Head of Applied AI

About the role

Lead and grow the Applied AI capability at Colibri Digital, shaping how generative, agentic and predictive AI move from prototype to secure, governed production environments. This senior position sits at the intersection of AI engineering, consulting, commercial growth and technical delivery.

Key responsibilities

• Define the technical direction, standards and growth strategy for the Applied AI practice.
• Lead senior client conversations, from discovery through delivery, ensuring solutions are technically feasible and commercially sound.
• Set high standards for architecture, testing, CI/CD, MLOps/LLMOps, evaluation, security and AI governance.
• Guide solution design, challenge estimates and delivery approaches before commitments are made.
• Mentor and develop AI engineers and senior technical specialists.
• Collaborate with sales and pre‑sales to build pipeline, win work and expand client relationships.
• Transform successful client projects into repeatable propositions, accelerators and reusable assets.
• Monitor practice performance, including revenue, utilisation, capacity and margin.

Required profile

• Proven senior leadership in AI engineering or a comparable technical practice.
• Track record of taking AI/ML solutions from prototype to reliable production use.
• Strong software engineering fundamentals, including system design, APIs, version control and automated testing.
• Experience with MLOps/LLMOps and operating AI systems at scale.
• Hands‑on experience with modern cloud AI platforms and technologies.
• Demonstrated ability to work directly with senior clients and contribute to pre‑sales activities.
• Experience leading, mentoring and developing technical teams.
• Deep understanding of responsible AI, governance and safe deployment at scale.

Required skills

• LLM‑based systems
• Retrieval‑augmented generation (RAG)
• Agentic or multi‑agent architectures
• Vector databases and embeddings
• AI evaluation methodologies
• MLOps / LLMOps
• Cloud AI platforms
• System design and APIs
• Version control and CI/CD pipelines
• Automated testing

What we offer

• Highly competitive salary, dependent on experience
• Salary sacrifice pension scheme (5% + 3% employer contribution)
• 25 days annual leave plus a birthday day
• Private medical insurance and additional benefits
• Remote‑first working model within the UK, with travel to client sites and offices as needed