Head of AI recruitment in the UK

The Clario team recruits Heads of AI, Directors of AI and VPs of AI for UK scale-ups and mid-market companies. This page is for a chief executive or a CTO who needs someone to run AI delivery, and who wants to be sure that title is the right one.

Most companies we meet do not need a Chief AI Officer yet. They need a senior person who can take the experiments already running in the business and turn the useful ones into something staff or customers use every week. That is a Head of AI job. Hiring the wrong title wastes the search and puts off the people who would have done the work well.

What a Head of AI does day to day

A Head of AI leads the team that builds, buys and runs AI systems. They usually report to the CTO or the chief product officer. In a typical week they might:

• decide which pilots move into everyday use, and which stop
• set the standards for how models are tested, monitored and switched off
• agree with the data team what has to be true before a new system goes live
• hire or reshape the people who do the building, and manage the suppliers who do the rest
• tell the CTO, in plain language, what the work costs and what it has changed
• write the rules staff must follow when they use AI tools on company data

It is a leadership role. The person needs to understand the technology well enough to judge it. They will not spend the week writing production code, and a brief that asks for both a full-time coder and a head of function is describing two jobs.

Titles vary. Director of AI, VP of AI and Head of AI are often the same seat with a different label. We read the reporting line and the decisions the person can make, then recommend the title that matches. A senior title on a narrow remit tends to attract people who will leave once they see the limits.

Head of AI or Chief AI Officer?

A Chief AI Officer sits with the executive team and shapes what the company does with AI. A Head of AI runs the work inside a direction someone else owns. The Chief AI Officer recruitment page sets out that difference in more detail.

Hire a Head of AI when the board has already agreed the direction, the CTO or chief executive will keep that decision, and the gap is getting systems into use. Hire a Chief AI Officer when nobody senior owns the question, the person will report to the chief executive, and they will be able to stop work as well as start it.

Some companies need both, in that order. A Head of AI under a CTO can be the right first hire. A Chief AI Officer hired over a CTO who already makes the technology decisions often leaves both of them unsure who is in charge. We say so in the first meeting.

Pay is not a reliable way to tell the roles apart. Published figures overlap. Robert Half's Head of AI range and the Harvey Nash Chief AI Officer average measure different populations. Both are on our salary pages, with the source and the date.

Signs you need a Head of AI

The search is usually worth starting when several of these are true:

• AI is already in use in more than one team, and nobody is responsible for the whole of it
• pilots are multiplying, and few of them have an owner after the demo
• the CTO is the named owner, and the rest of the technology job is suffering
• staff are using tools the company has not approved, and there is no one senior to set the rule
• the board is asking for a plan, and the answer is a slide rather than a person who will carry it out
• you have tried to hire and the applicants were either not senior enough for the seat or wanted a chief officer title you are not offering

If the data the systems would rely on is not fit to use, hiring a Head of AI first can still be right, but the brief must say that fixing the data is part of the job. Otherwise a Head of Data or Chief Data Officer may be the earlier hire. We will tell you which we think it is.

What to look for in a candidate

The strongest Heads of AI have already been responsible for systems that staff or customers use, not only for a lab or a slide. In the assessment we look for people who:

• can describe a project they stopped, and why
• have managed engineers, researchers or a supplier team, and can say where that experience is thin
• can explain a failure to a non-technical executive without hiding behind the model
• have worked somewhere with similar constraints: a regulated firm, a manufacturer, a retailer, or a scale-up with a small platform team
• will work to a CTO or chief executive who keeps the strategy, without treating that as a demotion

A well known previous employer is context. It does not show that the person can do this job in a company of your size. We write that view into the shortlist, including the gaps.

Published pay for a Head of AI is on the Head of AI salary page. Robert Half is the source we use for that role, because it publishes Head of AI separately from Chief AI Officer. If the salary in your brief sits outside that published range, we will say so before the search starts. We do not treat the published range as a quote for your role.

How we run a Head of AI search

The search follows the same shape as our other senior technology searches.

1. Agree the role. We meet the chief executive and the CTO, if those are different people. We agree what the Head of AI will own, who they report to, the team, the salary and where they need to be.
2. Written brief. You review it. We do not approach anyone until you are content with it. A note on what to include is in what to put in a Chief AI Officer brief. The same questions apply here.
3. Direct approach. We approach people already doing this work, or the job just below it, in businesses of a comparable size. Most of them are not answering adverts.
4. Shortlist. You receive a short list with a written view of each person: why they fit, where the gaps are, and what they are likely to ask.
5. Offer and start. We stay involved through interviews, the offer and the notice period, which is when senior hires are most likely to fall through.

We agree terms with you in writing before the search starts. Confidentiality is part of the brief: we name any companies you do not want us to approach, and we do not share your plans with the market.

Questions we are often asked

The questions below are the ones that come up before a Head of AI search. The answers are short on purpose. The right answer for your company is settled in the brief, not in a general rule.