Head of Adoption

Job description About Applied Computing Applied Computing was founded in 2024 to build Orbital, a physics-informed foundation model for energy operations. We came out of stealth less than a year ago and have seen exceptional early traction: live deployments across oil and gas, refineries, and petrochemicals, strategic investment from industry leaders, and validation from some of the world’s most demanding operators. The hydrocarbon industry keeps the world running. But its complexity has left operators tied to legacy systems, making critical decisions on less than 10% of available data. We built Orbital to change that. It is a foundation model built specifically for energy that lets companies use AI at scale, harnessing all of their operational  data and optimising in real time for any metric. Decisions get faster, operations get safer, and carbon intensity falls. We have raised over $40 million, including one of the largest seed rounds for an AI company in the UK. We are 32 people, flat structure, high autonomy. We’re just getting started. The Role Most of our customers are extraordinary at what they do. They’ve spent decades mastering the chemistry, physics, and operational complexity of some of the most demanding industrial environments on the planet. Most of them have never used an LLM. None have deployed a multi-agentic foundation model in live operations. Orbital is not a simple tool. It does not behave like software they have used before. It reasons across data, surfaces patterns that were previously invisible, and gives operators capabilities that require a fundamentally different way of working. Getting from first deployment to daily, confident, self-directed use is a journey. This role owns that journey. As Head of Adoption, you will build and lead the function responsible for taking our customers from Orbital-curious to Orbital-obsessed. That means structured programmes, on-site presence, adult learning design, change management, and an obsessive focus on one outcome: operators who trust the product, use it fluently, and advocate for it internally. The end state is not a customer who attended a training session. It is a customer who has changed how they work, who has identified other teams that should be using Orbital, and who is pushing us to build more. The Person You have a rare combination. You understand how adults learn new things, especially adults who are already expert in something else and have no obvious reason to change. You know that resistance to new tools is rarely about the tools and almost always about trust, identity, and workflow disruption. You are comfortable in industrial environments. You do not need to understand refinery chemistry, but you need to be able to sit in a control room, earn the respect of an operator who has been doing this job for twenty years, and help them see that Orbital makes them better at it, not redundant because of it. You build systems, not sessions. One-off training is not adoption. You know how to design a programme that moves people through capability stages, identifies who is ready to go further, and creates the internal momentum that means customers ask us for more without being pushed. You measure outcomes, not activity. Completion rates and attendance figures mean nothing to you. You care about daily active use, workflow integration, and whether customers are bringing new teams to the table.  What Success Looks Like Days 1-30 You have spent time on-site with at least two customers. You have mapped the current state of adoption across our live accounts: who is using Orbital daily, who is using it occasionally, who has effectively stopped, and why. You have formed a clear view of the biggest adoption blockers and presented your findings to the leadership team. Days 30-90 You have built the first version of the AC adoption framework: user personas, capability stages, and the programme structure that moves customers from one stage to the next. You are running the first structured adoption engagement with a customer, and you have identified at least two potential champions across our accounts. Months 3-6 Adoption metrics are defined, tracked, and visible. At least one customer has a trained champion actively running their own internal sessions. The product team has received a structured set of adoption-derived requirements. Account management has a clearer view of which accounts are ready for expansion conversations based on adoption health. Months 6-12 Adoption is a measurable, managed function. Daily active use has increased across the customer base. At least one account has expanded scope or headcount because of adoption-driven demand, not commercial pushing. The champion network spans multiple customers, and customers are beginning to learn from each other. We have a repeatable playbook that scales without requiring your personal presence in every account. How We Work -Flat structure. No layers of management between you and the decision. No committees for decisions that one person should own. - High autonomy, high accountability. We will not tell you how to do the job. We will care a lot whether you do it well. - Direct communication. We say what we think, including when we disagree. Feedback is fast and honest, not softened into uselessness. - This role requires real presence. You will be on customer sites regularly. That is not a nice-to-have, it is the job. - We move quickly. The adoption methodology you build in month one will be different by month six. That is expected and good. Job requirements Essential Experience - Proven track record of driving technology adoption in enterprise or industrial environments, where users were expert practitioners with no obvious motivation to change. - Experience designing and running structured change programmes, not one-off training. You understand capability staging, reinforcement, and how to sustain momentum across months, not days. - Comfortable working with technically complex products and translating that complexity into accessible, role-specific learning. - Experience identifying and developing internal champions within customer organisations, and using those champions to drive scale. - Strong data instinct. You define adoption metrics, track them rigorously, and use them to make decisions about where to focus and when to escalate. - Confident operating at multiple levels within a customer organisation: from the operator on shift to the VP who signed the contract. Nice to Haves - Background in adult learning design or organisational change management. - Experience in energy, utilities, manufacturing, or other operational industries where the workforce is domain-expert and change-averse. - Familiarity with AI or data product adoption specifically: the unique challenges of getting users to trust model outputs rather than rule-based systems. - Experience building customer community or champion network programmes at scale. Job responsibilities Key Responsibilities 1. Adoption Strategy and Programme Design -Build and own Applied Computing’s adoption methodology: the structured path from first deployment through operational fluency to customer champion. - Design adoption programmes for different user personas: front-line operators, process engineers, plant managers, and executive sponsors. Each group has different needs, different blockers, and a different definition of value. -Create the tools, materials, and frameworks that make adoption repeatable across customers, industries, and deployment types. -Define what AI-native looks like for an energy operator and build the curriculum that gets them there. 2. Customer Engagement and Change Management -Lead on-site adoption engagements with customers. Be present in the environments where Orbital runs. Understand the day-to-day reality of the people we are asking to change how they work. - Work with customer stakeholders to build internal buy-in: identifying sponsors, surfacing quick wins, and creating the internal narrative that sustains momentum after we leave. - Navigate resistance. Recognise the difference between technical blockers and human ones, and address both without conflating them. - Partner with forward deployed engineers and delivery teams to ensure adoption programmes are sequenced correctly alongside technical deployment. 3. Champion Development - Identify and invest in the operators and engineers within customer organisations who have the curiosity and influence to become Orbital champions. - Build a structured programme that takes champions from power user to internal advocate: someone who runs their own sessions, brings new colleagues to the product, and escalates expansion opportunities. - Build a cross-customer champion network over time. Customers learning from customers is more powerful than us telling them what is possible. - Track champion progress and use it as a leading indicator of account health and expansion readiness. 4. Adoption Measurement - Define the metrics that actually measure adoption: daily active users, workflow completion rates, feature depth, session frequency, and self-directed use versus prompted use. - Build visibility of these metrics across the business. Adoption health should be as visible as pipeline and ARR. - Use adoption data to identify at-risk accounts early, before it becomes a commercial problem. - Feed adoption patterns back into product and engineering: what is consistently hard to learn, what features are never used, what workflows are being improvised around. 5. Feedback Loop to Product and Commercial - Translate adoption blockers into specific, evidenced product requirements. If customers consistently struggle with the same thing, that is a product problem. - Work with account management and commercial leadership to identify expansion signals. A customer who has three champion-level users and two new teams asking questions is a customer ready for a bigger conversation. - Contribute to onboarding documentation, in-product guidance, and any materials that extend the adoption programme beyond direct engagement. What This Role Is Not - A customer success role. You are not managing commercial relationships, handling renewals, or owning account health from a revenue perspective. - A training function. Delivering workshops and tracking attendance is not this job. This role exists to change behaviour, not to run sessions. - A support function. You are not the escalation point for technical issues or bug reports. - A consultancy. You are not doing the work for customers. You are building their capability to do it themselves. - A content production role. You will create materials, but you are primarily in the field, not at a desk writing e-learning modules. Job benefits Benefits - Competitive salary benchmarked at the 90th percentile for the role, level, and location. - Meaningful equity. We are pre-Series A and growing fast. - 28 days holiday including bank holidays. - Private health insurance. - Remote-first with a London hub for collaboration. - Direct access to the founding team and a front-row seat to building one of the most technically ambitious AI companies in Europe.