Job Summary:

We are seeking a commercially astute and technically exceptional Associate Director to bridge client relationships and world-class AI & Cloud engineering delivery. You will be the primary interface between strategic clients and our engineering teams - winning new mandates, co-designing solutions, and owning end-to-end delivery from ideation to production. With 15+ years of experience, you bring deep Python and Generative AI expertise, proven cloud architecture skills, and the gravitas to influence at the C-suite level while staying hands-on with modern agentic development tooling.

Key Responsibilities:

1. Solution Architecture & Solutioning:

- Translate ambiguous client needs into structured, costed, and deliverable technical roadmaps.

- Architect end-to-end solutions: from ideation and PoC through to scalable production systems.

- Drive cloud-native design on Azure, AWS, GCP or hybrid platforms.

- Define reference architectures embedding Generative AI, LLMs, and agentic workflows.

2. Engineering Leadership & Delivery:

- Lead multi-disciplinary teams of 10 - 20 engineers, leads, and architects across geographies.

- Establish and enforce delivery governance: agile rituals, quality gates, and risk management.

- Champion CI/CD, DevSecOps, and MLOps practices across all client programmes.

- Own program P&L, resource planning, and executive-level status reporting.

- Drive adoption of AI coding agents (GitHub Copilot, Claude Code, Amazon Q) to accelerate delivery.

3. Generative AI & Intelligent Automation:

- Embed Generative AI capabilities (LLMs, RAG pipelines, multi-agent systems) into enterprise products.

- Design and deploy AI agent workflows using tools such as GitHub Copilot, Claude Code, and similar platforms.

- Evaluate and adopt emerging agentic frameworks (LangChain, Agent Core, CrewAI, etc.) to accelerate delivery.

- Champion responsible AI practices including governance, safety, and model observability.

4. People & Stakeholder Management:

- Build, mentor, and grow a high-performance team of engineers and technical managers.

- Manage a complex stakeholder matrix: internal leadership, client sponsors, and delivery partners.

- Influence without authority across business units and geographies.

- Foster a culture of innovation, accountability, and continuous learning.

Qualifications & Experience:

- 15+ years in software / AI engineering; 6+ years at senior leadership or Associate Director level.

- Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related field.

- Demonstrated track record of building and shipping end-to-end applications across the full SDLC.

- Full lifecycle ownership: ideation - architecture - engineering - production - optimisation.

- Proven cloud architecture and deployment across at least one hyperscaler.

- Demonstrable track record of winning and delivering large-scale client engagements.

- Strong commercial acumen: P&L ownership, proposal writing, SOW and contract management.