AI Director

This is a fully remote position, open to applicants in United Kingdom.

📋 Description

• Establish the technical direction for AI and data initiatives at Futurice UK.

• Ensure the quality of AI and data solutions developed.

• Design and construct production-level AI systems, which include agentic applications, retrieval and knowledge systems, applied machine learning, and foundational data platforms.

• Develop evaluation methods for assessing the quality, cost, latency, and risk of AI systems.

• Provide strategic advice to client leadership on AI strategies, operational models, decisions between building and buying solutions, and transitioning from pilot projects to full production.

• Incorporate governance, privacy, security, and responsible AI practices into projects.

• Lead the technical development of new opportunities, covering qualification, solution design, estimation, and pitches.

• Enhance Futurice’s profile through writing and public speaking engagements.

• Cultivate the UK AI capability through mentoring, training, and recruitment.

• Collaborate with the broader Futurice AI community across Europe.

• Identify and develop client opportunities while overseeing the technical aspects of proposals and pitches.

⛳️ Requirements

• Approximately 10+ years of experience in technology.

• Several years in a senior, client-facing position.

• Recent hands-on experience in delivering AI systems into production.

• Experience in regulated industries.

• Background in platform and data modernization.

• Contributions to open-source projects or published works.

• Experience in productizing offerings.

• Proven experience in deploying LLM-based and agentic systems into production and providing ongoing support.

• Familiarity with agentic architecture, including tool utilization, planning and execution loops, multi-agent orchestration, memory and state management, human-in-the-loop checkpoints, and failure recovery.

• Expertise in context engineering, focusing on retrieval strategies, chunking and compaction, caching, structured inputs, freshness, and cost trade-offs.

• Experience in AI evaluation and observability, systematic error analysis, regression testing, and tracing agent behavior in production.

• Knowledge of retrieval and knowledge systems, hybrid search, re-ranking, retrieval evaluation, and graph-based methodologies.

• Understanding of model selection and adaptation, fine-tuning, distillation, and reinforcement learning-based post-training.

• Proficient in classical machine learning and data science, including forecasting, optimization, causal inference, recommendation systems, and anomaly detection.

• Familiarity with data and platform foundations, including pipelines, orchestration, lakehouse and streaming patterns, data contracts, data quality, semantic layers, and lineage.

• Practical experience with AWS, Azure, or GCP.

• Knowledge of AI security, including prompt and indirect injections, tool use and permission design, data exfiltration pathways, sandboxing, agent identity management, least privilege practices, and red-teaming.

• Strong skills in Python and SQL.

• Solid software design instincts, testing discipline, code review capabilities, and comfort with existing codebases.

• Working knowledge of coding agents and AI tools.

• Comfortable engaging in technical discussions with engineering teams and strategic conversations with senior client stakeholders.

• Experience in leading multi-disciplinary teams.

• Ability to frame and shape engagements, including approach, phasing, team composition, estimates, and risk assessment.

• Experience in business development, including identifying opportunities and leading technical responses to proposals and pitches.

• Capability to navigate ambiguity effectively.

• Experience in mentoring, conducting internal training, documenting learning experiences, and interviewing and assessing AI and data talent.

🏝️ Benefits

• A supportive, values-driven team culture where individuality is celebrated.

• A personal learning budget of £1200 per year.

• Access to mentoring and knowledge-sharing sessions.

• Flexible, remote-first working arrangements with colleagues across the UK and EU.

• Private health insurance (WPA).

• Pension contributions starting at 6%.

• Wellbeing support, offering £50 per month via Juno.

• 25 days of holiday plus bank holidays and a day off for your birthday.

• Holiday entitlement increases by one day for each year of service after three years, capped at 30 days.

• A tiered parental leave policy, including 16 weeks of maternity leave and 4 weeks for partners, with full pay depending on tenure.

• An electric vehicle salary sacrifice scheme, available depending on tenure.