Head of Artificial Intelligence

Start-up‑Focused Role - $280,000-$320,000 + Equity About the Role A fast‑moving startup is seeking a Head of AI to build and lead its artificial intelligence function from the ground up. This is a high‑ownership role designed for someone who thrives in early‑stage environments, moves quickly, and is excited to shape both technical direction and company culture. What You’ll Do Own the entire AI strategy and roadmap, guiding the evolution from early prototypes to scalable production systems. Design, train, fine‑tune, and deploy AI/ML models end‑to‑end, remaining hands‑on through early growth phases. Build and lead the AI organization — hiring, mentoring, and establishing team structure and best practices. Rapidly experiment and iterate, balancing scrappy execution with thoughtful long‑term architecture. Establish all AI infrastructure, including data pipelines, training workflows, model hosting, and MLOps foundations. Collaborate closely with founders and product/engineering teams to identify high‑impact AI opportunities. Implement responsible AI practices from day one, ensuring safety, reliability, robustness, and transparency. Evaluate and integrate emerging AI technologies, including LLMs, agentic systems, and multimodal architectures. Set standards for experimentation, evaluation, benchmarking, and deployment, optimizing for speed and quality. What Makes You a Great Fit 7–10+ years in AI/ML with significant hands‑on experience building and deploying real systems. A track record of shipping AI products or infrastructure in a startup or small‑team environment. Deep understanding of LLMs, modern ML frameworks, retrieval systems, data engineering, and model evaluation. Ability to move fast while maintaining strong engineering discipline. Comfort operating in ambiguity and making high‑impact decisions without perfect information. Natural leadership instincts with the ability to both set vision and execute. Advanced degree in ML/CS or equivalent practical experience. Bonus Experience Previous experience as a founding ML engineer or early technical leader. Direct experience training, fine‑tuning, or analyzing LLMs, multimodal models, or agents. Familiarity with lightweight startup‑friendly ML infrastructure (e.g., serverless inference, vector search, lean MLOps). Demonstrated ability to build quickly while maintaining high safety and reliability standards. Location San Francisco, CA — hybrid role; in‑person collaboration preferred during early team formation. Head of AI — San Francisco, CA #J-18808-Ljbffr Harnham