Head of Applied AI Engineering

TalentCo are delighted to be partnering with an established PE-backed tech company and an AI consultancy looking to hire a high-calibre Head of Applied AI Engineering into their UK business, as they build a new conversational AI platform from the ground up.

This hire can either be based remote-first in the UK with occasional travel to work with the team in person, or hybrid out of their London HQ, with plenty of flexibility to suit individual circumstances.

The client are developing a low-code, multi-tenant platform that enables large enterprises to design, build and deploy AI agents capable of handling both single-step LLM tasks and complex multi-step agentic workflows.

As Head of Applied AI Engineering you will:

• Lead the Applied AI division end-to-end, setting the product vision for the multimodal AI orchestration platform and translating it into concrete technical and research priorities.
• Define and validate product strategy through deep customer research, rapid prototyping and early forward-deployed pilots that test real-world constraints, user flows and model behaviour.
• Build and oversee the technical foundations of the platform, including fine-tuned and specialised language models, private-cloud deployment patterns and architectures that meet strict security, compliance and industry requirements.
• Establish and manage the partner ecosystem across model providers, cloud infrastructure and telephony platforms to accelerate capability development and de-risk execution.
• Lead and coordinate AI engineering squads delivering prototypes and production foundations, while maintaining tight alignment with the CTO, CPO, Legal, Compliance and core Engineering teams.
• Ensure the division operates with high velocity and experimentation, balanced by enterprise-grade governance, technical rigour and operational discipline.

We want to hear from you if:

• Have led an applied AI or ML function, owning product direction and technical strategy for enterprise-grade AI platforms.
• Have operated as an AI Engineer or AI Architect at at Staff / Principal / Tech Lead level previously.
• Bring hands-on experience validating AI products through early customer pilots, rapid prototyping and real-world deployment rather than purely theoretical work.
• Have a strong track record of building and scaling cross-functional teams, partnering closely with engineering, product, legal and compliance stakeholders.
• Understand enterprise constraints deeply, including security, privacy, regulatory and industry-compliant model development and deployment.

What do they offer?

• Salary of £140k-£150k
• Comprehensive benefits package
• Remote-first or hybrid - the choice is yours
• Work from anywhere policy