Head of AI Engineering

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.