Head of AI

Head of AI Salary: £140,000 - £170,000 + bonus Location: London/Hybrid

Data Idols are partnering with a major UK brand undergoing a significant enterprise-wide transformation, placing AI at the centre of its long-term business and technology strategy. This is a pivotal, newly created leadership role with the remit to define, influence, and drive the organisation's entire AI agenda.

The Opportunity

As Head of AI, you will shape the strategic direction for how AI, including generative, agentic, and operational AI, is adopted, governed, and scaled across the organisation. You'll create and lead a high-impact AI function that brings together existing ML, AI Ops, and emerging AI capabilities under a clear, unified strategy.

This role is about vision, influence, and enterprise-wide impact. You'll work closely with executive stakeholders to identify where AI can deliver meaningful commercial value, create competitive advantage, and transform customer and operational experiences. You will champion the responsible and strategic adoption of AI, ensuring cutting edge technologies translate into measurable outcomes.

While you'll have a strong technical grounding, this is not a hands on research or engineering position. Instead, you'll provide strategic leadership, ensuring the right capabilities, standards, and governance structures are in place to successfully deliver AI at scale.

Key Responsibilities

• Set the enterprise AI strategy, aligning AI capabilities with long term business goals
• Build, lead, and inspire a new AI organisation, consolidating and uplifting existing teams
• Drive adoption of generative, agentic, and advanced operational AI across diverse business areas
• Influence senior stakeholders and guide the organisation on where and how AI can create real commercial leverage

Skills and Experience

• Proven leadership in defining and delivering enterprise AI strategy, including GenAI
• Strong understanding of AI platforms, MLOps, and modern AI tooling (without needing to be hands on)
• Experience translating AI opportunities into commercially impactful use cases at scale
• Exceptional communication, influence, and stakeholder engagement skills, able to operate confidently at senior levels
• Demonstrated ability to build new teams and uplift organisational capability

If you are motivated by shaping the future of AI within a major organisation and leading an agenda with significant executive visibility and impact.