Lead AI Strategist

Our Lead AI Strategist will play a critical role in driving delivery excellence, growing our business, and ensuring customer success. As a critical leader within our Advisory organization, the AI Strategist will engage with Senior Executives in partnership with our pre-sales team, to scope, shape, and sell AI Strategy, with a focus on how emerging shifts in AI capabilities can best support organizational business goals; asking “why” and backing up with lived experiences, to make sure our customers have an effective approach to AI that will drive measurable growth. The AI Strategist will also drive and support AI Strategy execution, provide delivery oversight to AI platform and capability implementation, and build our practice by developing intellectual property (frameworks, approaches, and accelerators) related to AI Strategy development and execution.

In this role, you’ll manage multiple work streams, build executive relationships, and guide clients through complex AI challenges, and stay ahead of market trends to inform the development of our go-to-market capabilities.

This role is about creating value, fostering trust, building relationships, and positioning yourself as a strategic influencer in the evolving AI landscape.

Required Experience:

• 6+ years as a hands-on AI Strategy Leader who has led AI Strategy engagements.
• 2+ years previous Consulting leadership experience working with external clients, with the ability to multitask, prioritize tasks, and work across a variety of projects. 
• Understands the evolving AI capabilities in the industry, including their applications and how to leverage them effectively to help clients increase revenue, improve customer experience, or introduce new products to the market.

• Brings vertical/industry expertise to bear, in making Strategic recommendations, given the nuances of each industry, e.g. Financial Services, Healthcare, Retail.
• Experience engaging senior stakeholders, including members of the C-suite.
• Functional Strategy Leadership expertise and/or exposure, including:
• Identification and prioritization of business-focused opportunities.
• Expertly balancing technical, organizational, and process recommendations.
• Developing and sequencing long-term roadmaps.
• Designing future state operating models.
• Designing processes for effective AI and analytical asset management.
• Developing business cases with return on investment in mind.
• Making recommendations that resonate with organizations, and have a clear story behind why we are making them.
• Adept at making technical recommendations that are tied to business outcomes and in support of standing up AI capabilities, including but not limited to the following:
• Cloud computing, and data platforms.
• Data Governance, observability, lineage, and data quality resolution.
• Privacy and security.
• Regulatory needs.
• Knowledge of AI Governance, its facets, and how to incorporate into an AI Strategy e.g. model transparency, risk management, and development standards.
• Some or all of the following technical experience:
• Experience deploying machine learning models in a production setting.
• Expertise in Python, Scala, Java, or another modern programming language.
• The ability to build and operate robust data pipelines using a variety of data sources,  programming languages, and toolsets.
• Strong working knowledge of SQL and the ability to write, debug, and optimize distributed SQL queries.
• Familiarity with AWS, Azure, GCP, Snowflake and Databricks preferred.
• Experience prioritizing use cases by value and complexity, conducting SWOT analysis, and bringing the confluence of capability and industry, to inform recommendations.
• Can communicate technical concepts to a non-technical audience verbally clearly and concisely.
• Understands and can identify change management gaps and opportunities.
• Has facilitated discovery sessions and workshops, ensuring a focus on business value to keep all participants aligned on the objectives.
• Had led “art of the possible” sessions to bring insights into what other organizations are doing within an industry, and to inspire client stakeholders.
• Able to guide on technology rationalization decisions, taking into account criteria such as total cost of ownership (TCO) and business need in mind.
• Knowledge of industry-wide strategy frameworks, principles, and best practices.
• Proven ability to coach and mentor others.
• Proven track record of collaborating with client stakeholders, technology partners, and cross-functional sales and delivery team members across distributed global teams, ensuring seamless, successful project delivery outcomes.
• Ability to create strong cross-practice relationships to drive customer success.
• Exhibits a strong sense of ownership in resolving challenges, committed to ensuring exceptional outcomes for all aspects of project execution.
• A vision for how the industry is evolving, and the value that evolutions will bring to the organizations that we serve.
• Evidence of sharing thought leadership in the industry, based on prior experience and ongoing learning.

• Strong client-facing written and verbal communication skills and experience; ability to deliver presentations with compelling storylines, tailored to the target audience, from technical stakeholders through to executive teams.
• 4-year Bachelor's degree.