Fractional head of AI jobs · AI leadership · Part of the week

Fractional head of AI jobs · hire a fractional head of AI

Fractional head of AI jobs are senior AI roles held for part of the week: one person who decides where AI earns its place in the business, gets the data ready, sets the rules and chooses the vendors.

To hire a fractional head of AI, start with the problems you want AI to solve, not the tools.

We recruit fractional, interim, part-time, temporary and permanent technology leaders.

On every brief we send a shortlist of 3–5, each with pay or day rate, availability and IR35 position set out, after five-stage vetting.

Looking for work?

Technology leadership roles are on the board below.

Brief us on a head of AI hire →See the roles

How a brief runswhat we undertake

01Brief30-MINUTE SCOPING CALLDay 0
02Shortlist of 3–5VETTED · RATE BENCHMARK · IR35After the brief
03InterviewsYOU MEET THE SHORTLISTYour diary
04Scoped startFIRST-MONTH OUTCOMES AGREEDYou set the date
05Fractional, interim and permanentIR35 POSITION SET OUTOn every brief

Shortlist3–5

3–5

Shortlist · with pay or day rate, availability and IR35 set out

Vetting · stages before a candidate reaches you

15 minutes · video or phone

Book 15 minutes to hire a fractional head of AI

Tell us the scope and the days a week. We come back with head of AI candidates, their day rates and availability.

0115 minutes, video or phone
02We scope the role and the days a week
03A shortlist of 3–5 after the call
04Fractional, interim and permanent briefs

Prefer email? Use the booking page →

Pick a day that suits · live availability

Open the booking calendar →

On the board · last 3 months

Technology roles jobs on the board

1 on the board · 0 confirmed open

FractionalSyndicated
Fractional IT Director – Technology & AI (FTC)
Flat Iron · London
est £1,000/day2 d/wk

Browse every role on the board →

Technology leadership roles on the board

Fractional Quest is a fractional recruitment agency: send a head of AI brief and we come back with a shortlist of three to five vetted candidates.

01/ the role

Fractional head of AI jobs: who advertises them, and for what

A head of AI leads a business’s use of artificial intelligence, one level below the executive team.

The seat owns the list of places AI is used, the data those uses depend on, the rules around them and the choice of models and vendors.

Fractional head of AI jobs are that seat, held for part of the week by someone who has done it before.

Who is hiring

Recent listings for fractional heads of AI have come from recruitment firms, martech companies, property businesses, financial services firms and agencies.

The pattern is the same across them: staff already use AI tools here and there, a few pilots have started, nobody owns the whole picture, and the business does not yet need a full-time AI executive.

What the seat covers

In practice the work is choosing which uses to back, getting the data fit for them, putting a policy and named owners in place, buying or building the tools, and moving a pilot into daily use with someone accountable for it.

Some heads of AI build prototypes themselves; most lead engineers, analysts or a vendor who do.

Agree which you want to hire before the brief goes out.

02/ scope

How to hire a fractional head of AI

1. Name the problems first

Write down the business problems you think AI could help with, who owns each one today and how you would know it had worked.

A brief that starts with a tool (“we need an LLM strategy”) attracts people who sell that tool.

A brief that starts with the problem attracts people who have solved one.

2. Choose the seat

If the board wants one executive accountable for AI across the company, hire a fractional CAIO instead.

If the gap is the software and the engineering team that AI will run on, hire a fractional CTO.

If AI is mostly about the systems and suppliers the business already runs, a fractional CIO may own it.

The head of AI fits between them: the person who makes AI work day to day.

3. Ask for something they shipped

Ask each candidate to walk you through one AI use they took from pilot to daily use: the data it needed, the data protection work, what it cost to run, how they measured it and what went wrong.

Then ask what they would switch off.

Someone who has only run pilots will struggle with the last two questions.

4. Settle the days and the contract

Most engagements start with more days while the inventory and the first uses are set up, then settle to fewer.

Put the days, the deliverables and the reporting line in writing.

If the person works through their own company, the IR35 guide sets out how status is decided.

What we do on a head of AI brief

We send a shortlist of 3–5 candidates, each with pay or day rate, availability and IR35 position set out.

Every candidate goes through our five-stage vetting first.

03/ the week

How a week divides.

Part of a week is the point of the model: the days you buy are yours, the rest of the week goes to other clients. Move the days a week and the week redraws.

Days a week for your company2 days

Your companyAnother clientA third client

Mon

Tue

Wed

Thu

Fri

Illustration only: one way a fractional head of AI’s week can divide at 2 days a week for you. Each block is half a day.

04/ the board

What the board holds.

A read of the roles on the board on this page, counted as they stand: how each is engaged, whether the posting gives the days and the rate, and where the work happens.

On this board, last 90 days · 1 role · Technology roles

Engagement

Fractional1

Days a week

Stated in the posting1
Not stated0

Day rate

Verified rate0
Estimated (est)1
Rate not stated0

Work arrangement (as the job feed classifies it)

Remote0
Hybrid1
On-site0

Newest posting on the board: 8 Oct 2026.

05/ the route

Fractional, interim or permanent?

Four taps. The answer names the route for the seat and the page that covers it.

How much of the week does the work fill?

Is there a fixed end or a programme?

Does the seat sit on the board for years?

Is the need now, or can it wait for a search?

The route · Fractional

A fractional head of AI.

The work fills part of the week, so buy the days it needs.

A fractional head of AI holds the seat on agreed days for as long as the seat is needed, and works for other clients on the rest.

The fractional head of AI roles on this page Talk it through

06/ comparison

Head of AI vs chief AI officer vs CTO

Three seats that overlap in a smaller business. Choose by who is accountable and for what.

Head of AIChief AI officerCTO

OwnsAI uses, their data, the AI policy in practice, vendors and pilotsAI strategy and AI risk across the companyTechnical direction, architecture and the engineering team

Typically reports toThe CTO, CIO, COO or CEOThe CEO and the boardThe CEO and the board

Board seatRarelyOftenOften

SuitsA business using AI in several places with nobody owning itA business where AI changes the product or carries board-level riskA business whose gap is the software and the team that builds it

07/ vetting

How we vet fractional heads of AI

What we undertake on every brief, before a candidate reaches you.

01
Qualification screen
Verify head of AI tenure, sector context and stage fit.
SOURCING
02
Mandate fit
Match to your situation — stage, board dynamics, timing.
MATCHING
03
Reference deep-dive
We take references ourselves, from recent past clients — real outcomes, not titles.
VERIFY
04
Shortlist
Three to five candidates with day rate, availability and IR35 position set out.
SHORTLIST OF 3–5

08/ head of ai vs caio

Head of AI vs chief AI officer: which seat are you hiring?

The difference is where accountability sits.

A chief AI officer is an executive: answers to the chief executive and the board for AI across the company, sets AI strategy with the rest of the leadership team, and owns the risk when something goes wrong.

A head of AI usually reports to the CTO, the CIO or the COO, or to the chief executive of a smaller company, and turns a strategy into working systems: the uses, the data, the models or vendors, and the people who run them.

Most businesses advertising fractional AI roles need the second seat first.

If AI is one programme among several and an existing executive can answer for it at board level, a head of AI is the right hire.

If AI is changing the product itself, or the board wants one named person accountable for AI risk across several functions, you need the chief.

For that seat, and for the AI governance officer and AI consultant alternatives, see fractional CAIO jobs.

Titles drift both ways.

Some small companies call their first AI hire a chief AI officer; some large ones give a head of AI a remit across the group.

Brief on the decisions the person will make and who they answer to, and choose the title after.

09/ the first 90 days

What does a fractional head of AI do? The first 90 days

The first 90 days of a fractional head of AI follow roughly the same order in most businesses: find out where AI is already used, check the data, set the rules, then choose what to buy or build.

The order matters.

A vendor chosen before the inventory and the data check tends to shape the strategy instead of serving it.

The use-case inventory

List every place AI is used today, including staff using public chatbots with company material.

For each one, record the owner, the data it touches and whether it makes or informs decisions about people.

Then list the candidate uses the business wants and rank them by value and by risk.

That list becomes the roadmap.

Data readiness

For each shortlisted use, the questions are whether the data exists, whether it can be trusted and whether the business may lawfully use it for this purpose.

The ICO’s guidance on AI and data protection works through accountability and governance, lawfulness, fairness, transparency and statistical accuracy as they apply to AI; the ICO notes the guidance is under review after the Data (Use and Access) Act.

That Act opens up the lawful bases for significant automated decisions about people, provided appropriate safeguards are applied, though not for special category data.

Governance

The UK has no single AI regulator.

The government’s AI regulation white paper set out a principles-based approach in which existing regulators apply the rules in their own sectors, and DSIT has issued initial guidance to regulators on applying the white paper’s principles within their remits.

So the head of AI first works out which regulators matter to this business, then writes an AI policy people can follow, with a named owner for each use.

Where a use involves personal data, the ICO’s DPIA guidance lists innovative technologies among the factors that can indicate high risk, so a data protection impact assessment is often the first document.

The data protection officer, where there is one, is a close colleague; see fractional DPO jobs.

For the policy itself, two frameworks help: the OECD AI Principles set out values for trustworthy AI, including transparency and explainability, and ISO/IEC 42001 is the first international standard for an AI management system.

Vendor choices

Most businesses buy AI rather than build it.

The NCSC’s guidelines for secure AI system development are aimed mainly at organisations building on models hosted by someone else or on external APIs, and cover secure design, development, deployment and operation.

A head of AI turns that into contract questions: what the vendor does with your data, where it is processed, how the model is changed and how you leave.

The NIST AI Risk Management Framework, a voluntary framework from the US standards body, is a useful checklist for those questions.

By the end of the quarter

Expect an inventory, a policy with owners, a ranked roadmap, a vendor decision for the first use and that use in production or in a measured pilot.

Then agree the days the seat needs from here.

If the technology underneath is the real question, a technology audit can run alongside.

10/ questions

Fractional head of AI jobs FAQ

The questions people ask before bringing in a fractional head of AI.

Head of AI roles held for part of the week. The person owns where AI is used in the business, the data behind it, the AI policy, and the choice of models and vendors, for an agreed number of days, often alongside other clients.

A senior AI lead who works for a business part of the week rather than full-time. They sit below the executive team, usually reporting to the CTO, CIO, COO or chief executive, and make AI work day to day: the uses, the data, the rules and the vendors.

Write down the problems you want AI to help with and who owns each. Decide whether you need a head of AI or an executive: if the board wants one person accountable for AI across the company, hire a fractional CAIO. Then ask each candidate to walk you through one AI use they took from pilot to daily use, and put the days, deliverables and reporting line in writing.

The day rate times the days worked. No source we can cite publishes a fractional head of AI rate, so we set out each candidate’s day rate on the shortlist instead. For the permanent salary spread across part-week days (our arithmetic, not a market rate), see fractional head of AI salary. For the full-time seat, Robert Half’s 2026 median for a permanent head of AI is £157,250 (see head of AI salary), and Robert Walters’ 2026 survey puts the London contract rate at £800–£1,250 a day, paid through PAYE (see interim head of AI salary).

Accountability. A chief AI officer is an executive who answers to the board for AI strategy and risk across the company. A head of AI reports to an executive and turns the strategy into working systems. Most businesses advertising fractional AI roles need the head of AI first; for the executive seat see fractional CAIO jobs.

Builds an inventory of where AI is used, checks the data each use depends on, sets a policy with named owners, works out which regulators apply (the UK relies on existing regulators, as the AI regulation white paper sets out), chooses a vendor for the first use and gets it into production or a measured pilot.

Some do, especially in a small company where they build the first prototypes. Most lead engineers, analysts or a vendor who build. Decide which you need before you brief, and test for it: a hands-on builder and a leader of builders are different hires.

It depends on how the engagement runs, not on the title. Where they work through their own company, HMRC’s off-payroll rules put the determination on the client in most cases; for a small client outside the public sector, the worker’s own company decides. See our IR35 guide.

Book 15 minutes · shortlist of 3–5

Bring the brief. We architect the team.

A shortlist of 3–5 with day rate, availability and IR35 position set out, after five-stage vetting.

Book a call →Submit a brief