An experienced technical leader who guides your AI initiative from strategy to production. Available as interim, fractional or project lead: pragmatic, vendor-independent and backed by a team.
The role calls for someone who can design LLM architecture, justify vendor choices, lead an AI team and also perform hands-on senior code review. At the same time, they sit in the boardroom to bring your CFO, CISO and legal team on board with a roadmap that is both ambitious and achievable.
That combination is scarce in the Dutch market. Internal recruitment often takes several months before a suitable permanent AI tech lead is in place, and during that time your AI initiative falls behind. An interim AI tech lead bridges that gap, or fills the role on a structural fractional basis.
We provide this role from Appfront: senior engineering experience combined with AI-specific expertise in LLM gateways, RAG pipelines, evaluation frameworks and the associated governance. Not a staffing model with a loose freelancer, but a tech lead backed by a team of AI engineers and architects.
The role also differs fundamentally from a data science lead. Today's AI initiatives rarely revolve around training models yourself. They revolve around skilfully orchestrating LLM APIs, context and retrieval engineering, evaluation loops that safeguard quality, and infrastructure that is production-ready. Senior software architecture therefore now weighs more heavily than classic ML experience. An interim AI tech lead with us deliberately combines those two worlds.
The right format depends on your situation: whether you are temporarily replacing a departing lead, building something new from scratch, or want expertise on a fractional basis. In the first conversation we determine which variant fits.
You bridge the period between a departing or yet-to-be-recruited permanent AI tech lead. Our interim takes over the full role: roadmap oversight, team leadership, vendor management and the stakeholder line with the board and the business. At the end, a clean handover to your new permanent lead.
For scale-ups and mid-sized enterprises that need seniority in AI but do not yet have the volume for a full-time AI tech lead. A fixed one or two days per week, on an ongoing basis. Architecture decisions, hiring input, board participation and governance oversight: everything a full-time AI tech lead does, on a part-time basis.
You want to recruit a permanent AI lead in the short term, but currently lack the seniority to set the right roadmap and architectural foundations. We run a short engagement in which we deliver the strategy, use-case prioritisation and initial platform architecture, then hand these over to the new permanent lead.
You have a concrete AI platform project that needs to move from pilot to production, such as a RAG system for your knowledge base, an agent flow for customer support, or an LLM gateway for your internal tooling. We provide a tech lead who designs, builds and delivers the project, with our AI engineers beneath them.
The role goes well beyond that of a conventional engineering manager. An AI programme calls for people who can carry strategy, architecture and governance at the same time. Our interim tech leads cover all of these dimensions.
If you would first like to set the direction before filling the leadership role, see our AI strategy offering.
Five situations in which we typically fill this role. If you recognise your organisation here, the conversation is likely to be worthwhile.
The ambition is there, and so is the budget, but the seniority is missing. You want to avoid making the mistake of starting with juniors without anyone to provide direction. Our interim sets up the platform and builds the team beneath it.
You are caught between a departed lead and a permanent hire yet to be recruited. Nobody is keeping an eye on the roadmap, vendor contracts are rolling on, and the team is losing momentum. We fill the gap until your new permanent lead is on board.
You have a proof of concept running in a Jupyter notebook or as a prototype on a single machine. Production requires observability, evaluation suites, security and SRE practices, work that a data scientist cannot carry alone.
A fractional AI CTO who joins your board meetings, substantiates AI investments for investors or the parent company, and at the same time oversees delivery. Strategy decks that also translate into practice.
You are an advisory firm running client engagements with an AI component, and you want to hire a senior tech lead on a secondment basis for the technical side without overburdening your own team.
The regulator or your legal team is sounding the alarm. You need someone who can map the AI Act onto your use cases, establish the overlap with GDPR and DORA, and design governance processes that remain workable for your team.
The roadmap you set some time ago now feels outdated, vendor choices are being questioned, or the first results are falling short of expectations. An external senior tech lead can look at the decisions with fresh eyes and re-establish the scope on a sound footing.
For scale-ups, AI is playing an increasingly prominent role in investor questions. A fractional AI tech lead can take part in due diligence conversations, provide technical substantiation during funding rounds, and support the AI claims in your pitch with realistic roadmaps.
There are several ways to temporarily fill an AI leadership role. Below is how we position ourselves relative to the usual alternatives.
A conventional staffing agency supplies individual engineers, not tech leadership. We combine both: a senior AI tech lead with operational authority, supported by builders they can call on directly wherever needed.
A freelance CTO is an individual with no back-up. Our tech leads are employees or long-term partners of Appfront. If someone becomes unavailable, we have a successor with the same expertise. Knowledge stays within the firm, not just with one person.
Firms such as Accenture, Capgemini, Deloitte and EY have strong AI practices, but they are generally built for enterprise budgets and large programmes. For scale-ups and mid-sized enterprises, that is overkill. We work more pragmatically and with a mid-market focus.
Recruiting a senior AI tech lead in-house is structurally slow: scarce supply, high salaries and lengthy hiring cycles. We are available as soon as we have made a match, often within a few weeks of the first introduction.
With OneDayBuild, we turn your idea into something tangible in one day for €1,150, so you can see whether further development is worth the investment. Decide to go ahead with the full build? Then we credit the full cost.
Explore OneDayBuild →A conversation in which we understand where you stand: what your AI ambitions are, what team you have, what compliance pressures apply, and what form of leadership fits best at this moment. Not a sales pitch, but advisory.
We connect you with one of our senior tech leads. Before starting, there is a thorough intake: culture, codebase status, stakeholder landscape and the main challenges at the outset. Concrete scope and goals are set down on paper.
The interim lead starts with a rapid assessment of the team, codebase and governance, and within a few weeks delivers a status report and a sharpened roadmap. They then continue to work alongside you as tech lead.
Weekly check-ins with you or your board, monthly roadmap reviews, and continuous operational leadership of your AI team. Our other AI engineers and architects are available for specific deep-dives where useful.
At the end, a structured handover to your new permanent lead or internal successor. Decision logs, architecture documentation, vendor contracts, and an ongoing roadmap that can be executed immediately.
The EU AI Act is in force, GDPR obligations overlap with AI systems, and sector-specific rules such as DORA impose additional responsibilities. An interim AI tech lead needs to understand this landscape, not as a lawyer, but as a technical translator between legal and engineering.
Our leads work with your legal team on a concrete mapping: which use case falls into which risk category under the AI Act, which documentation obligations follow from that, and how to make this operational without paralysing your development team. For broader support on compliance, see also our AI literacy training.
What clients typically want to know before we start.
A no-obligation half-hour introductory call. We listen to where you stand, which format suits you, and give you direction you can act on. After that, you can take your time deciding whether an interim, fractional or project engagement is the right choice.
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