--- title: "Head of AI: What the Role Owns, and Who Gets the Seat" description: "Head of AI: what the seat owns, the two roads into it, how it differs from Head of Engineering, and the contract to sign before you accept the title." url: "https://www.marian.coach/head-of-ai-role/" lang: "en" image: "https://www.marian.coach/_astro/portrait-formal-smile-hero.DyHbyQ-m_utmJF.jpg" --- A Head of AI is the person a company puts in charge of its AI work once that work has outgrown a side project: usually a small team, one or two product surfaces, and a mandate written much wider than the headcount that arrives with it. That gap between the mandate and the headcount explains most of the role. Two people with this title can have entirely different jobs, depending on how much of the mandate came with people and money attached. ## Two roads in, and where the first weeks break Most people in this seat came from one of two places. The first road is engineering leadership. An engineering manager or a staff engineer ran the company’s first serious AI project, it shipped, and the title followed the work. These people know how to get something into production and how to argue with a roadmap. The second road is data and machine learning. A data science lead or an ML engineer with depth gets handed the org. They know the material. The new part is everything around it: hiring against labs that pay more, saying no to a VP with a demo, and a week spent mostly convincing people instead of building. You’d expect the two roads to break in opposite places, the engineer on the models and the data scientist on the org. The cases on record point at the org side for both. Two intro calls from summer 2026 show what that looks like in the first weeks. Both people had just been given the first AI leadership title their company ever had, and both came up through engineering. Neither problem was a model. The first person had no team yet, hiring planned but months away, and three stakeholders who wanted three different things: the line manager wanted two or three agents or workflows live in production within three months, the tech lead wanted an AI governance framework and standards, and the CEO wanted a change of mindset across the whole company. The second had just started in a similar seat and called it “absolute chaos”. Leaders wanted everything by the next day, and he’d been brought in as an engineering leader whose strength was use cases. How either story continues isn’t on record, so this page doesn’t guess. ![Marian Kamenistak on stage in front of the Engineering Leaders Community logo, addressing a full auditorium.](https://www.marian.coach/_astro/talk-43.Dg7RtBjJ_o3jVn.webp) Most of the first weeks happen in rooms full of people who don’t report to you. ## What comes with the title The scope tends to settle into four things, roughly in the order they eat the calendar: 1. **The applied team.** A handful of engineers who build AI into the product. Hiring for it is some of the hardest hiring in the company right now, and it’s your problem. 2. **The shared platform.** Evaluation, prompt and model versioning, guardrails, cost controls. Everything the other teams use so they aren’t each solving it privately. The [AI platform engineer](https://www.marian.coach/ai-platform-engineer-role/) page goes through those layers one by one. 3. **The no.** Most functions have a demo and an idea. Someone has to say which three get built this year and take the heat for the rest. This is the part people underestimate before they take the job. 4. **The spend.** A leader who can’t explain last month’s inference bill line by line loses the argument the first time it doubles. Learning to read that invoice properly is a week of work that pays back for years. The company’s AI strategy across sales, legal, HR and operations isn’t on that list. That belongs to a wider seat, covered in [VP of AI vs Chief AI Officer](https://www.marian.coach/vp-of-ai-vs-chief-ai-officer/). A Director of AI title often covers the same ground as Head of AI, and [the Director of AI page](https://www.marian.coach/director-of-ai-role/) splits it into a research, a product and a transformation version. ## Head of AI vs Head of Engineering The two titles sit close enough that people negotiate between them without seeing the trade. | | Head of Engineering | Head of AI | | --- | --- | --- | | People | The whole function, through managers | A small team, often single-digit | | Owns | Delivery, hiring, org shape, tech direction | One product surface plus the shared AI platform | | Where risk sits | Roadmap slips, managers churn | A feature is confidently wrong in front of a customer | | Measured by | Predictable delivery and org health | Whether the AI bets shipped and what they cost | | Next step up | VP of Engineering or CTO | VP of AI, Chief AI Officer, or back into engineering leadership | Head of Engineering is the broader job and Head of AI is the more visible one. Which of those is worth more to you depends on whether you want to run an organisation or own a bet, and that’s about you far more than about the market. Will the title still be around in five years? I would not bet a career on the title. The contract decides: your goals at 3 months, 6 months and 12 months, the people you get, and the budget. ![Hand-drawn sketch: the words "The title" crossed out with a fat red X, and below it the terms that matter instead, circled: 3 months, 6 months, 12 months, People, Budget.](https://www.marian.coach/images/blog/head-of-ai-role/infographic.webp) The seat also changes shape on purpose. When I advise a company, I tend to build its first AI team inside tech and, after three months, move the members out to the business departments, because that’s again where the money is. The [AI transformation playbook](https://www.marian.coach/blog/head-of-ai-transformation-playbook/) has a contract one-pager to start from. ## Pay, from live postings Pay for the title spreads wide. Glassdoor’s US average for a Head of AI is [$355,844](https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/head-of-ai-salary-SRCH_KO0,10.htm), but from only 23 submitted salaries, so treat it as a rough marker. Live postings in October 2026 ran from [$225,000 to $250,000](https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/wongdoody/jobs/7676509003) base for a remote North America seat at the agency WongDoody, to [$300,000 to $400,000](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/primary/16a28fa5-c89d-423c-8a13-37b30753df7c) at the New York venture firm Primary. In the UK, Local Pensions Partnership advertised the seat at [£90,000 to £100,000](https://www.totaljobs.com/job/head-of-ai/local-pensions-partnership-job108088142), “working with the Chief Technology Officer” and expected to “develop the AI team”. None of those three ads names a reporting line. Ask for it before you ask about the number, because it tells you which version of the job you’re pricing. ## Month one in the seat Three things, in this order: 1. **Write down what you were hired to do and get it signed.** One paragraph, agreed with whoever gave you the title. Six months in, that paragraph is your best defence against a mandate that quietly grew. 2. **Ship one small thing that survives real users.** Credibility in this seat comes from something in production, not from a strategy deck. Pick the smallest bet with a visible surface. 3. **Publish the cost.** Before anyone asks. A leader who brings the numbers to the exec meeting unprompted gets believed later, when the number is bad. ![Marian Kamenistak leading a workshop in front of a screen reading "Measure your team's productivity" with strategy notes on the whiteboard.](https://www.marian.coach/_astro/talk-09.BOTNUCfW_Z1gfgb3.webp) Bring your own numbers to the room before somebody brings theirs. ## When the honest answer is no Some versions of this seat should be refused, and refusing one well is a career skill that rarely gets taught. The version to refuse comes with no headcount of your own, engineers borrowed from teams whose managers are measured on something else, and a sponsor who wants the AI story for the board more than the AI product. That job carries all the accountability of the role and none of the levers. Taking it costs a year and leaves you a CV line that rarely survives an interview, because the first question is what you shipped. The version worth taking looks unglamorous by comparison: a small funded team, one product surface, a clear owner above you. It’s a smaller job and a much better one. If you can’t tell which version the offer on your desk is, bring it to [Head of AI mentoring](https://www.marian.coach/head-of-ai-mentor/), together with the mandate, the org chart and the contract draft. Since 2019 that mentoring has covered 3,662 sessions and 317 leaders. The intro call costs you nothing. ## Seats next to this one - [VP of AI or Chief AI Officer: which part of the AI mandate each seat carries](https://www.marian.coach/vp-of-ai-vs-chief-ai-officer/) - [Director of AI, in its research, product and transformation versions](https://www.marian.coach/director-of-ai-role/) - [Applied AI engineer: the role your team hires first, and the rungs above it](https://www.marian.coach/applied-ai-engineer-role/) - [AI program manager: who keeps a moving AI program on track](https://www.marian.coach/ai-program-manager-role/) - [Head of Engineering: the seat this one gets compared with](https://www.marian.coach/head-of-engineering-role/) - [AI transformation playbook: the first six months, month by month](https://www.marian.coach/blog/head-of-ai-transformation-playbook/) ## Frequently asked What does a Head of AI do?+ A Head of AI runs a company's AI work once it has outgrown a side project. Day to day that means a small applied team, a shared platform for evaluation and cost control, choosing which AI bets get built this year, and answering for the inference bill. Company-wide AI strategy usually belongs to a wider seat. Is a Head of AI the same as a Chief AI Officer?+ Usually not, though small companies use the two titles loosely. A Head of AI tends to run one funded team inside technology. A Chief AI Officer holds a mandate across every function and often reports to the CEO. Judge the seat by the people and budget it controls, since the noun on the offer says little. What is a Head of AI Engineering?+ It's the Head of AI seat weighted toward building. The person leads the engineers who put AI into the product: retrieval, evaluations, guardrails and cost controls. It can report to the CTO, the VP of Engineering or the CEO, and early pressure tends to come from stakeholders more than from models. How much does a Head of AI make?+ Head of AI pay ranges widely. Glassdoor's US average sits around $356,000, from a small sample of 23 salaries. Live US postings in October 2026 offered $225,000 to $400,000 in base pay, and a UK posting offered £90,000 to £100,000. A spread like that usually means very different seats sharing one title, so compare the team and budget too. [1:1 mentoring](https://www.marian.coach/engineering-manager-mentor/) ## Ready to move this from advice to action? 1:1 mentoring for engineering leaders. 317 mentees since 2019. Rate a session under 7/10 and you don't pay for it. First intro is free. [Book a free 30-min intro →](https://www.marian.coach/meet) ## Read next - [![Marian Kamenistak studio headshot on a plain background.](https://www.marian.coach/_astro/headshot-clean-hero.ClrxHQVJ_2wpTAn.webp) ### VP of AI vs Chief AI Officer: Who Owns What VP of AI vs Chief AI Officer: how the two seats and Head of AI split one AI mandate, what each controls, and what makes a CAIO seat more than a title. 9 October 2026 · By Marian Read → ](https://www.marian.coach/vp-of-ai-vs-chief-ai-officer/) - [![AI Transformation Playbook: The Money Isn't in R&D](https://www.marian.coach/images/blog/head-of-ai-transformation-playbook/infographic.webp) ### AI Transformation Playbook: The Money Isn't in R&D A 6-month plan for a new Head of AI Transformation: five AI maturity levels with two KPIs each, how to hire for the seat, and where the money is. 2 October 2026 · By Marian Read → ](https://www.marian.coach/blog/head-of-ai-transformation-playbook/) - [![Marian Kamenistak in a 1:1 mentoring session.](https://www.marian.coach/_astro/mentoring-05.BrINwYEC_Z1otGeW.webp) ### Director of AI: Research, Product or Transformation Seat Director of AI can mean a research lead, a product AI builder or an enterprise adoption owner. Who each reports to, what it pays, and what to negotiate. 9 October 2026 · By Marian Read → ](https://www.marian.coach/director-of-ai-role/) ### New posts, straight to your inbox. Your emailSubscribe You're on it. Nothing hits your inbox today. First send goes out once the list is live, and you're already on it. 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