Head of AI
Reports to: CEO
Manages: Small team of prompt engineers, data scientists and software engineers (3 to 4 people in year one)
The Role
We are looking for an AI Systems Architect/Head of AI to own the design, build and deployment of AI systems across the business. This is an implementation-focused role for someone who can translate operational, commercial and trading challenges into working, production-grade solutions.
This is not an advisory or strategy-only position. The successful candidate will be hands‑on, building systems end to end while operating as a senior technical and commercial leader within the business.
The ideal profile is a highly capable senior software engineer with 8 to 20 years of experience building production systems at scale, who has spent the last several years moving deeply into AI and LLM-based systems. AI is now their primary focus, but their credibility comes from engineering excellence and a track record of delivering complex systems in commercially demanding environments.
Key Responsibilities
- Own the architecture and deployment of AI systems across the business, including model selection, tooling, infrastructure and integration with core business systems.
- Work closely with the CEO and senior leadership team to identify high-impact AI opportunities across operations, trading and commercial functions.
- Design, build and deploy AI solutions from prototype through to production, including prompt engineering, data pipelines, evaluations, integrations and operational rollout.
- Provide engineering capability across the algorithmic trading and software development estate, including building, deploying and supporting trading algorithms, internal tooling and development systems.
- Hire, lead and grow a high-performing technical team.
- Operate as a peer to the senior leadership team, translating technical capability into commercial outcomes and owning key architectural and implementation trade-offs.
- Ensure AI systems are robust, scalable, measurable and commercially effective.
Required Experience
- 15 to 20 years of experience building and operating production software systems at scale.
- Demonstrable experience delivering multiple successful production systems in commercially demanding environments.
- 1 to 3 years of hands‑on experience with LLM-based systems, including agentic workflows, RAG architectures, evaluations, integrations and fine‑tuning.
- Strong software engineering capability across the full stack, with deep understanding of production infrastructure and deployment.
- Experience leading and scaling small technical teams.
- Commercial fluency and the ability to engage effectively with senior business leadership.
- Remains highly hands‑on technically, capable of coding, debugging, prompting, evaluating and deploying systems directly.
- Comfortable operating within industrial, asset‑intensive or operationally complex businesses.
What Makes Someone Successful in This Role
- Strong architectural instinct with the ability to design systems from first principles and select the right abstractions early.
- Systems thinker who understands businesses as interconnected flows of data, decisions, people, cost and time.
- Pragmatic and delivery-focused, with a strong bias toward shipping working solutions rather than endless pilots.
- Curious and continuously learning, staying current with emerging AI tooling, models and research.
- Able to move fluently between deep technical detail and executive‑level strategic conversations.
- Strong track record of delivering measurable business impact through technology.
- Commercially minded and outcome‑oriented, focused on adoption and operational value rather than technical novelty.
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