Skills

Leadership Product vision Research Training Large Language Models

Job Specifications

Head of AI/LLM Engineering - London - Up to £400k base + equity

Location: London, UK

Compensation: £400,000 base + equity

Company: Well-funded AI technology start-up

I’m working with a well-funded AI start-up building next-generation AI systems and foundation models. The founding team comes from the agentic AI space and the company has secured significant funding to build its AI platform from the ground up.

They are hiring a Head of AI/LLM Engineering to lead the development of large-scale language models and the underlying AI infrastructure.

This is a hands-on leadership role - ideal for someone who can architect and build core systems while also leading and scaling a high-calibre AI team.

Importantly, the company has a clear multi-year roadmap, and they are specifically looking for someone who wants to build and scale something over the long term, rather than treat this as a short-term role.

Key Responsibilities

Lead the design, training, and deployment of large-scale large language models (10B+ parameters)
Architect and build the core AI and model training infrastructure
Work hands-on while leading and scaling a small elite AI team
Define the technical roadmap for LLM and agentic system development
Partner closely with the CEO and founding team to translate product vision into AI systems

Requirements

Experience building or leading teams that have trained large-scale LLMs (~10B+ parameters)
Strong hands-on experience with LLM architectures, training pipelines, and model optimisation
Deep understanding of distributed training and large-scale GPU infrastructure
Proven ability to lead and scale high-performing AI/ML teams
Experience taking models from research through to production

If you have experience building or scaling frontier LLM systems and are interested in joining a well-funded company with a long-term vision, please apply!

About the Company

Durlston Partners began recruiting for the world's best Hedge Funds in 2010 and we have grown our business to deliver best-in-class talent to companies in Tech, Quant Finance, Portfolio Management, Data Science & Digital Assets. Our team operates from our offices in London, New York and Dubai. Led by 5 Partners, we have achieved organic growth and self-funded success without external investment. Our clients include leading hedge funds, banks, family offices, and AI / Machine Learning firms across global financial hubs such... Know more