AI Lead ( Hands on - CEO Office)

Industry: Financial Markets / Brokerage / Trading Technology

Salary: Market Leading

We are working with a global financial markets and brokerage group on a senior AI appointment across EMEA.

This is not a corporate AI strategy role and it is not a pure governance position. The business is looking for someone who can get close to the front office, understand where AI can create immediate commercial and operational value, and personally build the first proof‑of‑concept solutions before scaling the function.

The role will report directly to the Co‑CEO and will start as a hands‑on leadership mandate: identifying high‑impact AI use cases, building working prototypes, proving value with senior stakeholders, and then using that success to build a team and broader AI capability across the region.

This is a strong fit for someone who sits between engineering, product, and business leadership — technical enough to build, commercial enough to influence, and pragmatic enough to deliver inside a regulated financial markets environment.

The mandate

You will be responsible for turning AI ambition into practical, usable tools across the business. Initial priorities will include working directly with senior business leaders, front‑office stakeholders, technology teams, and control functions to identify opportunities where AI can improve workflows, decision‑making, productivity, client service, trading operations, and internal processes.

In the early phase, you will be expected to personally design and build proof‑of‑concept solutions. Once the value is proven, the role will expand into building and leading a team to scale successful initiatives across EMEA.

Responsibilities

• Work directly with the Co‑CEO and senior stakeholders to define practical AI opportunities across the business.
• Partner with front‑office, operations, technology, compliance, risk, and data teams to identify high‑value use cases.
• Personally build early‑stage AI / GenAI proof of concepts and prototypes.
• Translate business problems into technical solutions that can be tested quickly and scaled where successful.
• Design AI solutions using LLMs, RAG, APIs, cloud services, internal data sources, and modern engineering practices.
• Own the journey from idea to prototype, user testing, adoption, and production‑readiness.
• Establish the technical and operational foundations for AI delivery across EMEA.
• Build confidence with senior stakeholders by showing tangible results, not just strategy decks.
• Over time, hire and lead a team to industrialise successful AI initiatives.
• Ensure solutions are delivered responsibly within a regulated financial services environment.

What we are looking for

We are looking for a hands‑on AI leader who has built real solutions, not just advised on AI strategy.

You are likely to have experience as a Lead AI Engineer, Principal AI Engineer, Applied AI Lead, AI Engineering Director, GenAI Lead, AI Product Lead, Machine Learning Lead, or a technically strong Director of AI.

You should be comfortable operating without a large team at the beginning. This role needs someone who can write code, build prototypes, speak to senior executives, and earn the right to scale the function through delivery.

Ideal background

• Strong hands‑on experience building AI, GenAI, LLM, or machine learning solutions.
• Strong Python capability and experience working with APIs, cloud platforms, and modern engineering stacks.
• Experience with LLMs, RAG, vector databases, agentic workflows, model evaluation, guardrails, or AI orchestration frameworks.
• Ability to build proof‑of‑concept tools quickly and pragmatically.
• Experience taking AI products or prototypes into real business usage.
• Strong stakeholder‑facing capability, ideally with exposure to senior executives or front‑office users.
• Financial services experience is strongly preferred.
• Capital markets, trading, brokerage, market data, investment banking, or front‑office technology experience would be highly valuable.
• Comfortable working in a regulated environment with risk, compliance, security, and data governance considerations.
• Able to operate strategically while remaining hands‑on technically.

This could suit someone who is currently

• A Principal / Staff / Lead AI Engineer ready for a broader mandate.
• A GenAI or Applied AI Lead inside a bank, trading firm, exchange, market data provider, or fintech.
• A technical AI Product Lead who still builds and prototypes.
• A Director of AI Engineering who wants direct business ownership rather than a narrow platform role.
• A hands‑on founder or technical leader from an AI product company selling into financial services.

Why this role is different

This is an opportunity to shape AI adoption from the ground up inside a major financial markets group, with direct senior sponsorship and a clear path to building a team.

The first phase is about proving value through hands‑on delivery. The second phase is about scaling what works.

For the right person, this is a chance to move beyond isolated AI projects and take ownership of a regional AI build across a complex, high‑value financial markets business.