Interim AI & Automation Technology Director

Interim AI & Automation Technology Director

London / Edinburgh (Hybrid) | PE-backed | Greenfield AI Build | Hands-on

12 month Interim Contract

The Opportunity

We’re supporting a PE-Backed Financial Services Group undergoing significant growth, with a clear mandate to scale toward £1bn revenue.

The business has:

• A fully defined AI strategy
• Board-approved investment
• Early pilots and vendor partnerships already in motion

What it doesn’t yet have is the internal capability to move from strategy to execution, where this individual will build and own the core AI platform. This hire will sit at the centre of that.

The Role

You’ll be responsible for designing and building a sovereign AI platform from the ground up, including:

• Model abstraction and multi-provider routing
• RAG architecture and domain knowledge layers
• Fine-tuning and evaluation pipelines
• Agentic systems and orchestration
• Production-grade AI infrastructure (cloud-based, with open-source integration)

This is a hands-on role in a lean environment close to the architecture and build, not managing from a distance.

We’re interested in individuals who have:

• Built and deployed AI systems in production environments
• Strong hands-on experience with:
• LLMs / small language models
• RAG and vector-based architectures
• Open-source models (e.g. Llama / Mistral)
• Cloud experience (Azure preferred)
• Background in fast-paced, engineering-led environments (startup / scale-up)
• A desire to step into a broader ownership role

If you’re currently building AI systems in production and looking for a builder role with Director-level ownership please get in touch.