Head of Applied AI

About the Role

Echelon is seeking a Head of Applied AI to lead its applied AI engineering efforts. This full-time position is based in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and involves overseeing the team, technology, and technical quality of all deployed solutions. The role reports directly to the Managing Director and requires a minimum of 10 years of experience.

Key Responsibilities

• Define the technical direction for engagements, including architecture, model and partner selections, and build, partner, or buy decisions.
• Build and lead forward-deployed engineering teams, design pods, set hiring standards, define career paths, and cultivate an engineering culture.
• Ensure the technical quality of deployments from prototype to production, approving scope, architecture, and technical risk.
• Act as the senior technical counterpart in strategic pursuits, conducting architecture, security, and data-residency reviews, and shaping engagement scope and pricing.
• Establish standards for building, securing, and operating AI systems, ensuring compliance with data protection and security regulations.
• Facilitate capability transfer to customers through documentation, evaluations, monitoring, training, and clean handovers.
• Collaborate with the platform lead to shape Echelon’s platform roadmap based on delivery patterns and customer needs.
• Lead technical relationships with technology partners and model providers across engagements.

Required Qualifications and Experience

• Over 6 years of experience in engineering, including building and leading teams that deliver production systems, ideally as a senior leader in an AI company, a forward-deployed business, or as a technical founder.
• Demonstrated experience taking a product or platform from inception to scaled usage by real users.
• Hands-on expertise with LLMs, agent frameworks, MCP, retrieval, and evaluation, with knowledge of making AI systems observable, safe, and reliable at scale.
• Proficiency in distributed systems, data engineering, and cloud and on-premise infrastructure under strict data residency and security constraints.
• Experience leading complex deployments for large enterprises or government, including technical pre-sales, scoping, and commercial considerations.
• Ability to communicate complex technical and commercial trade-offs effectively to both engineers and executive boards.

Advantageous Qualifications

• A PhD in AI, Machine Learning, or Computer Science.
• Experience with delivery in Saudi Arabia or the GCC, particularly in the public sector or regulated industries, with familiarity with PDPL, NCA, and SDAIA frameworks.
• Experience building Arabic NLP, speech, or multimodal systems; Arabic language proficiency is a plus.
• Experience with fine-tuning, post-training, or serving open-weight models on private or on-premise infrastructure.
• Experience leading technical relationships with model providers, cloud providers, or technology partners.

Work Environment and Expectations

This role is based in Riyadh, with regular travel to customer sites across the region and with partners abroad. The successful candidate will be a senior engineering leader who remains close to the code, fluent in Python, TypeScript, or similar languages, and capable of reviewing shipped code. The role requires a proactive approach to problem-solving, with an emphasis on curiosity, speed, rigor, and resourcefulness. Candidates should be comfortable with ambiguity and committed to long-term building and developing others.

Compensation and Benefits

Compensation for this position includes a base salary, a performance bonus, medical cover, and equity through the employee equity program. Specific terms will be shared during the offer stage.