Chief AI Officer

Edison Smart is exclusively supporting a major global financial services organisation with the appointment of a Chief AI Officer to build and lead a new AI Centre of Excellence in Singapore.

This is a genuine build-from-the-ground-up mandate.

You’ll have executive sponsorship and ownership of the strategy, technology, team and operating model required to establish Singapore as a major AI hub for the organisation globally.

The mandate:

• Build and lead a new AI Centre of Excellence in Singapore
• Define the enterprise AI strategy across generative AI, agentic AI and machine learning.
• Build and scale teams across AI Engineering, Applied AI, ML and AI Platform
• Establish the architecture and infrastructure required to deploy AI at enterprise scale
• Drive LLM, RAG, agentic and enterprise knowledge initiatives into production
• Identify high-impact AI opportunities across a global financial services environment
• Establish responsible AI, governance, security and model-risk frameworks
• Partner directly with the C-suite and global technology leadership
• Build relationships across Singapore’s wider AI, research and technology ecosystem

Who we're looking for

This is not a purely strategic or advisory AI leadership position.

We are looking for someone with deep technical credibility who has previously built AI products, platforms, or engineering organisations and can operate comfortably from executive strategy through to architecture and technical decision-making.

You are likely to have

• Significant leadership experience across AI/ML, generative AI or applied AI engineering.
• Experience building or scaling an AI Centre of Excellence, AI platform or enterprise AI function.
• Strong understanding of modern AI architecture, including LLMs, RAG, agents, evaluation, model deployment and MLOps/LLMOps.
• Experience deploying AI into production within a large-scale, regulated or technically complex environment.
• Strong understanding of AI governance, security and responsible deployment.
• Experience building and leading high-performing AI engineering and applied science teams.
• The ability to influence C-suite stakeholders while retaining credibility with senior engineers, architects and researchers.

Financial services experience is highly valuable, but we are also interested in exceptional AI leaders from Big Tech, fintech, cloud, enterprise software and other highly regulated industries.

Why this opportunity?

This is an opportunity to build rather than inherit.

You will have executive sponsorship, significant organisational reach and the mandate to establish Singapore as a strategic AI hub for a major global financial institution