Director of AI Systems & Foundation Models

This role is designed for a senior AI leader who operates at the frontier of machine learning and real-world impact. The focus is on building and scaling advanced AI systems that learn from complex, messy, multi-modal data and turn that learning into reusable capabilities that materially improve decision-making and outcomes.

What this person actually does

• Leads a high-calibre team of AI scientists and ML engineers building large-scale, production-ready AI systems

• Designs and delivers foundation models using self-supervised and representation learning techniques

• Builds models that learn across multiple data modalities and scales, from granular signals through to population-level insights

• Embeds explainability, uncertainty and causal reasoning into model design, not as an afterthought

• Partners closely with downstream teams to ensure models can be fine-tuned, deployed and deliver real-world impact

• Makes clear, defensible build vs adapt vs buy decisions across models, tooling and external partnerships

• Sets standards for model evaluation, bench-marking, validation and data quality

• Represents the organisation externally through publications, open-source contribution or recognised thought leadership

What success looks like

• Reusable AI systems that are actively leveraged across multiple high-value applications

• Models that improve as new data modalities are introduced

• Clear translation from research into deployed capability

• Strong internal confidence in model outputs due to explainability and uncertainty awareness

• A motivated, high-performing team with strong retention and progression

The kind of background that fits

• Deep expertise in modern machine learning, especially foundation models, self-supervised learning or representation learning

• Strong understanding of neural network architectures, multi-modal learning and transfer learning

• Experience with distributed training, large-scale model optimisation and efficient fine-tuning

• Proven track record of research impact (top-tier publications, widely adopted systems or equivalent)

• Comfortable working with imperfect, real-world data rather than curated academic data sets

• Experience translating advanced research into production-grade systems

• Senior leadership experience, including leading leaders, hiring at scale and owning capability road maps

• Confident communicator who can bridge technical depth and strategic clarity with senior stakeholders

Mindset and style

• Comfortable with ambiguity and research uncertainty

• Commercially and impact-oriented, not research-for-research’s-sake

• Curious, rigorous and opinionated, but open to challenge

• Sets a high bar for quality, documentation and reproducibility

• Motivated by building things that matter, not just publishing them

Why this role is compelling

This is a rare opportunity to operate at the intersection of cutting-edge AI and meaningful real-world application, with the scope to define how advanced machine learning systems are designed, evaluated and used at scale.

Robert Walters Operations Limited is an employment business and employment agency and welcomes applications from all candidates