AI Director

About the role

Most organisations have run their AI experiments. Far fewer have put AI into production and made it work reliably with real data, real users and real scrutiny.

We’re looking for our most senior AI practitioner in the UK: someone who can set technical direction, stay hands-on, advise senior clients and help build the next generation of our AI capability.

The role has four parts

• Technical leadership: Set the architecture and standards for how we build AI systems, while staying close to the technology.

• Consulting: Help clients turn AI ambition into practical, valuable plans and challenge approaches that won’t stand up in practice.

• New business: Identify and shape opportunities, and lead the technical side of proposals and pitches.

• Growing the team: Mentor, train and hire, making AI capability something we build across the team.

What you’ll be responsible for

• Setting the technical direction for AI and data work across Futurice UK.

• Architect and build production AI systems, from agentic applications and knowledge systems to applied ML and the data platforms behind them.

• Establish how we evaluate, observe and improve AI systems, with quality, cost, latency and risk measured from the start.

• Advise senior clients on AI strategy, operating models, build vs. buy and the journey from pilot to production.

• Design security, privacy, governance and responsible AI into solutions from the outset.

• Shape new opportunities, from early qualification through solution design, estimation and pitches.

• Develop our UK AI capability through mentoring, training, hiring, writing and speaking.

• Work with the wider Futurice AI community across Europe.

We’d love to hear from you if you have

• A combination of deep technical expertise, strong consulting skills and commercial judgement.

• Technically, you have recent experience building and operating AI systems in production. You understand the realities of LLMs and agentic systems, including retrieval, context engineering, evaluation, observability, model selection, security and the data and cloud infrastructure underneath them.

• You’re also a strong software engineer, comfortable with Python and SQL and able to work effectively in existing codebases and with engineering teams. You understand that not every AI problem needs an LLM, and that good data, classical ML and sound engineering are often just as important.

• As a consultant, you can move comfortably between technical detail and strategic conversations with senior stakeholders. You know how to turn an ambiguous business problem into a clear case for change, a practical roadmap and a well-scoped engagement. You’re comfortable challenging assumptions and saying when something isn’t worth building.

• You’ll also have experience developing others and contributing to the growth of an AI practice, through mentoring, training, hiring, thought leadership or productising new offerings.