Director, Head of Applied AI

Do you want your voice heard and your actions to count?

Discover your opportunity with Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG), one of the world’s leading financial groups. Across the globe, we’re 150,000 colleagues, striving to make a difference for every client, organization, and community we serve. We stand for our values, building long-term relationships, serving society, and fostering shared and sustainable growth for a better world.

With a vision to be the world’s most trusted financial group, it’s part of our culture to put people first, listen to new and diverse ideas and collaborate toward greater innovation, speed and agility. This means investing in talent, technologies, and tools that empower you to own your career.

Join MUFG, where being inspired is expected and making a meaningful impact is rewarded.

Working within EMEA Corporate Technology, EMEA TEC, as Head of Applied AI to lead the strategy, build-out, socialisation, and operationalisation of applied AI capabilities. This is a senior leadership role responsible for translating AI potential into measurable business outcomes, spanning multiple business areas.

NUMBER OF DIRECT REPORTS

TBD

MAIN PURPOSE OF THE ROLE 

AI Vision & Strategy:

• Define and own the EMEA Technology Applied AI strategy, aligned to MUFG's global technology and business priorities.
• Identify, evaluate, and prioritise AI opportunities across the division.
• Ensure the vision and strategy are articulated across the region, and the wider MUFG group.

Organisational Build-Out & Leadership:

• Build and develop Applied AI as a core organisational capability within the EMEA Technology function.
• Establish operating models, delivery frameworks, and career pathways that attract and retain top AI talent.
• Foster a culture of rigorous experimentation, rapid productization, and clear business accountability.

Applied AI Delivery

• Oversee the design and delivery of production AI systems - agentic workflows, LLM-powered co-pilots, ML inference pipelines, embedded into live front-office operations.
• Ensure solutions integrate seamlessly with core systems and existing architectures.
• Drive the transition from proof-of-concept to scalable, enterprise-grade deployment with measurable adoption and impact.

Data & Platform Strategy

• Own the Applied AI platform strategy, including real-time data pipelines, ML feature stores, model registries, and agentic runtime and control plane infrastructure.
• Partner with relevant teams and stakeholders to ensure a coherent, governed AI foundation.

Governance, Risk & Compliance

• Accountable for AI model governance across the division - ensuring all systems meet regulatory standards for explainability, auditability, and bias prevention.
• Engage proactively with market risk, legal, compliance, audit and other relevant teams on model risk frameworks and emerging regulatory obligations.

Stakeholder Engagement

• Build trusted relationships with line of business heads, desk leads, and senior stakeholders across EMEA and globally.
• Translate complex AI capabilities into compelling business cases and executive narratives.
• Act as an external face for MUFG's AI ambition - engaging with vendors, regulators, and the broader FinTech ecosystem where relevant.
• Partner closely with business, transformation, and control function stakeholders to shape and enable the firm’s broader DX/AI, ensuring Applied AI capabilities are aligned, integrated, and delivered in a cohesive, enterprise-wide manner

Key outcomes:

• A clearly articulated Applied AI strategy with executive alignment and a funded, sequenced roadmap.
• AI capabilities embedded in daily workflows across multiple business areas, and across the Technology function, with measurable adoption and business impact.
• A high-performing, stable AI team recognised as a centre of excellence within MUFG and the broader market.
• A governed, scalable AI platform that meets enterprise architecture, regulatory, and risk requirements.

PERSONAL REQUIREMENTS

• Significant experience senior leadership roles within financial services; significant experience in AI, or data science technology.
• Proven track record building and scaling applied AI functions within global markets, capital markets, or institutional financial services.
• Familiarity with core trading and banking infrastructure including Murex and ION, payment systems, core banking platforms and the integration challenges of deploying AI within regulated market systems.
• Strong command of modern AI capabilities: LLMs, agentic frameworks, RAG, ML inference, and MLOps, sufficient to lead technical teams and challenge engineering decisions.
• Demonstrated ability to drive AI adoption at scale, navigating organisational complexity, change management, and business stakeholder alignment.
• Exceptional executive communication: able to set vision, build consensus, and represent AI strategy at board and regulatory level.
• Results driven, with a strong sense of accountability
• The ability to operate with urgency and prioritise work accordingly
• Strong decision making skills and sound judgement
• Excellent communication skills
• Strong numerical and problem solving skills
• Creative and innovative; comfortable challenging the status quo and pushing for change
• Excellent leadership skills, with the ability to motivate and inspire a team

We are open to considering flexible working requests in line with organisational requirements.

MUFG is committed to embracing diversity and building an inclusive culture where all employees are valued, respected and their opinions count. We support the principles of equality, diversity and inclusion in recruitment and employment, and oppose all forms of discrimination on the grounds of age, sex, gender, sexual orientation, disability, pregnancy and maternity, race, gender reassignment, religion or belief and marriage or civil partnership.

We make our recruitment decisions in a non-discriminatory manner in accordance with our commitment to identifying the right skills for the right role and our obligations under the law.