Location: East Midlands Job Type: Permanent Industry: Enterprise Applications Job reference: BBBH437938_1779458348 Posted: about 11 hours ago
AI Models Lead
Hybrid: Midlands-based 2-3 days in the office or remote contracts for candidates outside of 35 miles
Paying up to £120,000 + bonus + bens
Permanent
Experis are delighted to be partnering with a highly successful and growing software organisation as they invest heavily in building a cutting-edge AI capability at the heart of their product suite.
We are supporting them in the search for an AI Models Lead, a key foundational hire who will own the development, fine-tuning, and production delivery of domain-specific AI models within a large-scale programme.
This is a rare opportunity to join at an early stage and build a fine-tuning capability from first principles, shaping how AI models are developed, evaluated, and deployed in real-world, regulated environments.
What You'll Be Doing
1. Designing and leading the end-to-end model fine-tuning strategy, including SFT, LoRA / QLoRA, and optimisation approaches
2. Selecting and evaluating base models (e.g. Mistral, Qwen, Phi, Falcon) based on performance, cost, and use case
3. Defining evaluation frameworks and standards to ensure models meet production-grade quality and reliability
4. Building and scaling a suite of fine-tuned models to support multiple product use cases
5. Owning experiment design and reproducibility, including tracking, benchmarking, and iteration cycles
6. Working closely with data, domain and product teams to translate real-world requirements into model behaviour
7. Leading, mentoring, and growing a team of ML Engineers while remaining hands-on technically
8. Driving models through to production environments, ensuring robustness, scalability, and performance
Experience Required
9. Proven experience fine-tuning machine learning / LLM models in production environments
10. Strong track record of deploying AI models at scale and understanding real-world failure modes
11. Hands-on experience with Generative AI / LLM architectures and frameworks
12. Strong Python engineering capability and familiarity with ML tooling (e.g. HuggingFace, PEFT, TRL, W&B)
13. Experience working in cloud environments (AWS preferred)
14. Ability to operate as a player-coach, combining deep technical expertise with leadership
15. Pragmatic mindset, comfortable working in ambiguous, evolving environments
16. Excellent communication skills, with the ability to engage senior stakeholders and influence direction
Why Join
17. Opportunity to build and shape a core AI capability from the ground up
18. Work on real-world AI use cases where accuracy and trust genuinely matter
19. Highly visible role with direct exposure to senior leadership and strategic initiatives
20. Join a business making significant long-term investment in AI-driven innovation
If you're interested in learning more, please reach out to Jacob Ferdinand at