Trtl is a travel accessories brand based in Glasgow City Centre, Scotland. With over two million customers worldwide, we make travel easier — starting with our hero product, the Trtl Travel Pillow, reinvented from the ground up to solve a problem no one had properly fixed.

We are a small, ambitious company that punches well above its weight — around £30M in annual revenue, selling across Amazon, Shopify/DTC, and TikTok Shop in the UK, US, and internationally. We have a clear ambition to scale to £50M+ and AI is central to how we get there.

We have been building AI-powered tools and workflows into the business for two years. AI is already core to how we operate. This role exists to accelerate that — materially and measurably.

We are looking for a Head of AI & Technology — someone who is first and foremost a builder with strong software development fundamentals, deep working knowledge of agentic AI systems, and the commercial instinct to know what is worth building.

This is a senior individual contributor and team leadership role. You will inherit and extend a growing ecosystem of AI-powered tools, workflows, and integrations already live in the business. You will lead a small technology team (an IT Manager and a mid-weight Software Developer) and work directly with colleagues across every department to turn real business problems into autonomous, production-grade solutions.

The ambition is not incremental. We want agentic systems adjusting Amazon advertising bids in real time, autonomous workflows surfacing customer intelligence, and AI-driven operations that free our team to focus on higher-value decisions. If you have seen what AI-native commerce teams are doing at scale and want to build that from the ground up, this role is for you.

1. Lead the Technology Team

– Line manage and develop an IT Manager (contractor) and Software Developer, deploying their capacity against the highest-impact technical priorities.

– Set the technical direction for the team — architectural decisions, tooling choices, ways of working.

– Act as the senior technical voice in the business, advising the COO and leadership team on AI and technology strategy.

– Identify capability gaps and proactively suggest additional roles or resource as the team’s remit grows.

2. Build & Maintain AI-Powered Tools

– Own the Stack: Take ownership of Trtl’s existing suite of AI tools and agentic workflows. Maintain, improve, and extend them as business needs evolve.

– Ship New Solutions: Design and build new AI-powered tools end-to-end — from identifying the problem through to deployment and iteration. Production tools, not prototypes.

– Integrate AI Models: Work with large language models to power tools — content analysis, classification, summarisation, generation, and decision-making. We currently use Claude (Anthropic) as our primary model and expect you to recommend the right tools as the technology evolves.

– Agentic Systems: Build and maintain agentic workflows where AI systems take actions, use tools, and operate semi-autonomously — including commercial functions such as automated bid management, performance monitoring, and customer insight.

3. Software Development

– Write Production Code: This is also a developer role. Clean, maintainable code that other people will rely on. Quality matters.

– APIs & Integrations: Build and consume APIs, connect to third-party services (e-commerce platforms, marketing tools, CRMs, communication tools), and ensure data flows reliably between systems.

– Infrastructure: Deploy and manage tools in cloud environments with proper scheduling, monitoring, error handling, and alerting.

– Documentation: Clearly document how systems work, how to run them, and how to troubleshoot them.

4. Collaboration & Problem Solving

– Work Cross-Functionally: Sit with colleagues in marketing, customer support, operations, and finance to understand their pain points. Translate vague business problems into concrete, buildable solutions.

– Work with the CEO and COO to identify tools, approaches, and agentic use cases emerging from more developed AI markets — particularly in US e-commerce — and assess their applicability to Trtl.

– Prioritise: There will always be more ideas than time. Assess impact, effort, and feasibility to decide what to build next.

– Iterate Based on Feedback: Ship fast, gather feedback, and improve. The goal is practical utility.

Essential

– Proven Development Experience: A strong track record of building and shipping software — ideally 4+ years — with at least some of that in production agentic or AI-integrated systems.

– Familiarity With the Agentic Stack: Practical knowledge of agentic patterns and MCP (Model Context Protocol). Framework experience is useful; what matters is that you’ve shipped autonomous systems that actually work.

– Working Knowledge of AI: You understand how to use LLMs effectively in production — prompt engineering, tool use, structured outputs, agentic patterns.

– Commercial Instinct: You can connect what you’re building to business outcomes. You’ll be operating close to revenue — that context has to land.

– Leadership Presence: You’re comfortable being the most senior technical person in the room. You can manage and develop a small team without it consuming your building time.

– Problem-Solving Mindset: The ability to break a vague business problem down into a concrete, buildable solution.

– Self-Starter Attitude: You’ll have a lot of autonomy. Manage your own time, set priorities, and push projects forward without constant supervision.

– Communication Skills: You’ll work with non-technical colleagues every day. Plain English is essential.

Nice to Have

– Commercial experience shipping products built using MCP servers and agentic frameworks or agent harnesses.

– Experience with automated commercial systems — bid management, budget optimisation, performance reporting — ideally in an e-commerce context.

– Familiarity with e-commerce platforms: Amazon (Seller/Vendor Central), Shopify, or TikTok Shop.

– Experience deploying and managing applications in cloud environments (AWS preferred).

– Experience with workflow orchestration or automation tools (e.g. n8n, Zapier, Make).

This role reports directly to the COO. You will lead a small technology team:

– IT Manager (direct report)

– Software Developer — mid-weight (direct report)

You will have genuine autonomy over how this team’s capacity is deployed. There is no bureaucracy to fight — if something is worth building, you’ll have the mandate to build it.

– Hybrid working — 3 days per week in our Glasgow City Centre office

– 33 days annual leave with option to buy more

– Commitment to personal and team development

– Social and wellbeing activities

– Real ownership of AI strategy at a growing brand — with commercial stakes and genuine autonomy to deliver