Head of Artificial Intelligence

develop; United Kingdom; Remote; GBP 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Bonus up to 30%

Equity

Fully remote within the UK

+ Benefits package

Job summary

develop is seeking a senior leader to build and run its Applied AI capability. The role combines deep AI expertise with client leadership, people management, and strategic growth of an established engineering capability.

You will oversee production AI solutions across Generative, Agentic and Predictive AI, ensuring implementation from discovery to reliable, scalable production with measurable business impact.

Qualifications

• Strong leadership of AI capability and teams.
• Experience turning AI ideas into production systems delivering business value.
• Ability to converse with senior clients on AI strategy and ROI.

Responsibilities

• Lead AI capability development and strategy.
• Drive AI production deployments from discovery to production.
• Mentor senior engineers and scale the team.
• Set technical direction across Generative, Agentic and Predictive AI.
• Engage with Sales to shape and win engagements.
• Contribute to proposals and SLAs for client engagements.
• Develop repeatable AI offerings and accelerators.
• Drive innovation and evaluate emerging AI technologies.

Skills

AI leadership

Client engagement

People management

Architecture leadership

Software engineering background

Tools

Cloud platforms

MLOps

Observability

Job description

I'm working on a key leadership hire to build and lead its Applied AI capability.

We're looking for someone who can combine deep technical AI expertise, client leadership and people management, while helping shape the future direction and commercial growth of an established engineering capability.

You'll lead a team delivering real-world AI solutions, working across Generative AI, Agentic AI, Machine Learning and intelligent automation.

Crucially, these aren't innovation-lab projects that stop at proof of concept. The focus is on taking AI from an initial idea through to secure, reliable production systems that deliver measurable business outcomes.

The role

You’ll have overall responsibility for the technical direction and development of the Applied AI capability.

That will include:

• Leading senior client conversations around AI strategy and implementation


• Taking AI opportunities from discovery through to production


• Leading engineers building AI systems from the ground up


• Setting technical direction across Generative, Agentic and Predictive AI


• Remaining close enough to engineering to challenge architecture and solution design


• Leading important client engagements and remaining approximately 20–30% billable


• Developing and mentoring senior technical people


• Building and scaling the team as demand increases


• Working alongside Sales and Pre-Sales to shape and win new engagements


• Contributing to proposals, solution design and statements of work


• Developing repeatable AI offerings and technical accelerators


• Driving innovation and evaluating emerging AI technologies


• Acting as a senior technical voice with both executive and engineering stakeholders


• Helping the wider organisation adopt AI effectively

Who we're looking for

The ideal person will have grown from a strong Software Engineering, Data, Machine Learning or Data Science background before progressing into architecture, technical leadership or management. You should still be highly technically literate.

We're not looking for someone who has spent the last several years entirely removed from engineering.

You’ll ideally bring experience across areas such as:

• Production LLM applications


• Generative AI


• Agentic AI and agent orchestration


• RAG


• Cloud-based AI platforms


• MLOps / LLMOps


• Evaluation and observability


• AI governance


• Software Engineering and system design

Specific tooling is less important than demonstrating that you’ve designed and delivered AI systems that people actually use in production. You’ll also need to be comfortable operating in front of clients. That could mean discussing business value and AI strategy with senior leadership in the morning, reviewing an architecture with engineers in the afternoon, and helping shape a proposal for a new engagement later that day.

You don't necessarily need to have previously run an entire AI practice either.

This could suit an existing Head of AI / Practice Lead, but we’re also interested in ambitious Principal AI Engineers, AI Architects, Engineering Managers and senior technical leaders who are ready to take the next step.

What's important is that you can demonstrate technical credibility, leadership, client impact and an entrepreneurial approach to building something.

Package

• Up to 30% bonus


• Equity


• Fully remote within the UK


• Brilliant benefits package


• Significant autonomy to shape and grow the capability

UK right to work is required and sponsorship isn't available for this position.