VP – AI & Machine Learning
Remote (UK) | c. £130k + Equity | High-Growth SaaS Scale-Up
This fast-scaling SaaS business is building technology to help organisations make smarter, fairer workforce decisions. They are now looking for a VP of AI & Machine Learning to lead the evolution of their AI capabilities and shape the intelligence behind their platform.
Are you a hands-on AI leader who wants to deliver real, production-grade innovation—without getting pulled into unnecessary company-wide leadership distractions?
This role gives you full ownership of the AI function inside a fast-growing SaaS scale-up, with a remit focused entirely on technical impact, architecture, and delivery.
The platform is used by global organisations to transform messy job, work and skills data into structured intelligence that supports fair pay decisions, clearer job structures and more effective workforce planning.
We’re looking for a VP of AI & Machine Learning to lead the evolution of the platform’s intelligence layer and build the next generation of LLM and machine learning capabilities. This is a hands-on “player–coach” role, focused purely on building, scaling and delivering AI systems.
What this VP of AI & Machine Learning will do:
- Lead the AI roadmap
- Translate product vision into an executable AI/ML strategy
- Build differentiated LLM/NLP and ML capabilities
- Balance innovation with pragmatic, value-driven delivery
- Design and scale AI architecture
- Own model design, pipelines, fine-tuning, evaluation and deployment
- Architect end-to-end GenAI and ML systems including RAG, semantic search and embeddings
- Build standards for explainability, fairness, observability and compliance
- Drive MLOps and model governance
- Implement robust MLOps practices
- Ensure reproducibility, drift detection and model lifecycle management
- Maintain high reliability, availability and responsible AI in production
- Build and lead a high-performing ML team
- Act as a hands-on “player–coach” for ML specialists
- Establish engineering discipline and evaluation frameworks
- Hire and grow the AI function as the company scales
- Work closely with Product & Engineering
- Partner on discovery, requirements, prototyping and delivery
- Ensure ML integrations fit seamlessly into the SaaS platform
- Keep the AI roadmap aligned with customer and product needs
- Represent AI externally
What this VP of AI & Machine Learning will bring:
- Deep expertise in LLMs, NLP, GenAI frameworks, semantic search, embeddings & ML architecture
- Experience building production AI systems in SaaS or enterprise environments
- Strong knowledge of MLOps, evaluation, observability, drift detection & responsible AI
- Proven experience leading small ML teams as a hands-on technical leader
- Ability to collaborate effectively with Product and commercial teams
- A pragmatic, startup mindset with strong delivery focus
- Excellent communication skills across technical and non-technical audiences
The tech environment:
- Python, PyTorch/TensorFlow, HuggingFace Transformers
- Semantic search / Embeddings / Vector DBs (e.g., FAISS, Pinecone, Weaviate)
- ML Ops tools (MLflow / Weights & Biases)
- AWS / Docker / Kubernetes
If you’re the VP of AI & Machine Learning we’re looking for then we want to hear from you as soon as possible, get in touch quoting AP1164.