Head of AI Research & Hands-On ML Leader

Free-Work; Peacehaven; On-site; GBP 130,000 - 180,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Bi-annual salary reviews

Equity refresh program

Job summary

Free-Work in Central London is seeking a Head of Research to build and lead a research function from the ground up, while remaining hands-on with cutting-edge LLMs, vision models and agentic systems in a regulated industry. You will shape the research roadmap and drive production-grade research across teams.

The role combines leadership with hands-on technical work, requiring 5+ years of applied AI/ML leadership, a track record of delivering research to production, and the ability to communicate

Qualifications

• 5+ years' applied AI research or ML engineering experience.
• Proven experience leading technical teams and research through to production.
• Hands-on expertise with LLM/vision model training, fine-tuning, agents and evaluation.
• Strong understanding of model quality, benchmarking and production ML systems.
• Excellent research judgement, ownership and communication skills.

Responsibilities

• Own the AI research strategy, roadmap and build-vs-adapt decisions.
• Build, lead and develop a team of AI researchers and engineers.
• Lead hands-on development across LLMs, vision models and agentic systems.
• Own evaluation, benchmarking, model quality and continuous improvement.
• Partner with product, engineering and commercial teams to deliver research into production.

Skills

AI leadership

Team leadership

Hands-on ML

LLM training

Vision models

Evaluation & benchmarking

Communication

Job description

Free-Work in Central London is seeking a Head of Research to build and lead a research function from the ground up, while remaining hands-on with cutting-edge LLMs, vision models and agentic systems in a regulated industry. You will shape the research roadmap and drive production-grade research across teams.

The role combines leadership with hands-on technical work, requiring 5+ years of applied AI/ML leadership, a track record of delivering research to production, and the ability to communicate