Director of AI and Research

Director of Artificial Intelligence (AI) & Research Type: Permanent Location: Hybrid – London, onsite 3 days a week Salary: Up to £150,000 An exciting and rapidly growing health-tech start-up are seeking a Director of AI & Research to define how the business can start to leverage LLMs and conversational AI across their diverse prodcut offerings. This is a chance to shape the entire AI vision from research, roadmap, and prototype to a nationwide rollout, while setting the gold-standard for safety, ethics, and governance in a regulated environment. As Director of AI & Research you will spearhead conversational AI, design next-generation AI-powered care models, and define rigorous guardrails to ensure the safety and confidentiality of all users. This is an opportunity to work on greenfield challenges, hands-on experimentation, and to build and lead a high-impact team. Responsibilities: Define & deliver the AI strategy - own the roadmap for conversational AI, generative LLMs, and predictive care models from ideation to production. Lead cutting-edge research - run rapid experiments, RLHF loops, fine-tuning, and retrieval-augmented generation to push the boundaries of clinical dialogue systems. Architect safe, scalable solutions - design reference & MLOps architectures on cloud with robust guard rails in place. Establish governance & guardrails - craft policies, model cards, and internal frameworks that ensure compliance with NHS, MDR, ISO 13485, GDPR, and emerging AI/ML regulations. Build & mentor a world-class team - recruit and develop Researchers, ML Engineers, and Data Scientists who thrive on collaboration and experimentation. Collaborate cross-functionally - partner with customers, product, and regulatory teams to translate research into safe, user-centric features. Qualifications Degree or equivalent experience in Machine Learning, NLP, Computational Linguistics, or a related field. Demonstrated success shipping LLM-based products (GPT, Llama, Mistral, or similar) or conversational AI systems into production. Deep knowledge of modern ML/NLP frameworks (PyTorch, TensorFlow, JAX) and orchestration stacks (LangChain, LlamaIndex, vector databases). Proven track record driving AI governance, model risk management, and compliance within regulated sectors (healthcare, med-tech, pharma, fintech, etc.). Strong leadership & mentorship skills; comfortable scaling teams from scratch while fostering an inclusive, high-trust culture. Hands-on experience with cloud architectures, CI/CD, and MLOps best practices. Passion for improving patient outcomes through ethical, human-centric technology. This is an excellent opportunity for a Director of AI & Research to leave a lasting mark on digital healthcare at a business already recieving great media coverage and consumer feedback.