Head of Artificial Intelligence

An Artificial intelligence engineer is needed for a rapidly growing Energy Trading house who are at the beginning of a major enterprise-wide AI journey. This is a greenfield AI leadership role. The business has already invested in AI and currently has three AI engineers/graduates working on smaller initiatives, but they now need someone senior enough to define the direction, shape the team and, importantly, remain hands-on.

Desired AI use cases: Reconciliation | Counterparty & Legal Contracts | Back-office automation | P&L

The key question for this hire is: “How do we use AI across the enterprise — and, more importantly, how do we actually execute it?”

The business has plenty of ideas around AI. What they are missing is someone who can turn those ideas into working solutions, demonstrate what is possible through POCs and demos, and then take successful initiatives towards enterprise-scale implementation.

This is why the successful person needs to be senior, whilst still being highly technical and hands-on.

You will have the opportunity to lead the AI function, guide existing and future hires, establish the technical direction and work directly with the business to identify where AI can deliver genuine value.

This hire will lead to a dedicated AI team being built round them

What will you be working on?

The business is already considering a wide range of AI use cases across Trading, Operations, Legal, Finance and Back Office, including:

Broker and execution reconciliation

Automating reconciliation processes more broadly

Counterparty and legal contract analysis

Connecting LLMs to internal databases and business data

Making information such as daily P&L more accessible to Trade Analysts

PowerPoint and document preparation

Back-office automation

Contract analysis across Legal and Counterparty functions

Autonomous agents capable of performing tasks such as broker reconciliation and P&L processes

The role will be about taking these ideas beyond conversations and into working prototypes, POCs and ultimately production-grade enterprise solutions.

It is highly advantages if you have prior experience delivering the above projects

AI + Compliance - This is a highly regulated Energy Trading environment, so understanding how to deploy AI responsibly will be critical.

The company already has an internal AI policy which you will need to work within. You therefore need to understand not simply what AI can do, but how AI can be implemented within a regulated enterprise environment where security, compliance, data governance and confidentiality are fundamental.

Energy Trading / Commodities experience is highly desirable and, for this particular role, could be the differentiator.

The business is looking for someone who understands the environment, the data, the workflows and the challenges associated with Energy Trading.

Experience delivering similar AI / ML / LLM projects within Energy, Commodities or a comparable Trading environment would be highly valuable.

What they are looking for:

Senior AI Engineering experience within an enterprise environment

Strong hands-on engineering capability — this is not a purely strategic leadership role

Experience taking AI ideas through POCs, demos and into production

Experience with LLMs, Generative AI and/or autonomous AI agents

Experience integrating AI with enterprise data and business systems

Experience identifying and delivering practical AI use cases

Ability to explain complex AI concepts to senior business stakeholders

Experience building or shaping AI engineering teams

Strong understanding of AI governance, data security and compliance

Energy Trading / Commodities experience strongly preferred

A track record of solving genuine business problems through AI

Package:

Permanent: £140K–£150K + Bonus + Benefits

Hybrid: 3 Days a Week Onsite, London

If you're an AI Engineer, Senior AI Engineer, AI Tech Lead or AI Engineering Manager with Energy Trading / Commodities experience and you're interested in building an AI function from the ground up, please reply with your latest CV or send it to sam@virtuetech.io