Head of AI Engineering
Permanent - Manchester
Hybrid with a focused on-site presence
Join a pioneering 5yr+ TechBio company at the intersection of AI, synthetic biology, and industrial biotechnology. You will lead the building of an AI engineering platform connecting computational design, experimental validation, and real-world commercial outcomes. Reporting directly to the CEO, sitting on the management team, and engaging with the Board.
This is a hands-on leadership role with genuine scope to shape the company's long-term technical position.
The tasks of a Head of AI Engineering will include:
- Build & lead the AI engineering team; hiring, coaching, designing, delivering.
- Contribute hands-on in coding, architecture, and technical problem-solving.
- Define and build the AI platform connecting data, models, workflows, and learning loops.
- Design and deploy agentic AI capabilities that improve scientific workflows and platform intelligence.
- Build the software foundations for autonomous closed-loop experimentation linking computational design and lab validation.
- Partner with leadership to translate challenges into scalable AI systems.
- Shape technical strategy, hiring, and engineering standards as company scales.
To progress as a successful Head of AI Engineering, you will require:
- 5+ years leading engineering, ML, or AI teams at Director or equivalent level.
- Deep expertise in AI/ML; model architectures, training, evaluation, and production deployment.
- Strong software engineering background building production-grade AI platforms and infrastructure.
- Proven experience building and deploying agentic systems into live workflows.
- A player-coach approach; equally comfortable writing code, setting architecture, and leading people.
- Strong communication skills across technical, scientific, and executives.
Highly desirable skills include:
- Exposure or understanding of AI and ML in a scientific or biotech environment
- Familiar with specialised datasets, iterative learning loops, or semi-autonomous experimentation systems.
Please Note
- Own eligibility to work in the UK — sponsorship is not available for this role.
- Significant experience in elite level AI environments is critical.
Rewards & Benefits
- Competitive salary plus equity.
- Senior leadership role with direct CEO and Board exposure.
- The opportunity to build something unique in a well-backed, science-led environment.
Keyword terminology
AI Engineering, Machine Learning, Agentic AI, AI Platform, Closed-Loop Experimentation, Autonomous Experimentation, Protein Engineering, Biocatalysis, Computational Biology, Synthetic Biology, Deep Tech, TechBio, Director of Engineering, ML Platform, AI Infrastructure, Lab Automation, Bioinformatics, Player-Coach, Engineering Leadership, AI Agents, LLMs, Python, Numpy, MLOps, Life Sciences AI, Biotechnology.
