Head of AI

OrangeValley; Breukelen; On-site; EUR 150,000 - 210,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Pension plan

Company car

Home office budget €1,000

26 vacation days

8% holiday allowance

Laptop

Job summary

Follo is seeking a Head of AI to lead our AI transformation, build a Champions network across services, and drive AI fluency for 150+ specialists. You will shape FolloEngine and Pace by Follo, collaborate with the executive team, and position Follo as the AI-native performance agency in the Netherlands and Belgium.

We value hands-on leadership, prompt engineering skills, and a strong track record in performance marketing.

Qualifications

• Senior leadership experience in AI transformation or strategy.
• Strong domain knowledge in performance marketing and AI.
• Excellent storytelling and external narrative capabilities.

Responsibilities

• Lead and nurture a network of AI Champions across services.
• Guard the product direction of FolloEngine and Pace by Follo.
• Define AI governance, KPIs, and data systems to enable scalable AI adoption.
• Represent Follo's AI story in market events, media, and publications.
• Collaborate with CEO and management team on strategic decisions.

Skills

Leadership

AI strategy

Performance marketing

Public speaking

Prompt engineering

Tools

Asana

Drive

Salesforce

Job description

You are the face of Follo's AI story - a connector, a driver, and a visionary.

At Follo, we're building the future of performance marketing - AI-native, not AI-added. We test every process, every role, and every way of working against the 80% question: does this still make sense once AI takes over eighty percent of the execution? If the answer is no, we redesign. For that, we're looking for someone who not only understands this, but can carry it, champion it, and set it in motion.

As Head of AI, you are the driving force behind our AI transformation. You build an AI team around a network of AI Champions per service line, lift 150+ specialists to AI fluency, and tell our story in the market - on stage, in podcasts, and in publications. At the same time, you stay close to the work: you write prompts, contribute to the sprints on FolloEngine, and guard the direction of product and process. Not a pure people manager, not a pure advisor. A connector with vision who also builds.

You work directly with the CEO and have a seat on the management team alongside the COO, CFO, and CCO. You connect three worlds: the Champions who make AI operational within every team, the development team behind our AI stack and FolloEngine, and the outside world where you position Follo as the AI-native performance agency of the Netherlands and Belgium.

Your main challenges

The role rests on four pillars - one person, four directions in which you make impact.

• Driver and face of AI, internally and externally: you build and lead the network of AI Champions per service line - SEO, SEA, Social, Marketplaces, Linkbuilding, Data - and lift 150+ specialists to reflexive AI usage as the baseline. You recruit, coach, and organize, and make AI fluency part of hiring, reviews, and promotion. Externally, you are the face of our AI story: LinkedIn, podcasts, keynotes, whitepapers, and panels, in every market where we operate.
• Product direction for FolloEngine and Pace: you guard the strategic course of FolloEngine - our data and intelligence platform for clients - and of Pace by Follo, our in-house product for Google Ads management. You work in two-week sprints with the development team on the Asana board and build along yourself where needed: prompts, agent architecture, model routing. But you sit in the direction, not predominantly in the code.
• Process roadmap and RevOps: you ensure our systems - Drive, Asana, Salesforce - deliver AI-usable data, with end-to-end process descriptions per vertical and standardization across disciplines. This is where AI adoption usually fails. Not here.
• AI expertise and governance: you set up KPIs and dashboards for AI efficiency (cost per action), margin per FTE per vertical, and quality. You keep the token economy sharp, monitor model routing, and prevent us from becoming dependent on a single LLM vendor.

What your week looks like

Your work doesn't fit into one type of activity. A day switches between leading the Champions, telling the story externally, sparring with the management team, and hands-on building where needed. Not a developer in a sprint - a leader who also builds.

You work closely with:

• The Champions network that you set up and steer yourself: weekly sync, monthly demos, personal coaching. This is where the breadth of the organization sits.
• The FolloEngine development team (product, tech, prompts): you're in the two-week sprints, guard the direction, and build along where it matters on substance - without being the executing developer.
• The management team (CEO, COO, CFO, CCO): you're part of the strategic decisions on FolloEngine, the AI Transformation pilot, and the AI Operating System. Your input is both technical and commercial.
• External stakeholders: press, events, podcasts, partner agencies, and client roundtables. You represent our AI story in the market - your face belongs to the brand.
• External development partners for specific build projects: you coordinate scope, deliverables, and quality.

What you can expect from us

• A direct line to the CEO and a seat at the table for strategic decisions - no layers in between, no delay.
• Maximum mandate and budget: token budget, licenses, development partners, and tooling. You get what you need to build.
• An organization in full transformation: 150+ specialists, four locations, a platform that clients use, and a growing international playing field. Your work touches value directly - no pilots in a corner.
• Room to grow: conferences, communities, knowledge sessions, and the option of a sabbatical.
• A pension plan, company car, and a work-from-home allowance with a €1,000 budget for your workspace.
• 26 vacation days, 8% holiday allowance, a laptop, and all the tools you need.

What we're looking for

• Driving and connecting. You're a people person with vision. You carry others along in your enthusiasm, build trust, and connect people who otherwise work past each other. Under your lead, the Champions become a network, not separate islands.
• Domain knowledge in performance marketing. You have at least 5 years of experience in a strategic, leading or advisory role within the digital marketing domain. You know the difference between organic SEO and paid campaigns, understand client reporting, know what an attribution model is, and have an opinion on GA4, BigQuery, and pixel tracking.
• Thought leader in performance marketing and AI. You have a voice in the market, or you're actively building one. You write, speak, podcast, and publish; LinkedIn is not an obligation but a natural stage. You present at keynote level and explain a complex agentic flow to an SEO consultant.
• Always in motion. You follow AI developments daily, out of interest rather than duty. A day without a new paper, model, or release feels strange. You test every new model, often before others know it exists, and have a well-founded opinion on the latest Claude and GPT versions, emerging agentic frameworks, and where the next leap will come from. Experimenting isn't a separate activity - it's how you think.
• Vision and AI orchestration. You understand why agentic architectures have often beaten chains since late 2025. You know when an expensive reasoning model is needed and when a cheaper Chinese model will do. You think in skills libraries, context engineering, and model routing - and explain that direction as easily to the management team as to a development sprint.
• Hands-on where needed. Tools like Claude Code, Cursor, OpenRouter, and agentic frameworks aren't concepts to you but tools. You write prompts yourself and build along, but you're not predominantly in the code. You lead and direct - and build along where you add value.
• Pace, urgency, ownership. The market moves too fast for long roadmaps; in this phase, speed > cost optimization. You make something that works every two weeks, learn from it, and iterate. A failing adoption track becomes your problem, a successful rollout your success. You seek responsibility, you don't hide behind the team.