Founding Practice Lead — AI Governance in City of London

A new credentialed institution is being built to deliver independent AI governance verification for UK regulated firms, EU institutions navigating the AI Act, and GCC sovereign clients. The category is genuinely empty. No credentialed institutional player owns it today. Big Four advisory firms are structurally conflicted. Software platforms produce dashboards, not signed Verdicts. Law firms deliver opinions, not operational assessments. Notified Bodies for AI are not yet designated. The institutional seat is being built now — and we are recruiting the founding practitioner to help build it.

The institution operates on the Lloyd's-of-London architecture. Senior figures of standing — former financial regulators, King's Counsel, Tier-1 academics, sovereign programme directors — sit as Founding Fellows and sign the assessments under named authority. The paired infrastructure produces the sealed, recomputable artefact the regulator-facing examination receives. We are building what does not yet exist and will be the institutional standard.

We are recruiting one founding practitioner to design the methodology, the platform-integration architecture, and the Fellow-readiness operations the institution will run on — and to lead the assessments themselves once engagement letters begin landing. This is not a delivery role inside an established firm. This is a co-founding role inside an institution being built in real time. Engagement structure (full-time, part-time, or other) is discussed in conversation and tailored to the right candidate.

WHY NOW

UK SM&CR Section 36, FCA Consumer Duty, the EU AI Act (Articles 17 and 43 conformity assessment, Annex III high-risk obligations), the EU Machinery Regulation, UAE Federal PDPL, DIFC Regulation 10, and SDAIA frameworks are simultaneously mandating independent AI governance attestation. UK firms are running readiness programmes already. Provider-led conformity assessment in the EU strengthens demand for credentialed third-party validation — because legal accountability for the conformity claim sits squarely on the provider organisation. The window in which institutional verification becomes mandatory is 2026 to 2029. The first-mover advantage is real and time-limited.

THE FIRST NINETY DAYS — THREE STREAMS OF WORK

• Methodology architecture: Translate a five-dimension governance framework into documented assessment rubrics, scoring criteria, evidence protocols, and the assessment template that Fellows will sign. Author the methodology playbook v1 — which becomes the institutional standard.
• Platform integration: Work alongside the engineering lead to define what the operator portal must capture, structure canonical JSON, design evidence-intake architecture, and ensure the seal pipeline matches methodology output.
• Fellow-readiness operations: Build per-Fellow conflict-check workflows, hardware-key onboarding process, signing protocol, scheduling system. Ensure the operational stack is ready before the first engagement letter signs.

Once the first engagements begin landing, you lead delivery alongside the founder commercially and the named Fellow on substantive sign-off. The work you build in Phase 1 becomes the institutional standard.

CAREER PATH — TWELVE TO THIRTY-SIX MONTHS

The role is designed to evolve as the institution scales. Title and scope progress against business milestones, not against time:

• Founding Practice Lead (Day 1): Methodology, platform integration, Fellow-readiness, first Verdicts.
• Practice Lead (post first paid Verdict): Runs the Verdict pipeline, co-leads standards-body engagement, recruits and oversees Reserve Fellows.
• Director (post Series A close OR third paying client): Owns the Practice end-to-end, leads regulator engagement, manages Practitioner team.
• VP / Chief of Practice (post fifth client OR institutional accreditation milestone): Institutional voice, partner-track economics, co-founder participation in strategic decisions.

The path is not theoretical. It is structurally aligned to the milestones the institution must clear to scale, and the equity vesting milestones reflect the same trajectory. The candidate who ships methodology v1, signs the first Verdicts, and represents the institution at standards-body level is on the Co-founder ladder.

WHAT WE ARE LOOKING FOR

You have personally built and delivered an AI governance, AI risk, or AI assurance framework or assessment — either to an external regulated client as the lead practitioner, or as the senior architect of an enterprise-internal Responsible AI programme that could withstand external scrutiny.

You have working knowledge of at least two of:

• EU AI Act (Article 14 human oversight, Annex III high-risk obligations, Articles 17 and 43 conformity regime)
• UK FCA SM&CR Section 36 and Consumer Duty
• ISO 42001 and NIST AI Risk Management Framework
• Model risk management (SR 11-7, PRA SS1/23)
• UK GDPR Article 22 and the ICO AI Auditing Framework

You have authored a governance framework or methodology from scratch — not adapted, not extended. You can draft an assessment that a Chief Risk Officer will sign their name to defending in front of a regulator. That is the standard.

You are ready to step out of an established firm's pyramid and into a founding role where the work you build becomes the institutional standard you will run for the next decade.

WHAT THIS ROLE OFFERS

• A founding role in a credentialed institution being built to last — your name on the institutional standard from Day 1.
• Founding equity in the operating company, milestone-vested against foundation, delivery, and scale milestones.
• Career progression from Founding Practice Lead to Director to VP / Chief of Practice — gated to business milestones, not annual reviews.
• Co-founder participation in strategic decisions as the institution scales.
• Direct line to the founder. No middle layer. No internal political cycle.
• Engagement structure (full-time, part-time, or otherwise) discussed in conversation and tailored to the right candidate.
• First-mover advantage in a category with no incumbent. The institution you help build will be the one others copy.

Specific compensation is discussed in direct conversation, not advertised.

THE FOUNDER

Led by a founder with eighteen years in specialist executive search across financial services, luxury, and regulated sectors. The founder is the sole enterprise sales lead in Year 1 — you will not be expected to originate. You will be expected to deliver and to help shape what the institution becomes.

BEFORE YOU APPLY

One question to ask yourself. Have you personally built an AI governance framework, methodology, or assessment that could survive external regulator scrutiny — and are you ready to build the institution that runs it for the next decade? If yes — apply via LinkedIn. In your application, include one paragraph describing that specific framework or engagement: the institution context, the framework or risk you were addressing, your role as architect or lead practitioner, and the deliverable. That paragraph is the application. CVs without it will not be reviewed.