Director of AI Engineering
Location: Manchester — hybrid working
Salary: £105,000–£120,000, depending on experience
Package: Performance-related bonus, meaningful equity opportunity and benefits
About Hybrid Mind
Hybrid Mind is an AI consultancy helping organisations design, build and deploy enterprise AI solutions.
We work with organisations including AstraZeneca, GSK and Cognizant, delivering everything from AI strategy and architecture through to production AI engineering.
In less than two years, we’ve grown from a two-person business to a team of more than 35 specialists working across the UK and Europe. We’re now looking for our first Director of AI Engineering to help shape the next stage of our growth.
This isn’t a role focused on maintaining an established engineering function. It’s an opportunity to help build one.
The Opportunity
As Director of AI Engineering, you’ll work closely with the founders and wider leadership team to define what engineering looks like at Hybrid Mind over the next three to five years.
You’ll initially provide senior leadership across client delivery, technical quality, recruitment, solution design and pre-sales. Over time, you’ll build and lead a permanent internal engineering team, working alongside our wider network of specialist associates and client-embedded engineers.
You’ll have genuine influence over the direction of the business, how we deliver for clients and how we build a scalable consultancy that is less dependent on its founders.
What You’ll Be Doing
Build the Engineering Function
- Define the future structure of Hybrid Mind’s engineering organisation.
- Recruit and develop our permanent engineering team.
- Establish clear engineering standards and ways of working.
- Build a strong culture around quality, ownership and continuous improvement.
- Help define how permanent employees, associates and client-embedded engineers work together.
Lead Client Delivery
- Provide technical leadership and oversight across major client engagements.
- Support solution architecture, technical design and delivery planning.
- Introduce lightweight project assurance and engineering governance.
- Act as a senior escalation point for complex technical or delivery challenges.
- Ensure projects are delivered to a consistently high standard.
Support Pre-Sales and Growth
- Lead or support technical discovery and solution-shaping sessions.
- Translate client problems into practical and commercially viable delivery plans.
- Review Statements of Work, proposals and technical submissions.
- Support bids, tenders and executive-level customer conversations.
- Help develop repeatable offerings that can be taken to market.
Shape Our Technical Strategy
- Influence Hybrid Mind’s service offerings and technical direction.
- Help develop our delivery methodology, internal intellectual property and reusable assets.
- Support the continued development of AIDA, our proprietary AI Delivery Assistant.
- Build relationships with strategic technology partners.
About You
We’re looking for someone who enjoys building teams and businesses as much as building technology.
You’ll likely have:
- Experience leading engineering teams within a consultancy, digital business or technology organisation.
- A strong background in software engineering, AI, data or cloud delivery.
- Experience delivering complex enterprise technology programmes.
- Strong client-facing and stakeholder-management skills.
- Commercial awareness and experience supporting pre-sales.
- Experience recruiting, mentoring and developing engineers.
- The ability to operate strategically while remaining close enough to delivery.
Experience We’d Value
Experience across some of the following would be beneficial:
- Enterprise AI and generative AI applications.
- Large language models and agentic systems.
- Retrieval-augmented generation.
- Python and modern software engineering.
- Azure, AWS or Google Cloud.
- MLOps and production AI deployment.
- Data platforms and modern architecture.
- AI governance, evaluation and assurance.
- Technical leadership within consulting or professional services.
You don’t need to be the deepest technical specialist in every area. What matters most is your ability to build strong teams, make sound engineering decisions and give clients confidence.
Package and Equity
This is a senior leadership appointment with the opportunity to play a meaningful role in the long-term development and value of Hybrid Mind.
The package includes:
- A base salary of £105,000–£120,000, depending on experience.
- A performance-related annual bonus.
- A meaningful equity opportunity, aligned to long-term contribution and company growth.
- Pension and standard company benefits.
- Flexible hybrid working.
The precise balance between salary, bonus and equity can be tailored to the right candidate.
Why Join Hybrid Mind?
You’ll be joining at a point where the foundations have been built, but there is still significant opportunity to shape what comes next.
You’ll have:
- Genuine ownership over the engineering function.
- Direct access to the founders and leadership team.
- The opportunity to build a permanent team around you.
- Exposure to complex enterprise AI programmes.
- Support from experienced advisors who have previously built and exited successful technology consultancies.
- A meaningful stake in the future value you help create.
This role would suit someone who wants to build something, rather than inherit a finished organisation.
Working Pattern
This is a full-time, hybrid role based around Manchester.
We expect the Director of AI Engineering to spend time with the leadership team, engineers and clients in person where this adds value, while retaining flexibility to work remotely.
