Head of AI (Hiring Immediately) in Brighton

At Humara we’re developing the next generation of virtual sales assistants. With genAI at our core, we help users discover products that truly fit their needs, provide Product Experts to answer their questions 24/7, and guide them through complex sales processes in any channel they choose. Reporting directly to the CTO, we’re seeking a Head of AI to lead our team of Data Scientists and Machine Learning Engineers and play a pivotal role in Humara becoming a successful AI-first business. Our AI team is central to building and optimising best in class products that solve real problems for our customers. A successful Head of AI will achieve this by deeply understanding the challenges our customers face, collaborating across departments to discover/validate potential solutions and using state of the art approaches to rapidly deliver value.

Responsibilities

• Being a hands-on leader and subject matter expert in your field, splitting your time between department leadership and staying hands-on.
• Shaping and guiding how AI advances such as Agentic and genAI can benefit and accelerate business growth at Humara.
• Bringing relevant and current technical knowledge to decisions which guides the team, improves decisions and leads to better Technology and user outcomes.
• Identifying, evaluating and adopting valuable industry best practices, processes and ways of working into the business and evangelising benefits of AI.
• Delivering an ambitious AI strategy aligned to business goals which takes our business forward.
• Driving AI delivery velocity - rallying teams through ambiguity, shipping frequently and optimising based on learnings.
• Teaching, coaching and mentoring your high performing team and inspiring them with a Customer and Product oriented approach.
• Leading a department connected to the rest of the business where collaboration amplifies individual ability and impact.

Requirements

• Is a proven department leader with experience of building commercial products powered by AI.
• Has extensive experience with and a passion for genAI and classic machine learning.
• Has experience with Agentic AI including building products, architecture patterns, and tool chain applications (this may be in a non-commercial environment).
• Is a vocal AI thought leader.
• Is commercially minded in their approach to product development, balancing technical investments against customer value creation to achieve both short and long term business goals.
• Has experience in creating, setting, and communicating strategy and has made technical decisions that have shaped company direction and enabled growth.
• Is able to build technical credibility with their team through hands-on collaboration as well as sharing experiences and learnings from your career.
• Strong knowledge of cloud computing (AWS preferred) and containerisation as well as a deep understanding of ML model lifecycles and MLOps best practices.
• Has experience with practices and tools that power today's AI agents: managing Agentic Loops, selecting and integrating eval frameworks, agent tooling, optimised RAG pipelines, and prompt engineering.
• Actively codes, having experience with Python, PyTorch, sci-kit learn and other ML frameworks as well as experimenting with AI tools such as Cursor, Claude Code, Codex, Lovable, v0.
• Is comfortable talking to customers, joining calls with enterprise stakeholders to understand their challenges and build their confidence in our product.
• Has 5 years or more experience in leadership roles where you’ve tested, learnt and developed your people management, coaching, and mentoring skills.
• Has excellent communication skills, is able to communicate complicated decisions to technical and non-technical stakeholders and at a level of detail that is meaningful to them.
• Asks excellent questions of the team to help unblock problems and improve solutions.

Please note that this is a hybrid role and will require a minimum once a week visit to our Brighton office.

Studies have shown that women and people who are disabled, LGBTQ+, neurodiverse or from ethnic minority backgrounds are less likely to apply for jobs unless they meet every single qualification and criteria. We’re committed to building a diverse, inclusive, and authentic workplace where everyone can be their best, so if you’re excited about this role but your past experience doesn’t align perfectly with every requirement on the Job Description, please apply anyway - you may just be the right candidate for this or other roles in our wider team.

Benefits

• Medicash healthcare scheme (reclaim costs for dental, physiotherapy, osteopathy and optical care)
• Private Medical Insurance via AXA