Consider a German mid-market operator that wants an agent to close support cases or place routine orders next week. Engineering can show a working flow. The release ticket still has no signature. The run log has no named reader. The escalation path ends in a group inbox. A kill switch exists on the system, yet no one is on the hook to pull it if the agent drifts after hours. Those artefacts are the job you mean to fill when you hire a Head of Agentic AI. Beyond Chiefs stands behind that judgment.
A generic AI lead can run a model roadmap and present a demo. Hiring a Head of Agentic AI is not the same job. The work starts when an agent may write, pay, book or change a live system. Who is named on the release ticket? Who decides which actions the agent may trigger without a fresh human approval, and which actions it may not?
If that signature is missing, the agent runs under a team name. After a misfire you will look for ownership in the incident review, instead of having placed it on the ticket first. The review still matters. It does not replace the release. Who chairs it is fixed before the first run as well.
Suppose your current Head of AI has already shown the agent working in a sandbox. That proves the flow can run. It does not prove who will release write access in production, who can halt a bad transaction and who will explain the run log the next morning.
That title is appearing in conversations about agent leadership. It does not sign the release. Hire for a new label and leave the ticket, the log, the path and the switch unnamed, and you have stationery. The search is for the person who will run those artefacts in production, whatever nameplate the posting carries.
A stop right, in this seat, is not a debate about whether the technology should exist. It is the duty to know the kill switch, to reach it without a chain of approvals, and to pull it when the agent leaves its path. Two further duties travel with the release: an escalation path that names the person to call, the trigger and the time window, and a run log that can show tools, inputs, intermediate steps and the result.
Those artefacts have to be named in the brief. The switch only helps if the named person can reach and use it after hours. The log only helps if it can reconstruct the tool, the input and the result. A role that merely "owns agentic AI" and leaves them blank is a heading over an agent that will go live anyway.
What a supervisory board should ask before an agent goes live is set out in board questions for agentic AI. This page is about the operating role you need to staff. The management board must be ready to name who signs the ticket, who reads the log, whom the path reaches after hours and who owns the kill switch.
Staffing this seat in Germany runs through AI executive search.
If those four artefacts are missing from your brief, the search has nothing to test against. You will have posted for agentic language.
