Head of Research

Arva AI, London, England, GB

The role

Location: In person, Central London, 4–5 days in office

Type: Full-Time

NB: We are able to sponsor visas

Arva AI is revolutionising financial crime intelligence with our cutting-edge AI Agents. By automating manual human review tasks, we enhance operational efficiency and help financial institutions handle AML reviews, while cutting operational costs by 85%.

As Head of Research, you will lead the research function behind our AI Agent platform: the in-house models, agentic systems and evaluation infrastructure that power everything from document fraud detection to web-scale due diligence. At Arva, model quality is the product. You'll set the research agenda, build and lead the team that delivers it, and stay hands-on: training, fine-tuning and rigorously evaluating systems that must be faster, more thorough and more accurate than human reviewers in live, regulated workflows.

What you will do

Research Strategy & Roadmap

All jobs

Head of Research

Arva AI, London, England, GB

The role

Location: In person, Central London, 4–5 days in office

Type: Full-Time

NB: We are able to sponsor visas

What you will do

Research Strategy & Roadmap

What you need

5+ years in applied AI research or ML engineering, with a track record of leading teams and owning a research agenda through to production.
A PhD in machine learning, AI or a related field is a nice to have, not a requirement.

Technical Depth

Hands-on expertise training and fine-tuning LLMs and vision models, building and testing agentic systems, and designing evaluations that hold up in production.
Experience with distillation, RL-based post-training or inference optimisation is a strong plus. Experience using TypeScript a plus.

Research Judgment

Ability to separate what is truly promising from what is merely new, and to sequence research bets against near-term customer impact.

Product & Customer Focus

Strong understanding of how AI solves real-world problems, and the ability to connect model behaviour to customer outcomes in AML, compliance and risk. Domain experience in regulated industries is a plus, not a requirement.

Communication & Collaboration

Clear, concise communicator who can explain complex AI concepts to executives, customers and non-technical stakeholders, and align researchers, engineers and commercial teams around a shared plan.

Ownership

Comfortable taking full responsibility for outcomes, decisions and results, and for building the team that delivers them.

Why Join Us?

Be part of an early-stage startup, building and leading its research function from the ground up with significant ownership and influence over AI strategy.
Work at the frontier of applied AI on problems where accuracy, explainability and trust are non-negotiable.
Collaborate with a passionate, mission-driven team dedicated to innovation.
Work from anywhere in the world for 4 weeks a year, in addition to regular team off-sites.
Competitive salary and equity package, with bi-annual salary review and yearly performance-based equity refresh.

Ready to Join the Fight Against Financial Crime?

If you're excited to lead the research that defines how AI earns trust in compliance, we'd love to hear from you. Apply now to become an Arvanaut as our Head of Research.

Head of Research

The role

What you will do

Head of Research

The role

What you will do

What you need

As Head of Research, you will

Similar jobs at other companies

AI Researcher

AI Research Engineer (London)

Machine Learning Researcher

Senior AI Software Engineer

AI Research Engineer (New York)

Head of Research

Arva AI