Head of AI Engineering Permanent - Manchester Hybrid with a focused on-site presence Join a pioneering 5yr+ TechBio company at the intersection of AI, synthetic biology, and industrial biotechnology. You will lead the building of an AI engineering platform connecting computational design, experimental validation, and real-world commercial outcomes. Reporting directly to the CEO, sitting on the management team, and engaging with the Board. This is a hands-on leadership role with genuine scope to shape the company's long-term technical position. The tasks of a Head of AI Engineering will include: Build & lead the AI engineering team; hiring, coaching, designing, delivering. Contribute hands-on in coding, architecture, and technical problem-solving. Define and build the AI platform connecting data, models, workflows, and learning loops. Design and deploy agentic AI capabilities that improve scientific workflows and platform intelligence. Build the software foundations for autonomous closed-loop experimentation linking computational design and lab validation. Partner with leadership to translate challenges into scalable AI systems. Shape technical strategy, hiring, and engineering standards as company scales. To progress as a successful Head of AI Engineering, you will require: 5+ years leading engineering, ML, or AI teams at Director or equivalent level. Deep expertise in AI/ML; model architectures, training, evaluation, and production deployment. Strong software engineering background building production-grade AI platforms and infrastructure. Proven experience building and deploying agentic systems into live workflows. A player-coach approach; equally comfortable writing code, setting architecture, and leading people. Strong communication skills across technical, scientific, and executives. Highly desirable skills include: Exposure or understanding of AI and ML in a scientific or biotech environment Familiar with specialised datasets, iterative learning loops, or semi-autonomous experimentation systems. Please Note Own eligibility to work in the UK - sponsorship is not available for this role. Significant experience in elite level AI environments is critical. Rewards & Benefits Competitive salary plus equity. Senior leadership role with direct CEO and Board exposure. The opportunity to build something unique in a well-backed, science-led environment. Keyword terminologyAI Engineering, Machine Learning, Agentic AI, AI Platform, Closed-Loop Experimentation, Autonomous Experimentation, Protein Engineering, Biocatalysis, Computational Biology, Synthetic Biology, Deep Tech, TechBio, Director of Engineering, ML Platform, AI Infrastructure, Lab Automation, Bioinformatics, Player-Coach, Engineering Leadership, AI Agents, LLMs, Python, Numpy, MLOps, Life Sciences AI, Biotechnology.