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.
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
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
Pick a day that suits · live availability
On the board · last 3 months
Technology roles jobs on the board
No Technology roles roles on the board in the last three months. Showing technology and operations leadership roles instead.
- FractionalSyndicated
Fractional COO / Operations Director
genesis labels & packaging · Leeds
est £750/day2 d/wk - FractionalSyndicated
Fractional Product Practice Leader - 9 Month Contract
Tails.com · London
est £1,000/day2 d/wk - FractionalSyndicated
Fractional CPO
Log my Care · City of London
est £3,250/day3 d/wk - FractionalExclusive
Fractional COO
Confidential client (Fractional Quest mandate) · London
Rate not statedLondon - InterimExclusive
Interim Chief Operating Officer
Confidential client (Fractional Quest mandate) · London
Rate not stated5 d/wk
Live technology leadership roles
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/ 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.
04/ 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
05/ 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.
06/ 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.
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.
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.
07/ questions
Fractional head of AI jobs FAQ
The questions people ask before bringing in a fractional head of AI.
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.
