Lead AI strategist

This role will have a dual focus, as both an AI thought leader within FYLD, and as the lead AI researcher for defined projects.  It will report into the COO, who sits on the FYLD Executive Team, have an indirect reporting line to the CEO who is deeply involved in product direction, and occasional dotted lines to other FYLD’ers where your thought leadership is crucial to the success of their project.  Whilst this might feel a bit complex, it is how we roll at FYLD – we care first and foremost about getting the best brains on our biggest opportunities, not rigid org structure.

More detail on each aspect follows.

AI Thought Leader (20% of role)

• AI systems have constantly evolved for many years.  The past  12 months however has seen a landscape change (LLMs) which presents for FYLD significant business opportunity, as well as risk.

• In this role, you will have responsibility for keeping abreast of AI developments, how they can impact FYLD, and ensuring that FYLD team members are well briefed on these developments, to ensure for example they are placed to make better business decisions and conversational ability with customers about AI topics.

• You will have a role in imagining a re-imagined FYLD with the possibilities of new technologies baked in.

AI Project Research Leader (60% of role)

• With the FYLD algorithm now having visited more than 300,000 work sites/jobs (typically with multiple data points collected at each), FYLD has built a significant proprietary data set, coupled with deep industry expertise about challenges being faced by the industry.

• We foresee 3 key types of projects that this will result in at FYLD:

• Grant funded research projects, for example the current Predictive Safety Interventions project that Government Regulator OFGEM has funded to £1.7m over 3 stages.  This role will have joint responsibility with the Project Leader (not AI technical) for delivery of the project plan (available subject to an NDA being signed).  

• The FYLD Business Plan is actively focused on securing more non-dilutive grant funding to progress our research streams and ensure that we continue to achieve external (market-relevant) endorsement of the thought leadership of FYLD.

• Customer research projects, for example where a partner identifies a particular challenge that the FYLD team can see has cross-industry application, and that challenge is data led (as an example, where should field workers be placed in the morning to best serve the day’s anticipated needs?). 

•  We do expect on occasion there may be some level of ‘consultancy’ to customers as they learn to couple FYLD data with their proprietary data to drive business outcomes.  Our entire team works in an agile fashion to ensure customers get value from the funds they invest in their FYLD relationship, and we know many of them are early in their digitisation journey.

• FYLD Product Roadmap, which may involve some tactical assistance to current product priorities with an AI element (e.g. Video Risk Assessment enhancements), rapidly working on bringing GenAI capability into the product, as well as more strategic priorities such as the AI roadmap 12-24 months from today.  This will include trends such as a shift to find vs search, automated analytics of user behaviours and nudges, etc.

And then there is coding … (20% of role)

We fully appreciate that a lot of people who come into this type of role do have an engineering background and we see that as a key benefit for FYLD.  It better enables your thought leadership to eventually turn into deployable, scalable product.

To ensure your skills remain up to date, and also that you can understand our product stack, approximately 20% of your time will be dedicated to being on the tools.  The right person will figure out how to make this work day to day with the engineering team.

The grade of the role?  We have initially crafted this role as a ‘lead’ in the business, and see that the successful candidate will obtain promotion to Director grade within 3-6 months through successful OKR delivery that generates business value.

The culture

A positive culture is vitally important to us. Planning, delivery, agility, and accountability are second nature in our business. We have worked hard to develop a culture that is open, transparent, and empowers our people by providing career defining experiences, industry-leading benefits, employee care and learning opportunities.  We run our business through every team member having a defined Job Description, quarterly agreed OKRs and knowing what their next Career Defining Experience will be.  We find after that, a lot of the culture takes care of itself!

Transparency is central to our culture – we are a small team, and every team member is important to the success of the business. You don’t need to have experience in a start-up environment, but we do need you to adopt the culture of being at one.

A bit more detail on the technical

As our Lead – AI Technology, you will play a crucial role in designing, implementing, and maintaining the core machine learning systems that power FYLD, as well as being a leader in our longer term product strategy. You will collaborate with cross-functional teams, including engineers, product managers, and data scientists, to deliver high-quality, scalable, and reliable solutions that meet the needs of our customers.

We are interested in applications from individuals who:

• Are deeply curious about the practical application of AI to industrial environments, and, like the team at FYLD can see a very different way of working emerging over the next 5 years in our target segments
• Have a deep ability to go beyond curiosity, and can take their learnings to develop demonstrator products that FYLD can successfully commercialize (we know this won’t be 100% of the time, but you’ll also know when to stop a project)
• Have a  passion for commercializing high quality proprietary data sets, with a love of unstructured data, including an understanding of how it can create value for FYLD and its customers.  This includes painting a future state vision that they can buy into.
• Are great communicators, and who can translate complex technical concepts plain English, particularly for some of our customers and users who are unfamiliar with AI systems
• Thrive in a remote first environment, and know how to both complete projects independently and work collaboratively in a team environment
• Experience with ML, computer vision and NLP libraries (e.g. Sci-Kit Learn, TensorFlow, PyTorch, Transformers) as well as emerging GenAI tools and an obsession with how new products can be built on those tools
• Knowledge and programming experience in Python, and have experience in deploying AI models on AWS and similar cloud platforms
• Can couple all of the technical stuff in this job description with commercial nouse – however it has been obtained.

We do need you to be UK based and fluent in English, and thrive in a fast paced, demanding environment.  We’re pretty good at FYLD in managing work life balance, but we are also a fast growing start up and don’t suit people looking for a 9-5 gig.

DEI at FYLD

At FYLD, we welcome everyone regardless of their background, race, national origin, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, protected veteran status, disability, age, etc. We nurture an inclusive work environment and are committed to ensuring equal opportunity in employment for qualified persons with disabilities.

In addition, we have implemented a flexible way of working which we believe enables teams and individuals to do their best work, regardless of where they’re based. While we value in-person collaboration and know a change of scenery and quiet space to work is welcomed from time to time, we also appreciate and understand that the world of work has changed.

Benefits that are attractive to a diverse range of candidates are provided, from health insurance for yourself and immediate family, to pet insurance, parental leave and an electric car leasing facility.

All offers of employment are contingent upon an individual’s ability to secure and maintain the legal right to work at the company.

To apply, please email careers@fyld.ai