Head of AI

The client is seeking a Head of AI to establish and lead its artificial intelligence function from inception. This role is ideal for individuals who thrive in fast-paced startup environments, capable of shaping technical direction while contributing to company culture. Key responsibilities include developing the entire AI strategy and roadmap, transitioning from early prototypes to scalable production systems. The role demands deep involvement in designing, training, fine-tuning, and deploying AI/ML models. The selected candidate will also build and lead the AI organization, focusing on hiring, mentoring, and setting up team structures and best practices, alongside rapidly experimenting and iterating on systems. In this high-responsibility role, the Head of AI will establish AI infrastructure, such as data pipelines, training workflows, and MLOps foundations. Collaboration with founders and product/engineering teams will be crucial for identifying high-impact AI opportunities. Implementing responsible AI practices from the start to ensure safety, reliability, robustness, and transparency is a core responsibility. The candidate will evaluate and integrate emerging AI technologies, including LLMs, agentic systems, and multimodal architectures while setting standards for experimentation, evaluation, benchmarking, and deployment. The ideal candidate will have 7-10+ years in AI/ML with significant hands-on experience in building and deploying systems, preferably within a startup or small-team setting. A deep understanding of modern ML frameworks, LLMs, retrieval systems, data engineering, and model evaluation is essential, along with a proven record of shipping AI products or infrastructure. Leadership instincts, the ability to operate in ambiguity, and an advanced degree in ML/CS or equivalent practical experience are required. Additional experience as a founding ML engineer or early technical leader, with familiarity in lightweight startup-friendly ML infrastructure, will be considered a bonus.