Principal, Strategic AI Advisory

About the Role

We are looking for a rare kind of technologist — someone who is equally at home whiteboarding a generative AI architecture with an enterprise engineering team and presenting a multi-year transformation roadmap to a C-suite. As a Principal within our Office of AI Strategy, you will serve as the strategic go-to-market (GTM) lead for our APJ theater. You will be the bridge between our most ambitious customer visions and our product’s evolving capabilities.

Operating within the Office of AI Strategy, you will act as a high-level advisor at the intersection of business value, technology, and market influence. You will lead from the front, taking clear ownership in the room to shape how the world’s largest enterprises think about AI readiness, data activation, and the long-term impact of autonomous systems.

You will exert significant influence across the organization. Account executives, solution architects, and product leaders will look to you to set the strategic North Star for our most complex APJ engagements. You will play a foundational role in defining our regional market approach and ensuring that the Office of AI Strategy becomes a primary driver of enterprise trust through assertive, prescriptive leadership.

What You'll Do

Strategic Advisory & Thought Leadership

• Establish Authority: Represent the Office of AI Strategy at tier-1 industry events, executive roundtables, and in the press as a credible, forward-looking voice on the future of AI.
• Original Research & Content: Publish and speak on the intersection of AI strategy, data governance, and enterprise integration, building the company’s "center of gravity" in the APJ market.
• C-Suite Influence: Develop and deliver "Board-ready," outcome-based narratives that focus on business impact rather than technical minutiae, helping senior buyers navigate the shift from AI experimentation to production at scale.
• Collaborative Alignment: Work closely with product, sales, marketing, and GTM peers to develop and refine GTM assets, positioning strategies, and roadmaps.

Accelerate Strategic AI Transformations

• Executive Partnership: Engage directly with CTOs, CDOs, and AI Transformation leads at Fortune 500-level prospects, building trust through real-world industry perspective and operator experience.
• Prescriptive Strategy Workshops: Design and lead high-stakes sessions that move beyond discovery to deliver clear, sequenced roadmaps. Customers should leave your workshops knowing exactly what to tackle first, why, and how they will be successful.
• Complex Problem Solving: Navigate the full spectrum of enterprise AI hurdles: regulatory compliance (including the APJ AI Act), data residency, model governance, and organizational change management.
• Deal Leadership & Agility: Provide high-level technical direction on "must-win" pursuits. You must be able to pivot in real-time—capturing a use case, quantifying its value, and aligning delivery expectations in a single fluid motion.

Bridge the Gap to Product Strategy

• Field Intelligence: Synthesize complex requirements from APJ enterprises — especially regarding data sovereignty and localized AI needs — and translate them into actionable priorities for Product and Engineering.
• Strategic Proxy: Act as the voice of the APJ enterprise within the Office of AI Strategy, ensuring our global product roadmap accounts for the unique technical and regulatory nuances of the region.

Shape the APJ GTM

• Market Positioning: Partner with regional leadership to refine our messaging and GTM strategy, ensuring our value proposition resonates with the specific maturity levels of various APJ markets.
• Ecosystem Development: Work with strategic partners and consultancies to build a unified advisory motion that accelerates AI adoption for our customers.

What We're Looking For

Technical Foundation (T or M-shaped — non-negotiable)

• AI/Data Depth: Deep expertise in the modern AI stack, with experience across LLM orchestration, agentic/RAG architectures, and data activation platforms. You are grounded in the latest industry trends and emerging standards—such as MCP (Model Context Protocol)—and understand how they shape the future of enterprise-scale AI and API integration.
• Broad Fluency: A "systems thinker" who understands how AI fits into the broader enterprise landscape (cloud infra, security, legacy data silos, and governance).  You easily can pivot from technical issues, into how technology patterns relate to company culture and strategy, and how different technology patterns interact with different operating models.
• Pragmatism: The ability to distinguish "AI hype" from real-world utility, providing customers with grounded, high-impact guidance.
• Tech & Risk Savvy: You have the experience to spot deployment "potholes" early—like knowing when complex OAuth delegation is required for secure data access—and the judgment to gracefully avoid academic "rabbit holes" like deep-diving into niche AI concepts (e.g., protein folding, quantum ML, etc) that are out of reach or irrelevant for the vast majority of enterprise use cases.

Strategic & Commercial Acumen

• Advisory & Operator Background: Proven experience in a strategic advisory role (e.g., Management Consulting, Field CTO office, or Lead Architect) coupled with real-world operator experience that allows you to lead with business context.
• Collaborative Value Engineering: The ability to partner with account teams and customer stakeholders to co-create a compelling business case for AI, translating technical milestones into shared ROI and strategic competitive advantage.
• Sales Instinct & Hybrid Agility: Understands the mechanics of enterprise buying cycles and has the "hybrid" ability to be commercially sharp and technically credible simultaneously, even in high-ambiguity environments.

Communication & Presence

• Executive Storyteller: Exceptional ability to communicate outcome-based narratives to non-technical stakeholders, quickly aligning executives around value.
• Assertive Facilitation: A master at "owning the room" and driving alignment across divergent groups. You are comfortable challenging stakeholders and steering fragmented discussions toward a clear decision.
• Public Profile: Comfortable and effective in high-visibility environments, from keynote stages to private boardrooms.

APJ Context & Industry Depth

• Regional Expertise: Based in Australia with deep familiarity with the regulatory landscape (GDPR, APJ AI Act) and the cultural nuances of doing business across APJ
• Vertical Knowledge: While you are a horizontal strategist, you bring specialized depth in one or more key industries: Financial Services, Manufacturing, Life Sciences, or Retail.
• Mobility: Willingness to travel frequently to meet with customers and partners across APJ.

What Success Looks Like in Year One

• Market Impact: You are recognized as a leading voice for the Office of AI Strategy in APJ, with a portfolio of published content and speaking engagements.
• Deal Influence: You have played a pivotal role in securing several landmark enterprise contracts through high-level advisory and the delivery of prescriptive technical strategies.
• Strategic Alignment: You have successfully established a feedback loop between the APJ field and the global Product team, resulting in tangible roadmap updates for the region.
• Trusted Advisor Status: You have built a network of C-suite relationships where you are sought out for guidance on AI strategy, independent of specific deal cycles.
  
  

#LI-VC1