Director of AI Engineering in Manchester

About Hybrid Mind

We work with organisations including Astra Zeneca, GSK and Cognizant, delivering everything from AI strategy and architecture through to production AI engineering.

In less than two years, we’ve grown from a two-person business to a team of more than 35 specialists working across the UK and Europe.

We’re now looking for our first Director of AI Engineering to help shape the next stage of our growth.

This isn’t a role focused on maintaining an established engineering function. It’s an opportunity to help build one.

The Opportunity

As Director of AI Engineering, you’ll work closely with the founders and wider leadership team to define what engineering looks like at Hybrid Mind over the next three to five years.

You’ll initially provide senior leadership across client delivery, technical quality, recruitment, solution design and pre-sales.

Over time, you’ll build and lead a permanent internal engineering team, working alongside our wider network of specialist associates and client-embedded engineers.

You’ll have genuine influence over the direction of the business, how we deliver for clients and how we build a scalable consultancy that is less dependent on its founders.

• What You’ll Be Doing
• Establish clear engineering standards and ways of working.
• Help define how permanent employees, associates and client-embedded engineers work together.
• Lead Client Delivery
• Introduce lightweight project assurance and engineering governance.
• Act as a senior escalation point for complex technical or delivery challenges.
• Ensure projects are delivered to a consistently high standard.
• Lead or support technical discovery and solution-shaping sessions.
• Translate client problems into practical and commercially viable delivery plans.
• Support bids, tenders and executive-level customer conversations.
• Help develop repeatable offerings that can be taken to market.
• Build relationships with strategic technology partners.

About You

We’re looking for someone who enjoys building teams and businesses as much as building technology.

You’ll likely have

• Experience leading engineering teams within a consultancy, digital business or technology organisation.
• Experience delivering complex enterprise technology programmes.
• The ability to operate strategically while remaining close enough to delivery.

Experience across some of the following would be beneficial

• Enterprise AI and generative AI applications.
• Retrieval-augmented generation.
• Python and modern software engineering.
• MLOps and production AI deployment.
• Technical leadership within consulting or professional services.

You don’t need to be the deepest technical specialist in every area.

What matters most is your ability to build strong teams, make sound engineering decisions and give clients confidence.

Package and Equity

This is a senior leadership appointment with the opportunity to play a meaningful role in the long-term development and value of Hybrid Mind.

The package includes

• A performance-related annual bonus.

The precise balance between salary, bonus and equity can be tailored to the right candidate.

Why Join Hybrid Mind?

You’ll be joining at a point where the foundations have been built, but there is still significant opportunity to shape what comes next.

• Genuine ownership over the engineering function.
• Direct access to the founders and leadership team.
• The opportunity to build a permanent team around you.
• Support from experienced advisors who have previously built and exited successful technology consultancies.

This role would suit someone who wants to build something, rather than inherit a finished organisation.

Working Pattern

This is a full-time, hybrid role based around Manchester.

We expect the Director of AI Engineering to spend time with the leadership team, engineers and clients in person where this adds value, while retaining flexibility to work remotely.

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This is a lite, 5-minute self-service version of the readiness check. It gives a directional RAG view across the five domains. This does not replace the full Assessment.

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