Head of AI

Head of AI – Manchester

A growing technology-led business is looking to appoint a Head of AI to lead the development, implementation, and long-term adoption of AI capabilities across the organisation.

This is a strategic and hands-on leadership role focused on shaping the company’s AI direction while overseeing the successful delivery of AI solutions from concept through to live deployment and business adoption. Working closely with IT, operational, commercial, and leadership teams, you will drive practical AI initiatives using Azure, LLMs, machine learning, and AI agents — ensuring solutions are secure, scalable, integrated, and delivering measurable business impact.

The organisation is already investing heavily in AI and exploring a broad range of initiatives. They are now looking for an experienced AI leader who can combine technical expertise with strategic thinking, helping define the AI roadmap while building internal capability and leading implementation across the business.

This role would suit someone who enjoys building and scaling AI functions, leading innovation, solving operational challenges, and delivering transformational business outcomes in a fast-moving environment.

Role Purpose

Lead the organisation’s AI capability, strategy, and implementation roadmap.

Responsible for identifying, prioritising, and delivering AI solutions that create measurable operational and commercial value. Working across the business, you will oversee the design, deployment, governance, and adoption of AI technologies while helping shape the future AI direction of the organisation.

Key Responsibilities

Define and lead the organisation’s AI strategy, roadmap, and long-term capability development

Identify and prioritise AI opportunities across operational, commercial, and customer-facing areas of the business

Design and oversee the development of high-performing AI models tailored to business needs

Lead AI initiatives from proof of concept and rapid prototyping through to enterprise-scale production deployment

Work closely with IT Infrastructure and Development teams to deploy secure, scalable AI solutions into production environments

Ensure AI solutions meet enterprise-grade security, governance, and compliance standards including Private Endpoints and secure integrations

Drive adoption of AI technologies across the organisation and ensure solutions become embedded within day-to-day workflows

Establish AI governance, operational standards, and best practices for deployment, monitoring, scalability, and risk management

Implement monitoring and evaluation frameworks for production AI environments, including hallucination detection, drift monitoring, performance optimisation, and GenAIOps processes

Ensure AI solutions integrate effectively with existing systems, APIs, and data platforms

Collaborate with senior stakeholders to evaluate business value, project feasibility, and ROI before implementation

Measure and report on AI project outcomes including efficiency gains, automation improvements, productivity, and customer impact

Provide leadership, mentorship, and technical direction to internal teams and future AI hires

Stay informed on emerging AI technologies, trends, and opportunities to maintain competitive advantage

Required Experience

Essential

Proven experience leading AI strategy, implementation, or AI transformation initiatives within a business environment

Deep expertise in Python and modern AI/ML frameworks and SDKs

Strong experience building and deploying production-grade AI solutions, including RAG pipelines and LLM-based applications

Hands-on experience with AI deployment, operationalisation, monitoring, and scaling

Strong understanding of enterprise infrastructure concepts including VNets, Entra ID, API Gateways, Private Endpoints, and secure integrations

Experience working with at least one major enterprise AI cloud platform (Azure preferred)

Strong SQL skills and experience working with both structured and unstructured data

Experience building AI agents, workflow automation, and tool/API integrations

Strong commercial awareness with the ability to assess business value and prioritise AI initiatives effectively

Excellent stakeholder management and communication skills, with the ability to engage both technical and non-technical audiences

Strong leadership, problem-solving, and strategic thinking capabilities

Desirable

Experience leading or building internal AI functions or teams

Experience with LLMOps / GenAIOps tooling and monitoring frameworks

Exposure to OCR, computer vision, voice AI, or conversational AI solutions

Experience working within operational, retail, automotive, or customer-focused businesses

Familiarity with AI governance, security, and scalability best practices

Experience driving organisation-wide AI adoption and change management initiatives

Salary & Benefits

Competitive salary depending on experience

Quarterly bonus scheme

Hybrid working arrangements — 3 days office / 2 days remote

Opportunity to shape and lead AI capability within a growing business

Significant long-term career progression opportunities

High level of autonomy and influence within the organisation

Interested? Please click Apply Now!

Head of AI – Manchester