Head of Artificial Intelligence

About the job

Head of AI – Agentic Systems & Security Intelligence

London, UK (Remote) | Full-Time | Permanent | Cybersecurity / AI

Placed by Hotsourced – connecting top Indian talent with world-class global companies

We're partnering with a fast-growing, venture-backed cybersecurity startup building a next-generation AI-powered security platform for SMBs. The company has transformed years of real-world MSSP expertise and proprietary threat intelligence into a powerful agentic AI system that detects, reasons, and responds to threats across environments with human oversight.

This is a rare opportunity to lead and scale a truly differentiated AI capability at the core of the business. You'll work directly with founders and take full ownership of the AI roadmap, architecture, and delivery as the company evolves toward a production-grade, cost-efficient intelligence engine.

Company Overview / About Us

Our client is a cutting-edge cybersecurity startup focused on democratizing enterprise-grade security for small and medium-sized businesses. Built on years of operational experience and deep threat intelligence, their platform leverages hybrid AI architectures to automate detection, investigation, and response workflows.

With strong early traction, live customers, and fresh seed funding secured, they are now scaling their AI capabilities to deliver even more powerful, reliable, and cost-effective solutions to market.

Job Summary / Role Overview

As the Head of AI, you will lead the technical vision, development, and scaling of the company's agentic AI platform. Reporting directly to the CTO/CPO, you will operate across three dimensions: hands-on architecture, technical leadership, and strategic ownership.

You'll inherit an advanced hybrid system combining deterministic orchestration (LangGraph) with LLM-based reasoning layers (AWS Bedrock/Claude), and your mission will be to evolve this into a scalable, production-ready intelligence engine—including leading a strategic transition toward in-house LLM infrastructure.

This is a high-impact leadership role with full accountability for performance, cost, and reliability of the AI system.

Key Responsibilities

Delivery & Ownership

• Own and execute the end-to-end AI roadmap, including planning, prioritisation, and delivery
• Serve as the single point of accountability for AI system performance, reliability, and cost efficiency
• Translate complex AI metrics (cost, accuracy, system health) into actionable insights for leadership

Architecture & Engineering

• Extend and optimise the LangGraph-based multi-agent architecture
• Enhance deterministic routing, state machines, and agent orchestration pipelines
• Maintain and evolve the LLM reasoning layer for complex analysis and decision-making
• Develop efficient dynamic tool/skill dispatch systems to reduce hallucination and cost overhead
• Collaborate with backend teams on FastAPI services, AWS infrastructure, and CI/CD pipelines
• Implement advanced capabilities including incident correlation, anomaly detection, and behavioural risk modelling

Strategic Migration (LLM Infrastructure)

• Lead the transition from AWS Bedrock to self-hosted/open-source LLMs
• Evaluate models (e.g., LLaMA, Mistral) for reasoning quality, scalability, and cost efficiency
• Design a phased, low-risk migration strategy with fallback mechanisms
• Own cost modelling across GPU infrastructure, fine-tuning, and inference pipelines
• Ensure compliance with UK/EU data residency and security requirements

Team Leadership

• Provide mentorship and technical direction to AI engineers and data scientists
• Align data science outputs (RAG pipelines, embeddings, knowledge graphs) with system architecture
• Define and enforce engineering standards and best practices
• Act as a strategic partner to leadership, contributing to product and technical decisions

Required Qualifications / What We're Looking For

• 7+ years of experience in AI/ML engineering
• 3+ years working on production-grade LLM or agentic systems
• Proven experience owning AI systems end-to-end (architecture to production)
• Strong Python expertise and experience with LangGraph, LangChain, or similar frameworks
• Deep understanding of hybrid AI architectures (deterministic + LLM-based systems)
• Hands-on experience with open-source LLM deployment and fine-tuning
• Experience with RAG pipelines, vector databases (e.g., Qdrant), and graph databases (Neo4j preferred)
• Strong AWS experience (Bedrock, Lambda, EC2, S3, DynamoDB)
• Expertise in prompt engineering, token optimisation, and cost governance
• Experience leading or mentoring technical teams

Preferred Skills / Nice to Have

• Background in cybersecurity or security operations
• Familiarity with tools like Splunk, Cribl, or similar log pipelines
• Experience in anomaly detection, behavioural modelling, or risk scoring
• Knowledge of multi-tenant SaaS architectures and secure API design
• Familiarity with MITRE ATT&CK framework or threat intelligence workflows
• Experience with agent frameworks such as AWS Strands or Anthropic patterns
• Exposure to GPU infrastructure planning or on-prem LLM deployment

Work Schedule

• Flexible working hours aligned with UK business operations
• Collaboration overlap expected with UK time zone (GMT)

Benefits / What We Offer

• Competitive salary with meaningful equity in a funded startup
• Direct collaboration with experienced founders from leading global organisations
• Opportunity to build and scale a cutting-edge AI system from the ground up
• Fully remote flexibility or optional London-based work
• High-impact role with significant ownership and growth potential