AI Factory Lead

Our client, a leading British airline, is building an AI Factory to scale AI safely and profitably across its brands. They are looking for an AI Factory Lead to own the portfolio, the products, and the guardrails in one accountable role.

Location: [Heathrow,London / Barcelona / Madrid] (Some travel, flights and hotel covered) | Type: Contract

The role
You'll be the single senior leader accountable for how the AI Factory delivers value. That means steering the investment portfolio, owning the products and platform end to end, and making sure everything reaches production safely, with clear accountability and defensible evidence. You'll provide the executive view across initiatives without becoming the delivery owner for every product, and you'll build a capability rather than a collection of disconnected proofs of concept.

What you'll do

Portfolio and programme

• Establish and run portfolio governance across the operating companies, functions, and delivery teams
• Prioritise investment on business value, strategic alignment, feasibility, risk, and reusability
• Maintain the integrated roadmap, dependencies, funding position, and executive reporting
• Resolve cross-brand conflicts and prevent fragmented or duplicated AI initiatives
• Track benefits, delivery confidence, risks, and adoption across the portfolio

Product

• Define the product vision, strategy, roadmap, and measurable outcomes for the AI Factory's platform, products, and services
• Translate business problems into prioritised product opportunities, and own discovery, validation, and lifecycle decisions
• Balance user value, business benefit, technical feasibility, and responsible-AI constraints
• Set product metrics covering adoption, quality, productivity, cost, and realised value
• Decide when to scale, evolve, pause, or retire a product

Governance, risk, and assurance

• Define the policies, risk tiers, controls, and approval pathways for AI products, services, and agents
• Translate legal, regulatory, cyber, data, and responsible-AI requirements into practical engineering controls
• Set requirements for human oversight, evaluation, traceability, and incident management
• Embed automated controls and evidence collection into delivery pipelines wherever possible
• Provide clear escalation and stop mechanisms for unsafe or underperforming systems
• Coordinate senior stakeholders across technology, business, data, cyber, legal, privacy, audit, and procurement

About you

• A senior portfolio, product, or transformation leader with experience in complex, federated organisations
• Enough understanding of AI and software delivery to challenge plans credibly, including AI's capabilities and limitations and the realities of taking products from experiment to production
• Experience turning governance principles into proportionate, risk-based controls that enable speed rather than create late-stage bottlenecks
• Confidence influencing senior stakeholders through structured thinking and clear narrative
• A track record of driving initiatives end to end with minimal oversight

Ideal candidates from strategy consulting backgrounds
If you've worked at McKinsey, BCG, Bain, or a comparable firm, particularly in QuantumBlack, BCG X, or Bain's digital and AI practices, and have since led AI or transformation programmes, this role is a natural next step. You'll bring structured problem-solving, comfort in the boardroom, and the ability to turn ambiguity into a clear prioritised plan. You'll also need real ownership instincts: this is a role where you run the portfolio and live with the outcomes, rather than advise on them.

What success looks like

• A transparent, outcome-led portfolio with clear ownership, controlled investment, and demonstrable benefits across multiple brands
• AI products that solve meaningful problems and achieve sustained adoption
• AI systems reaching production with defensible evidence, while low-risk initiatives move quickly through standardised controls

Why this role

• Own a capability at the centre of the airline's AI strategy, with direct access to senior leadership
• Complex, visible work at one of the UK's most recognised brands
• A high-calibre team across product, engineering, architecture, and governance

Guidant, Carbon60, Lorien & SRG - The Vertage Group Portfolio are acting as an Employment Business in relation to this vacancy.