The Co-operative Bank of Kenya has announced several employment opportunities targeting professionals in artificial intelligence, data engineering, data science, technology architecture, quality assurance, risk and compliance, and commercial financial services.
The latest Co-op Bank jobs provide opportunities for professionals interested in contributing to the Bank’s continued investment in technology, digital transformation, data-driven decision-making and artificial intelligence.
A significant proportion of the vacancies are within artificial intelligence and data functions. The roles cover the complete AI and data delivery environment, including leadership, architecture, data engineering, application development, systems integration, data science, quality assurance, governance, risk and compliance.
The recruitment also includes the Commercial Manager – Youth Financial Services position, which focuses on growing and managing the Bank’s youth customer portfolio.
According to the Bank’s official careers portal, the available positions include AI Integration Engineer, Data Engineer, AI & Data Architect, AI Application Engineer, AI Risk & Compliance Specialist, AI – QA Automation Engineer, Data Scientist, AI Data Architect, Commercial Manager – Youth Financial Services and Head of Artificial Intelligence.
Interested candidates should carefully review the responsibilities and application requirements associated with the respective vacancies.
1. AI Integration Engineer
The AI Integration Engineer will join the Bank’s ICT Innovations team and will be responsible for developing and operating secure and scalable integrations connecting artificial intelligence models, agents and data solutions with the Bank’s enterprise systems.
The position will help ensure that AI capabilities can securely access trusted information and undertake authorised activities within approved business processes.
Key Responsibilities
The successful candidate will be responsible for:
- Designing, developing, testing and maintaining APIs, events, messages, connectors, batch interfaces and secure tool interfaces that allow approved AI models and assistants to access trusted data and perform authorised actions.
- Implementing integrations through approved API gateways, integration platforms and messaging infrastructure.
- Working with REST, SOAP, GraphQL, message queues, event-streaming and batch integration approaches in line with established enterprise standards.
- Translating interface requirements into appropriate contracts, schemas, mappings, reconciliation processes and service-level requirements.
- Implementing security measures covering authentication, authorisation, encryption, secrets handling, data masking, logging and auditability.
- Incorporating human oversight where AI agents undertake sensitive or potentially high-impact actions.
- Developing resilient integrations incorporating appropriate retry, timeout, recovery, queueing and related mechanisms.
- Working with system owners, Application Engineers, Data Engineers, Architects, ICT Security and Quality Assurance teams.
- Supporting end-to-end and regression testing of integrations.
- Coordinating releases, deployment and production handover through the Bank’s change-management processes.
- Monitoring the health, performance and reliability of integrations and addressing incidents, defects and technical issues.
- Maintaining API specifications, interface catalogues, schemas, operational procedures and other technical documentation.
Application Deadline: 9 November 2026.
Job Reference: AI – IE/IID/2026.
2. Data Engineer
The Data Engineer will contribute to the development of the Bank’s data infrastructure and help create reliable data solutions that support artificial intelligence, analytics and business decision-making.
The role focuses on developing secure and scalable data pipelines and establishing the data foundations required for the Bank’s AI and analytical initiatives.
Key Responsibilities
The Data Engineer will be expected to:
- Design, develop, test and maintain batch, streaming and real-time data pipelines.
- Integrate information from approved source systems into the Bank’s data and AI platforms.
- Develop reusable and properly structured data products and feature sets.
- Support business intelligence, analytics, artificial intelligence and data-driven decision-making.
- Establish data quality controls, reconciliation processes, metadata, lineage and monitoring mechanisms.
- Help ensure that data remains accurate, complete, consistent and available when required.
- Implement appropriate data security, privacy, access-control, encryption and retention requirements.
- Optimise data pipelines for scalability, performance, reliability and cost.
- Work with cross-functional teams and business data owners to translate business requirements into appropriate datasets and solutions.
- Incorporate automated testing, source control and CI/CD practices into data engineering workflows.
- Support deployments across development, testing and production environments.
- Monitor production data pipelines and resolve incidents and defects.
- Develop ingestion and processing pipelines for unstructured information such as documents, text and voice.
- Support generative AI applications and technologies including vector databases.
Application Deadline: 9 November 2026.
Job Reference: DE/IID/2026.
3. AI & Data Architect
The AI & Data Architect will report to the Head of Artificial Intelligence and provide architectural direction for the Bank’s artificial intelligence and data environment.
The role will define and govern AI and data domain architecture within the approved enterprise architecture while translating business priorities into target-state designs, standards, reusable patterns and implementation roadmaps.
Key Responsibilities
The position will involve:
- Defining and maintaining AI and data architecture frameworks, standards, principles and strategic roadmaps.
- Ensuring AI and data architecture remains aligned with the Bank’s wider enterprise architecture.
- Establishing standards for data modelling, integration, quality, metadata, lineage and master data management.
- Translating business priorities into comprehensive AI and data solution architectures.
- Developing reusable architectural approaches for machine learning, generative AI and agentic AI.
- Ensuring appropriate governance, safeguards, monitoring and human oversight are incorporated into AI architectures.
- Evaluating AI technologies, platforms, models and vendors.
- Assessing solutions based on factors including business value, security, scalability, cost, resilience and interoperability.
- Establishing standards for AI model deployment, lifecycle management and monitoring.
- Working with technology, data, security and infrastructure teams on MLOps and LLMOps requirements.
- Leading architecture reviews and documenting technical decisions and associated risks.
- Maintaining architecture documentation, capability maps, technology standards and transition roadmaps.
- Providing technical leadership to teams delivering AI and data solutions.
- Supporting capacity planning, performance management and cost optimisation for AI infrastructure.
Application Deadline: 9 November 2026.
Job Reference: AIDA/IID/2026.
4. AI Application Engineer
The AI Application Engineer will be responsible for designing, developing, deploying and supporting AI-enabled solutions across the Bank’s internal systems and customer-facing channels.
The position will help convert approved AI models, AI services and business requirements into production-ready applications, APIs, workflow integrations and user experiences.
Key Responsibilities
The successful candidate will:
- Design, develop, test and maintain AI-enabled application features and services.
- Develop solutions for customer-facing and internal applications.
- Support technologies such as retrieval-augmented generation, conversational assistants and AI agents.
- Develop tool-calling workflows, intelligent document-processing capabilities, recommendations and workflow automation.
- Translate business, product and user requirements into secure and maintainable technical solutions.
- Integrate models developed by Data Scientists and approved AI services into production applications.
- Build the APIs, services, interfaces and workflows required to support AI solutions.
- Ensure applications comply with approved technical architecture and engineering standards.
- Contribute to reliable and secure operation of AI applications.
- Work with other technology and data professionals to move approved AI capabilities from development into practical business use.
Application Deadline: 9 November 2026.
5. AI Risk & Compliance Specialist
The AI Risk & Compliance Specialist will report to the Head of Artificial Intelligence and support responsible AI adoption across Co-operative Bank.
The position will play an important role in establishing and operationalising governance, risk and compliance controls for artificial intelligence technologies.
The role is intended to ensure that AI systems are appropriately assessed, approved, monitored and managed throughout their lifecycle.
Key Responsibilities
The successful candidate will:
- Implement and maintain the Bank’s responsible AI governance framework.
- Support implementation of AI-related policies, standards, controls and approval processes.
- Maintain an organisation-wide inventory of AI use cases, models, providers and third-party AI tools.
- Ensure appropriate ownership and risk classification of AI solutions.
- Support approval and lifecycle monitoring processes.
- Conduct AI risk and impact assessments.
- Assess areas including data protection, cybersecurity, model risk, bias, fairness and explainability.
- Evaluate human oversight, third-party risk and regulatory compliance considerations.
- Establish risk-based controls, testing procedures and evidence requirements.
- Support model validation, bias testing and generative AI safeguards.
- Contribute to AI incident-management processes.
- Coordinate independent reviews and approvals with Risk, Legal, Compliance, Data Protection, ICT Security and other relevant functions.
- Promote accountability and responsible use of AI throughout the organisation.
Application Deadline: 9 November 2026.
6. AI – QA Automation Engineer
The AI – QA Automation Engineer will focus on quality assurance and process automation for AI-enabled solutions.
The position is responsible for helping ensure that artificial intelligence solutions introduced by the Bank meet expected standards of quality, reliability, safety and business readiness.
Testing responsibilities extend beyond conventional software testing and include data, models, integrations and responsible-AI controls.
Key Responsibilities
The successful candidate will be expected to:
- Develop and maintain risk-based testing strategies for AI-enabled applications.
- Create testing plans for data pipelines, integrations and platform services.
- Ensure testing activities can be traced to approved requirements and acceptance criteria.
- Develop and maintain automated testing suites.
- Conduct API, user-interface, data-pipeline and integration testing.
- Support regression, performance, resilience and security-related quality testing.
- Evaluate the quality, reliability and safety of AI solution behaviour.
- Test applicable AI safeguards against approved requirements.
- Develop representative test scenarios and data.
- Ensure sensitive and personal data is appropriately protected during testing.
- Work with ICT Security and AI Risk and Compliance teams.
- Integrate automated quality gates into software and AI delivery pipelines.
- Ensure defects, failed controls and deployment risks are visible before production releases.
- Maintain appropriate evidence supporting quality-assurance and release decisions.
Application Deadline: 9 November 2026.
7. Data Scientist
The Data Scientist will use advanced analytics, data science and artificial intelligence to address business challenges and identify opportunities for the Bank.
The role involves working with cross-functional teams and applying statistical modelling, machine learning and AI techniques to support better decision-making.
The Data Scientist may contribute to solutions across areas such as credit, fraud detection, collections, customer engagement and banking operations.
Key Responsibilities
The role will involve:
- Working with business and product teams to identify high-priority business challenges.
- Defining analytical approaches and measurable outcomes for data science initiatives.
- Analysing complex datasets to identify trends, patterns and business opportunities.
- Translating analytical findings into actionable insights and recommendations.
- Developing, training, testing and validating statistical models.
- Developing machine-learning, generative AI and optimisation models.
- Applying robust and reproducible methodologies during model development.
- Establishing performance benchmarks and validation criteria for models.
- Developing appropriate monitoring frameworks.
- Ensuring models consider fairness, explainability and appropriate human oversight.
- Supporting compliance with responsible AI and model-risk requirements.
- Working with Data Engineers and Application Engineers to move models into production.
- Supporting deployment through approved MLOps and LLMOps practices.
- Applying data science and AI capabilities to initiatives that can improve customer experience, risk management and operational efficiency.
Application Deadline: 9 November 2026.
8. AI Data Architect
The AI Data Architect will report to the Head of Artificial Intelligence and will be responsible for defining how the Bank’s data should be structured, integrated, governed and managed.
The objective of the role is to help ensure that organisational data remains secure, trusted, consistent and reusable across different business requirements.
The architecture developed under the role will support regulatory requirements, operational reporting, analytics and artificial intelligence applications.
Key Responsibilities
The AI Data Architect will:
- Define the target architecture and transition roadmap for enterprise data platforms.
- Support the architecture of data warehouses, data lakes or lakehouses.
- Develop architecture for real-time streaming capabilities, integration patterns and consumption layers.
- Design conceptual, logical and physical data models.
- Establish appropriate definitions, ownership and quality requirements for data.
- Develop architecture patterns covering data ingestion, storage, transformation, sharing, retention, archival and deletion.
- Address batch, streaming and real-time data requirements.
- Work with business data owners and Data Governance teams.
- Help establish common data definitions, metadata and lineage.
- Define master and reference data requirements and authoritative data sources.
- Guide Data Engineers in developing scalable and governed data products.
- Ensure appropriate traceability between data sources and consumption.
- Support the rationalisation of legacy data stores and reduction of unnecessary duplication.
- Define migration approaches towards the Bank’s target-state data platform.
- Incorporate data security classification, access controls, privacy, encryption, retention and resilience requirements into architecture.
Application Deadline: 9 November 2026.
9. Commercial Manager – Youth Financial Services
The Commercial Manager – Youth Financial Services is responsible for driving the commercial performance and growth of an assigned youth customer portfolio.
The role translates customer insights and business strategy into relevant financial propositions, market initiatives and sustainable customer value.
It covers the customer journey from acquisition and activation through engagement, retention and longer-term growth.
Key Responsibilities
The position involves:
- Managing the commercial performance of the assigned youth customer portfolio.
- Delivering agreed customer acquisition and activation targets.
- Driving product uptake, usage, customer retention and profitability.
- Translating business priorities and customer insights into commercial plans.
- Developing campaigns, propositions and market-activation initiatives.
- Establishing clear commercial objectives and measurable outcomes.
- Developing a detailed understanding of the financial needs and behaviours of young customers.
- Monitoring emerging youth-market trends.
- Using research, customer engagement, market intelligence and performance analytics to inform decisions.
- Working with Product Owners and other cross-functional teams.
- Supporting the development, testing and commercialisation of relevant products.
- Contributing to customer journeys, pricing strategies and offers.
- Identifying potential partnerships with universities and schools.
- Developing relationships with employers, youth organisations, businesses, fintechs and other ecosystem participants.
- Using strategic partnerships to expand market reach and support growth.
- Helping position Co-operative Bank as a preferred financial-services provider among younger customers.
The official careers page for this position displays an application deadline of 5 October 2026. Applicants should therefore verify the current status of the vacancy directly with Co-operative Bank before submitting an application.
10. Head of Artificial Intelligence
The Head of Artificial Intelligence is a senior strategic position responsible for leading Co-operative Bank’s enterprise-wide AI agenda.
The position reports to the Chief Digital and AI Officer and will lead the adoption and development of Artificial Intelligence, Generative AI and Agentic AI across the organisation.
The role requires leadership of the Bank’s AI strategy and the development of enterprise capabilities that can turn AI innovations into practical solutions delivering measurable value.
Key Responsibilities
The successful candidate will be responsible for:
- Developing and implementing the Bank’s multi-year artificial intelligence strategy and roadmap.
- Aligning AI initiatives with the Bank’s corporate objectives and emerging technology opportunities.
- Identifying and prioritising high-impact artificial intelligence use cases.
- Supporting AI applications across areas including credit, fraud management, collections, customer service and technology.
- Leading cross-functional AI teams.
- Overseeing AI projects from ideation and experimentation through deployment and adoption.
- Ensuring AI projects progress towards measurable benefits and business outcomes.
- Defining enterprise AI architecture and engineering standards.
- Establishing appropriate AI lifecycle-management practices.
- Supporting MLOps, production monitoring and development of reusable AI services.
- Driving appropriate cost optimisation for AI technologies.
- Establishing and maintaining responsible AI governance frameworks.
- Ensuring security, fairness, transparency and accountability are incorporated throughout the AI lifecycle.
- Supporting regulatory compliance in the development, deployment and operation of artificial intelligence.
- Building enterprise capabilities that enable AI initiatives to progress from experimentation into scalable business solutions.
- Providing strategic leadership for the Bank’s broader AI transformation programme.
Application Deadline: 30 October 2026.
How to Apply
Applications for the current Co-operative Bank AI and data vacancies are submitted by email.
Candidates should prepare an application together with a detailed Curriculum Vitae and send the documents to:
Applicants should indicate the appropriate job reference number in the subject line where a reference number has been provided in the official vacancy notice.
For example:
- AI Integration Engineer – AI – IE/IID/2026
- Data Engineer – DE/IID/2026
- AI & Data Architect – AIDA/IID/2026
Candidates applying for any of the positions should check the individual vacancy notice before submitting their application to ensure that the correct reference number and application instructions are followed.
Most of the currently advertised AI and data positions covered above have an application deadline of 9 November 2026, while the Head of Artificial Intelligence position closes on 30 October 2026.
The Commercial Manager – Youth Financial Services vacancy remains displayed on the Co-operative Bank careers listing, but its individual vacancy page indicates that the advertisement expired on 5 October 2026. Candidates interested in this particular position should confirm its status through the official careers portal before applying.
Co-operative Bank states that it is an equal opportunity employer.
Applicants are advised to submit their applications within the specified deadlines and rely on the official Co-operative Bank recruitment information when preparing their applications.
