Head of AI Innovation

Faktion is an AI Product Studio as a Service. We envision, design and engineer enterprise-grade AI software solutions that transform how businesses operate. Spanning both business and industrial domains, our solutions range from intelligent knowledge assistants and AI-powered applications to advanced computer vision systems and agentic AI platforms that orchestrate and automate complex, end-to-end business and industrial processes.

We partner with organizations throughout the entire journey: identifying high-value opportunities, analyzing business challenges, shaping the right solutions, engineering and deploying scalable AI products, and continuously evolving them in production. By combining deep AI and software engineering expertise with a strong understanding of business needs, we turn cutting-edge AI innovation into robust, production-grade solutions that deliver measurable business impact.

As Head of AI Innovation you own the first half of that promise: the cutting edge, and the path from there to production. You lead our innovation domains across the company, you bring the frontier in, and you make sure it lands in proposals, in projects and in running solutions. Then you take what we learned back out, to clients and on stage.

At Faktion we have a strategic plan. It is called: doing things.

The Role

• You have transversal ownership of AI innovation at Faktion: its activities, its targets and its budget. Innovation here is always applied. It is organised in domains, each led by one of our lead engineers, and each domain runs innovation projects with people from our AI, software, delivery and advisory teams. You steer those domains and projects across the company.

• The role cuts across everything Faktion does: sales and proposal design, solution design and engineering, delivery, advisory, and how we show up in the market. Wherever new technology decides the outcome, you are involved and you set the bar.

• This is a technology role with direct customer impact. You are one of our technical faces in the market, and you take an active, shaping part in sales. You do not wait to be called in. You are in strategic deals from the first conversation to the signature, and you open conversations yourself wherever our innovation gives a client a reason to talk.

• In those deals you validate, sharpen and deepen the solution in complex client environments. You are the technical authority and trusted advisor for senior decision makers. You raise the quality, clarity and credibility of every proposal, you speed up the decision, and you keep a tight feedback loop between sales, engineering and delivery so the next proposal is better than the last.

• One ability matters above all others: positioning innovative technology in a client conversation so that it wins trust, removes doubt and becomes the deciding factor in closing the deal.

• You cultivate Faktion's thought leadership, and you do it by example. You publish, speak and show your own work, and you coach colleagues to do the same, so that what we learn in projects becomes a point of view the market knows us for.

• Leading by example is how you lead everything else too. You hold yourself to the standard you ask of others: you are in the work, you build, and you finish what you start.

The how

• Agentic SDLC: how we and our clients build software with agents, from requirements to operations.

• Evaluation-driven development: making AI systems measurable, so quality is proven and guaranteed before and after go-live. Productise workflows to involve human experts and evaluation agents as from the early build stages

• …

The what

• Agent orchestration: multi-agent architectures, tool use and long-running agents that hold up in enterprise systems.

• Context and knowledge: context engineering, knowledge assistants, process & enterprise brains.

• Voice and multimodal AI: voice agents, document and vision understanding.

• Benchmarking: new frameworks, new models, small and open models, routing and cost, and our own benchmarks.

• AgentOps and reliability at scale: observability, guardrails, security and compliance of agents in production.

• …

The portfolio is yours to shape. Domains start, merge and stop as the technology and the market move.

You report to the CEO and are part of Faktion’s leadership: next to the heads of AI, Delivery, Sales, Advisory.

What You Will Do

• Direction. You own a clear view on where AI and software engineering are going, and you turn it into choices: which bets we make, which experiments we run, and what we stop. You set the innovation roadmap together with the lead engineers.

• Outside in. You track new models, architectures, tools and engineering practices, and you bring them into Faktion through research, experiments and the wider AI ecosystem. You own our technical vendor partnerships and our subsidised research and development projects.

• Applied and industrialised. Every innovation project ends in something the teams use: a method, an accelerator, a reference architecture or a standard. You co-own those standards with the engineering teams, and you see them through to client projects that run in production.

• Winning with innovation. You are active in strategic sales from the first conversation to the signature. You shape the solution design and the proposal, you act as technical authority for senior decision makers, and you position new technology in a way that wins trust and removes doubt.

• Valorisation. You turn what we have proven into technical propositions with a market fit, together with sales and advisory.

• In the work. You stay close to solution engineering on the projects where new technology carries the risk. When building the prototype yourself is the fastest way to know, you build it.

• Inside out. You accelerate Faktion’s thought leadership: talks, publications, benchmarks and community. You are one of our faces on stage, and you help others get there.

• Culture. You cultivate curiosity, ownership and continuous learning, and you keep a tight feedback loop between sales, engineering and delivery.

What Success Looks Like

• Adoption: the share of client projects that use what the innovation domains produce.

• Propositions: new technical propositions brought to market.

• Deals: deals won where innovation made the difference.

• Visibility: talks, publications and the inbound interest they bring.

Who You Are

• A solid background in data, AI and software engineering. A master’s degree and at least 10 years of experience, preferably built in a services company where you worked for clients.

• Applications in production. You have industrialised and operated AI and software systems that enterprises depend on. You know the distance between a demo and a system that runs.

• Commercial acumen. You have helped win complex deals with content and credibility. You can explain a new technology to a senior decision maker so that it becomes the reason to sign.

• A drive to apply. New technology excites you, and you are only satisfied when it works for a client and the team can repeat it.

• Stage presence. You speak with authority to a boardroom, a conference hall and an engineering team.

• Leadership across teams. You have steered people, budgets and targets in a matrix, and you get results through leads who own their domain.

• Still hands-on. You design, you review in depth, and you build when that is what moves things forward.

• Ownership. You are proactive and entrepreneurial, you go the extra mile, and you build strong relationships with colleagues, clients and partners.

• Languages. Native-level Dutch and excellent English. French is a plus.

Why Faktion

• Together with the leadership team, you set the direction of AI innovation in a company that builds AI for more than 10 years

• You work directly with the lead engineers who build our AI products and see your ideas turn into products and capabilities that clients use in their business.

• You work closely with our commercial, delivery and engineering leadership and help build the way Faktion grows.

• A competitive salary package with additional benefits such as a company car with fuel card or a mobility budget, comprehensive hospitalisation, and group insurance.

• A flexible hybrid working policy that allows you to choose where, how, and when you work.