Head of Artificial Intelligence

Alfa-Executive Solutions; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Alfa-Executive Solutions is seeking an exceptional AI Engineering Leader to own and scale the AI organization — covering the AI infrastructure, agent intelligence and agentic products at the heart of the platform.

You’ll lead the current AI team, define the technical strategy for production-grade agentic systems, build reliable long-running AI agents, and recruit and mentor engineers while remaining hands-on with architecture and code.

Qualifications

• Experience leading AI/ML engineering teams building production LLM or agentic systems.
• Direct experience shipping AI products rather than operating solely in research or advisory roles.
• Deep understanding of agent architectures including tool use, planning, orchestration, evaluations and reliability.
• Strong hands-on technical capability and the ability to operate comfortably at code and architecture level.
• Experience recruiting and scaling high-performing engineering teams.

Responsibilities

• Own and scale the AI engineering organisation.
• Define the technical strategy for production-grade agentic AI systems.
• Build infrastructure supporting reliable, long-running AI agents.
• Recruit, mentor and retain exceptional AI engineers and future engineering leaders.
• Establish rigorous approaches to evaluation, reliability and model performance.
• Work closely with founders, engineering and product leadership.
• Remain hands‑on with architecture and code.
• Push the capabilities of AI agents within complex insurance workflows.

Skills

Production LLMs

Agentic systems

Leadership

Hands-on coding

Hiring & mentoring

Communication skills

Tools

LLM platforms

Agent tooling

Job description

Our client is a high-growth, venture-backed AI company building advanced AI agents for the insurance industry — a trillion-dollar global market still heavily dependent on manual, complex workflows.

Combining frontier agentic AI with deep industry expertise, the company is transforming how some of the insurance sector's most critical work gets done.

Following significant institutional funding and rapid growth, the business is already working with major insurance carriers, brokers and large enterprise customers.

The company is deeply technical and engineering-led, with AI at the core of both its product and long-term strategy.

They are now looking for an exceptional AI Engineering Leader to own and scale the AI organisation — covering the agents, infrastructure and products at the heart of the platform.

The Opportunity

This is a rare opportunity to take ownership of the AI function within a rapidly scaling, early-stage technology company.

You’ll lead the existing AI team and build the organisation across three core areas:

• AI Infrastructure — model routing, reliability and production infrastructure
• Agent Intelligence — evaluations, shared tooling and multimodal pipelines
• Agentic Products — customer-facing AI assistants and long-running autonomous workflows

You’ll set the technical direction for production-grade AI agents operating within complex, high-value enterprise environments.

This is not a purely managerial role. You’ll remain deeply technical, working across architecture, experimentation and engineering while building the team around you.

What You’ll Do

• Own and scale the AI engineering organisation
• Define the technical strategy for production-grade agentic AI systems
• Build infrastructure supporting reliable, long-running AI agents
• Recruit, mentor and retain exceptional AI engineers and future engineering leaders
• Establish rigorous approaches to evaluation, reliability and model performance
• Work closely with founders, engineering and product leadership
• Remain hands‑on with architecture and code
• Push the capabilities of AI agents within complex insurance workflows

Example Technical Challenges

• Building intelligent model‑routing systems optimised across speed, accuracy and cost
• Infrastructure for reliable, long-running autonomous agents
• AI assistants capable of understanding complex documents, interacting with connected enterprise systems and taking actions end‑to‑end
• Evaluation and reliability frameworks for production agentic systems
• Multimodal AI pipelines and shared agent tooling

What We’re Looking For

You’ll likely have:

• Proven experience leading AI/ML engineering teams building production LLM or agentic systems
• Direct experience shipping AI products rather than operating solely in research or advisory roles
• Deep understanding of agent architectures including tool use, planning, orchestration, evaluations and reliability
• Strong hands‑on technical capability and the ability to operate comfortably at code and architecture level
• Experience recruiting and scaling high‑performing engineering teams
• The ability to develop future technical leaders beneath you
• Strong written and verbal communication skills

Experience within high‑growth B2B SaaS or venture‑backed technology companies would be highly advantageous.

Insurance experience is not essential.

Above all, we’re looking for someone with exceptional drive, technical ambition and ownership — someone excited by the opportunity to build a major AI organisation rather than simply inherit one.

Why Join?

This is an opportunity to:

• Own the AI function at a rapidly scaling AI company
• Build an engineering organisation from an early stage
• Work on genuinely complex production agentic AI systems
• Solve problems within one of the world's largest industries
• Work alongside an exceptional technical founding and engineering team
• Have significant influence over product and technical direction
• Participate meaningfully in the company's future through equity

Candidates must already be legally authorized to work in the United States. Visa sponsorship or relocation-based immigration sponsorship is not available for this position.

Please note: Due to the high volume of applications, we will only contact shortlisted candidates. If you have not heard from us within two weeks, please consider your application unsuccessful at this time.