About the Role
We are looking for a visionary and execution-driven Delivery Head to lead our Data & AI Center of Excellence. This is a strategic leadership role responsible for building, scaling, and delivering high-impact Data & AI solutions across enterprise clients. The ideal candidate will combine deep technical fluency with strong business acumen, client management skills, and the ability to build a world-class delivery organization from the ground up.
Key Responsibilities
Delivery Leadership
- Own end-to-end delivery of Data & AI programs across multiple client accounts, ensuring quality, timeliness, and business impact
- Define and enforce delivery governance frameworks, escalation protocols, and risk mitigation strategies
- Drive consistent delivery excellence across data engineering, data science, ML/AI, and analytics workstreams
- Establish KPIs, SLAs, and OKRs for the COE and ensure teams consistently meet or exceed targets
COE Building & Strategy
- Architect and scale the Data & AI COE — including talent strategy, capability building, tooling, accelerators, and reusable assets
- Define the COE's service offerings across Data Engineering, Advanced Analytics, Machine Learning, Generative AI, and MLOps
- Build and manage a pool of high-quality AI/ML, data engineering, and analytics resources ready for rapid deployment
- Stay ahead of market trends in AI/ML, LLMs, Generative AI, and data platforms to continuously evolve COE capabilities
Stakeholder & Client Management
- Serve as the primary delivery point of contact for CXO-level client stakeholders
- Build and nurture long-term client relationships, driving satisfaction, retention, and account growth
- Collaborate with sales and pre-sales teams to support RFP responses, solution design, and effort estimation
- Identify upsell and cross-sell opportunities within existing accounts
People & Team Leadership
- Lead, mentor, and grow a team of program managers, architects, data engineers, data scientists, and AI specialists
- Drive a culture of innovation, accountability, continuous learning, and delivery excellence
- Define career paths, competency frameworks, and performance benchmarks for the COE team
- Partner with talent acquisition to attract and retain top Data & AI talent
Technology & Innovation
- Provide oversight and direction on solution architecture for Data & AI programs leveraging cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP)
- Champion adoption of modern data stacks — Databricks, Snowflake, dbt, Apache Spark, Kafka, and AI frameworks like LangChain, PyTorch, TensorFlow
- Drive POCs and innovation sprints to bring emerging AI/GenAI capabilities to client engagements
- Ensure responsible AI practices including model governance, explainability, and compliance
Must-Have Skills
- 18+ years of IT experience with at least 5–7 years in a senior delivery leadership role focused on Data & AI
- Proven track record of building or scaling a Data/AI practice or COE
- Deep understanding of the full Data & AI stack — data engineering, ML/AI, analytics, MLOps, and GenAI
- Strong client-facing experience at CXO level across global accounts
- Experience managing large, multi-disciplinary teams (50+ members) across geographies
- Hands-on experience with cloud platforms — AWS, Azure, or GCP
- Strong financial acumen — P&L ownership, budgeting, and resource optimization
Good to Have
- Experience with Generative AI, LLMs, RAG architecture, or AI agents
- Background in building partner ecosystems or hyperscaler alliances (AWS, Microsoft, Google)
- Published thought leadership, conference speaking, or active presence in the AI community
- Experience in BFSI, Healthcare, Retail, or Airline
