Head of AI Platforms

A leading financial services organisation headquartered in Munich, operating across insurance, asset management, and financial infrastructure at scale. With a strong balance sheet, a growing appetite for technology-led transformation, and thousands of users across Europe, the business is investing heavily in AI to unlock operational efficiency, accelerate decision-making, and build a long-term data competitive advantage.This is a newly created Director-level role sitting at the heart of that agenda: responsible for defining and delivering the AI platform strategy that will underpin the organisation's AI capabilities for the next decade.THE ROLEThe Head of AI Platforms will own the end-to-end design, delivery, and governance of the organisation's AI platform engineering function. Reporting directly to the Chief Technology Officer (or Chief Data Officer), this leader will build and lead a team of AI Platform and MLOps Engineers, and partner closely with Data Science, Architecture, Compliance, and Business stakeholders to ensure AI can be deployed at scale, securely, and in a regulated context.This is a hands-on leadership role: you will set direction but also be expected to be deeply technical, credible with engineers, and comfortable operating in a complex regulated environment.KEY RESPONSIBILITIESDefine and own the AI platform strategy: including infrastructure, tooling, deployment frameworks, and standards for how AI is built and shipped across the organisation.Build, lead, and develop a high-performing team of AI Platform Engineers and MLOps specialists, hiring for both near-term delivery and long-term capability.Design and implement scalable MLOps pipelines: covering model training, versioning, deployment, monitoring, and retraining: in a regulated financial services context.Establish the organisation's AI governance and compliance framework: model risk management, explainability standards, audit trails, and alignment with BaFin / Solvency II requirements.Partner with Data Science and Analytics teams to accelerate the path from model experimentation to production deployment, reducing time-to-value for AI initiatives.Own the AI infrastructure stack: cloud-based platform architecture (Azure / AWS), feature stores, vector databases, LLM orchestration frameworks, and GPU compute provisioning.CANDIDATE PROFILESignificant experience in data and AI engineering, with a minimum of 5 years in senior or leadership roles within a regulated financial services environment (insurance, banking, or asset management strongly preferred).Proven track record of building and leading AI or data platform teams: hiring, developing, and retaining senior engineering talent.Deep technical expertise in MLOps and AI infrastructure: model deployment pipelines, containerisation (Docker/Kubernetes), feature engineering at scale, and model monitoring in production.Hands-on experience with cloud-native AI platforms: Microsoft Azure (Azure ML, Azure AI Studio, Microsoft Fabric) and/or AWS (SageMaker) at enterprise scale.Fluent in German and English (both written and spoken); essential for stakeholder engagement across the organisation.Advantageous:Experience with LLM deployment, RAG architectures, and agentic AI systems in a production environment.Familiarity with Microsoft Fabric, OneLake, and the broader Microsoft data and AI ecosystem.Background in insurance-specific data domains: claims, underwriting, actuarial modelling, or fraud analytics.Experience operating in a matrix organisation and influencing without direct authority across technology and business functions.WHAT'S ON OFFERA Director-level mandate with real organisational authority and budget to build something significant.Direct reporting line to C-suite with genuine executive visibility and influence over the AI strategy.Competitive base salary, performance bonus, and long-term incentive package commensurate with Director level in Financial Services.A hybrid working model with a Munich base: typically 3 days on-site.The opportunity to define how AI is built and deployed at a major European financial institution: at a pivotal moment in the technology's maturity.