Overview
Head of Artificial Intelligence Jobs in South Africa at hotsourced
Title: Head of Artificial Intelligence
Company: hotsourced
Location: South Africa
About the job
AI Engineering Lead – Agentic Systems & LLM Architecture
South Africa (Remote) | Full-Time | Permanent | Cybersecurity / AI
Placed by Hotsourced – connecting top South African talent with world-class global companies
This is a rare opportunity to lead the evolution of a cutting-edge AI security platform at a fast-growing, venture-backed startup. Our client is redefining how small and mid-sized businesses access enterprise-grade cybersecurity by transforming real-world analyst expertise into an intelligent, agentic AI system.
Having already built a revenue-generating product and secured seed funding, the company is now entering a critical growth phase. This role sits at the heart of that journey—owning the intelligence layer that powers the platform and scaling it into a robust, production-ready system.
Company Overview / About Us
Our client is an innovative cybersecurity startup focused on democratizing access to advanced security operations. Built on years of managed security service provider (MSSP) experience and enriched with proprietary threat intelligence, the platform leverages agentic AI to detect, correlate, and respond to threats across multiple environments.
The team operates at the intersection of AI, security, and scalable systems design—combining deterministic frameworks with advanced LLM capabilities to deliver real-time, actionable intelligence. With a strong engineering culture and a clear roadmap toward AI-driven autonomy, the company offers a high-impact environment for builders and problem-solvers.
Job Summary / Role Overview
As the AI Engineering Lead, you will own the architecture, roadmap, and delivery of the company’s agentic AI core. Reporting directly to the CTO/CPO, you will drive the transition from a prototype system into a scalable, cost-efficient, production-grade intelligence engine.
You will operate across three dimensions: hands-on architecture, technical leadership, and strategic ownership. This includes evolving a hybrid LangGraph + LLM system, leading a migration toward in-house LLM infrastructure, and ensuring performance, reliability, and cost efficiency at scale.
Key Responsibilities
Delivery & Accountability
- Own the end-to-end AI roadmap, including planning, prioritisation, and execution
- Act as the single point of accountability for AI system performance, reliability, and cost
- Translate technical metrics (LLM cost, accuracy, pipeline health) into actionable business insights
- Drive delivery toward next-generation AI platform readiness
Architecture & Engineering
- Extend and optimise the multi-agent pipeline built on graph-based orchestration frameworks
- Enhance deterministic routing, shared state machines, and conditional execution flows
- Improve dynamic tool/skill dispatch mechanisms for cost-efficient and accurate agent behaviour
- Maintain and evolve the cognitive AI layer for complex reasoning tasks
- Implement advanced capabilities such as incident correlation, anomaly detection, and risk scoring
- Collaborate with backend teams on API integration, cloud infrastructure, and CI/CD pipelines
Strategic Migration (LLM Infrastructure)
- Lead the transition from third-party LLM services to self-hosted open-source models
- Evaluate and benchmark models for reasoning accuracy, cost efficiency, and scalability
- Design a phased, low-risk migration strategy with fallback mechanisms
- Own cost modelling across GPU infrastructure, fine-tuning, and deployment strategies
- Ensure compliance with data residency and regulatory requirements
Team Leadership
- Provide mentorship and technical direction to engineers and data scientists
- Align data science initiatives with system architecture and product goals
- Establish and enforce engineering best practices and quality standards
- Enable team productivity by removing blockers and guiding delivery
Required Qualifications / What We're Looking For
- 7+ years of experience in AI/ML engineering
- 3+ years working with production-grade LLM or agentic systems
- Proven ownership of end-to-end AI systems (architecture to production)
- Strong Python expertise and experience with graph-based orchestration frameworks
- Deep understanding of hybrid AI architectures (deterministic + LLM systems)
- Hands-on experience deploying and fine-tuning open-source LLMs
- Experience with RAG pipelines, vector databases, and graph databases
- Strong knowledge of cloud platforms and distributed systems
- Expertise in prompt engineering, token optimisation, and cost governance
- Demonstrated experience leading or mentoring technical teams
Preferred Skills / Nice to Have
- Background in cybersecurity or threat intelligence
- Familiarity with log management and observability tools
- Experience with anomaly detection, behavioural analytics, or risk modelling
- Knowledge of secure, multi-tenant SaaS architectures
- Understanding of threat frameworks and incident response workflows
- Exposure to GPU infrastructure planning or on-premise AI deployment
Work Schedule
- Monday to Friday
- 09:00am – 18:00pm GMT
- 11:00am – 20:00pm SAST
Benefits / What We Offer
- ZAR 115,000 - ZAR 135000 Monthly
- Fully remote working environment
- Collaborative, transparent, and high-performance culture