Head of AI Product & Architecture Consulting

Roles and Responsibilities:

Practice Leadership & Team Development

• Lead and grow the practice across people, offerings, delivery standards, and market positioning.

• Continuously improve consulting methods, delivery playbooks, technical standards, and ways of working in collaboration with Customer Success and Senior Leadership.

• Build a strong team culture grounded in software craft, product thinking, architectural discipline, and practical AI adoption — with an emphasis on psychological safety, accountability, and measurable improvement.

• Recruit, develop, coach, and retain high-performing consultants, engineers, architects, product leaders, and delivery practitioners.

Delivery Excellence

• Provide senior oversight across client engagements involving software development, product engineering, AI-enabled delivery, modernization, and architecture.

• Ensure solutions are maintainable, secure, scalable, and aligned to client outcomes, promoting modern practices such as continuous delivery, test automation, observability, and platform thinking.

• Use metrics such as DORA, flow metrics, and business outcome measures to drive evidence-based improvement.

• Help clients adopt flexible, sustainable delivery models that balance speed, governance, quality, and business value — coaching cross-functional teams on effective collaboration across product, engineering, architecture, security, and compliance.

AI Leadership

• In collaboration with the CTO, shape APA's approach to applied AI across product engineering, software development, architecture, and delivery transformation.

• Help clients identify and pursue practical AI use cases that improve delivery speed, product quality, customer experience, or operational efficiency.

• Guide teams in the responsible use of AI-assisted development tools, agentic workflows, and intelligent applications, with clear understanding of associated risks including governance, security, privacy, and regulatory considerations.

• Partner with Ippon's data and cloud leaders to connect APA's AI capabilities with strengths in AWS, Snowflake, and data architecture.

Client and Thought Leadership

• Support sales pursuits, proposals, and executive conversations — translating ambiguous client needs into clear engagement strategies, delivery plans, and measurable outcomes.

• Act as a trusted advisor to senior client stakeholders at the intersection of product, engineering, architecture, data, cloud, AI, and governance.

• Define and package APA offerings across AI-enabled product engineering, software modernization, delivery effectiveness, and engineering excellence.

• Drive brand awareness through thought leadership initiatives including events, blogs, white papers, and client success stories.

Competencies we are looking for:

Minimum Qualifications:

• 5+ years of consulting experience

• 5+ years of experience leading software engineering, product engineering, architecture, or technology consulting teams.

• 5+ years of experience building, managing, coaching, and growing high-performing technical teams.

• 7+ years of experience and deep understanding of modern software development practices, including software architecture, software craft, DevOps, CI/CD, testing strategies, and cloud-native delivery.

• 7+ years of experience with product development and product-oriented ways of working.

• Strong working knowledge of agile delivery practices, with the judgment to adapt methods to fit client context rather than applying process mechanically.

• Hands-on experience with AI tools, AI-enabled software development, intelligent applications, or applied enterprise AI use cases.

• 7+ years of experience in financial services, banking, insurance, capital markets, or related regulated industries

• Excellent organizational skills, including the ability to manage people, priorities, offerings, delivery quality, and practice operations simultaneously.

• Strong client-facing communication skills, including the ability to engage credibly with executives, product leaders, engineering leaders, architects, and delivery teams.

• Experience supporting business development, proposal creation, solution design, or account growth in a consulting environment.

• Ability to travel up to 20% of the time

Preferred Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or a related field

• Experience leading a consulting practice, capability, center of excellence, or large technology delivery organization.

• Experience using DORA metrics, SPACE, flow metrics, or other engineering effectiveness frameworks to improve delivery performance.

• Experience with AI-assisted development tools, agentic workflows, LLM-enabled applications, or enterprise AI governance.

• Familiarity with AWS, Snowflake, modern data platforms, and cloud-native architecture.

• Experience with modernization programs, legacy system transformation, platform engineering, or large-scale digital product delivery.

• Experience creating market-facing offerings, white papers, executive presentations, workshops, and assessment frameworks.

• Understanding of regulatory requirements and compliance standards (e.g., GDPR, HIPAA) within the Financial Services and Insurance industries.

• Knowledge of IT strategy and management

• Demonstrated experience of presenting talks at conferences, publishing white papers, and public speaking.

What we offer:

• Competitive salary –   Great starting salaries for well qualified candidates

• Generous Paid Time Off policy - Ippon offers flexible time off to help you be your best

• Health, dental, and vision insurance – We are dedicated to helping our employees live healthier lives through comprehensive health programs

• 401k with company match - Ippon offers an industry leading 401(k) matching plan 

• Family Leave - We support the importance of family and offer maternity, paternity and family medical leave plans   

• The chance to work in a startup-esque environment with a fun, smart, and healthy work environment, focused on our values, teamwork, and 5406 custom Slack emojis