Smart Bricks
Head of Applied AI (Forward Deployment)
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Head of Applied AI (Forward Deployment)
Location: London (preferred), Dubai or San Francisco
Reports to: Founder & CEO
About Smart Bricks
Smart Bricks is building the intelligence layer for real assets. We're creating an AI-native platform that helps investors, developers, governments, and Fortune 500 companies make better decisions across the lifecycle of physical assets—from sourcing and underwriting to due diligence, asset management, and portfolio strategy.
Rather than building generic AI tools, we partner directly with leading institutions to solve their hardest operational problems, turning every customer engagement into reusable product that compounds across the platform. We're backed by leading global investors and are now building the next generation of our institutional AI platform.
The Opportunity
We're looking for a Head of AI Lab to build and lead our Applied AI organisation from the ground up.
This is not a Professional Services role.
This is not a Consulting role.
This is not a traditional Product role.
You'll create the operating system that transforms customer problems into scalable AI products. You'll work directly with some of the world's largest owners, operators, investors, and governments, deploying AI into mission-critical workflows while building the repeatable capabilities that define the future of Smart Bricks. You'll build the team, define the methodology, and establish the culture for what we believe will become one of the world's leading AI Labs focused on physical assets.
What You'll Do:
Build the AI Lab
- Design and scale Smart Bricks' Applied AI organisation.
- Recruit and develop Forward Deployed Engineers, AI Engineers, and Solutions Architects.
- Establish operating principles, delivery methodology, and quality standards.
- Create a high-performance culture centred on customer outcomes and rapid execution.
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Partner With Customers
- Work directly with executive stakeholders at enterprise customers.
- Map complex workflows and identify opportunities for AI transformation.
- Lead discovery workshops and solution design.
- Oversee deployments from prototype through production adoption.
- Ensure measurable business outcomes are achieved.
Turn Services Into Product
- Every customer engagement should make the platform better.
- You'll be responsible for identifying reusable workflows, patterns, and capabilities that become core product functionality.
- You'll work closely with Engineering and Product to ensure customer learnings are rapidly productised.
Build Institutional Intelligence
- Capture domain expertise from every deployment and transform it into reusable knowledge, evaluation frameworks, workflows, and AI capabilities.
- Help create one of the industry's most valuable proprietary knowledge assets.
Scale the Function
- As the company grows, you'll build regional AI Labs across key markets and establish Smart Bricks as the market leader in applied AI for real assets.
Success Looks Like
Within your first 12 months, you will have:
- Built the foundational AI Lab team.
- Successfully delivered multiple enterprise AI deployments.
- Established a repeatable deployment methodology.
- Created a pipeline for converting customer work into platform capabilities.
- Reduced deployment time with each successive customer.
- Built a team recognised internally for exceptional execution and customer impact.
What We're Looking For
We're less interested in titles than in what you've built. You may have led:
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- Forward Deployed Engineering
- Applied AI
- Enterprise AI
- Solutions Engineering
- AI Delivery
- Technical Consulting
You have likely:
- Built an applied AI or forward deployment organisation from scratch or at scale.
- Worked directly with enterprise executives on complex operational problems.
- Led multidisciplinary teams of engineers and customer-facing specialists.
- Built systems that evolved from bespoke deployments into repeatable products.
- Recruited exceptional technical talent.
- Thrived in ambiguous, fast-moving environments.
Experience in real estate is helpful but not required. Experience building AI systems that deliver measurable business outcomes is essential.
Ideal Background
We're especially interested in leaders who have built applied AI organisations at companies such as:
- Palantir
- OpenAI
- Hebbia
- Anduril
- Scale AI
- Vannevar Labs
- Retool
- Cursor
- Anthropic
- Other AI-native enterprise software companies
How We Think
We believe the future belongs to companies that learn faster than everyone else.
- Every deployment teaches us something.
- Every customer improves the product.
- Every workflow becomes an asset.
Our AI Lab exists to turn institutional knowledge into software.
Why Join
This is a rare opportunity to define an entirely new function inside a company building category-defining AI infrastructure.
You'll work directly with the founder, shape company strategy, build a world-class team from day one, and have an outsized influence on the direction of the business.
If you're excited about creating a new model for how AI companies are built—and want to help define the intelligence layer for the world's physical economy—we'd love to talk.
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