The Role
The Principal Consultant leads AI and digital transformation engagements, guides clients in identifying AI opportunities, builds strategies and roadmaps, implements solutions, and develops teams to achieve measurable business outcomes.
Summary Generated by Built In
AHEAD builds platforms for digital business. By weaving together advances in cloud infrastructure, automation and analytics, and software delivery, we help enterprises deliver on the promise of digital transformation.
At AHEAD, we prioritize creating a culture of belonging, where all perspectives and voices are represented, valued, respected, and heard. We create spaces to empower everyone to speak up, make change, and drive the culture at AHEAD.
We are an equal opportunity employer, and do not discriminate based on an individual's race, national origin, color, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, religion, age, disability, marital status, or any other protected characteristic under applicable law, whether actual or perceived.
We embrace all candidates that will contribute to the diversification and enrichment of ideas and perspectives at AHEAD.
AHEAD is seeking a Principal Consultant, AI Services to help enterprise clients move from AI ambition and experimentation to measurable business impact.
In this role, you will lead high-impact client engagements with senior business and technology executives. You will help clients identify where AI can create value, prioritize use cases, build business cases and roadmaps, design operating models and governance, and mobilize implementation with AHEAD’s broader teams of consultants, architects, engineers, and specialists.
This is a leadership role for a consulting professional who can operate at the intersection of strategy, technology, business transformation, and execution. The ideal candidate brings top-tier consulting discipline, strong executive communication, structured problem solving, and enough AI / technology fluency to guide multidisciplinary teams — without needing to be a hands-on ML engineer.
We are especially interested in candidates who have operated in roles equivalent to Engagement Manager, Project Leader, Senior Manager, or Director in strategy consulting, technology advisory, digital transformation, or enterprise technology environments.
What You’ll Do
- Lead complex AI and digital transformation engagements from initial diagnostic through roadmap design, implementation planning, and execution support.
- Structure ambiguous client problems into clear hypotheses, workplans, analyses, decision points, and executive-ready deliverables.
- Manage day-to-day engagement delivery, including workstream planning, team leadership, synthesis, quality control, issue resolution, timelines, and client communication.
- Facilitate executive workshops and align senior stakeholders across business, technology, data, risk, and operations.
- Serve as a trusted advisor to client leaders on where AI can create measurable value and what is required to scale it responsibly.
- Identify and prioritize AI opportunities across productivity, growth, customer experience, decision-making, software delivery, and operational efficiency.
- Conduct AI maturity and readiness assessments across strategy, data, platforms, governance, talent, process, and change management.
- Build practical AI roadmaps that sequence pilots, platform enablers, governance actions, operating model changes, and value realization milestones.
- Develop business cases and value-tracking approaches that connect AI initiatives to measurable client outcomes.
- Help clients redesign workflows and operating processes to capture value from AI, automation, and agent-assisted ways of working.
- Translate business priorities into implementation-ready initiatives in partnership with architects, engineers, data specialists, and security/governance experts.
- Help define pilot scope, success metrics, adoption plans, governance requirements, and scale-up pathways.
- Ensure AI recommendations are practical, credible, and grounded in enterprise technology realities.
- Bridge communication between executive stakeholders and technical delivery teams.
- Lead multidisciplinary teams across one or more client workstreams.
- Coach consultants and specialists through structured problem solving, client communication, synthesis, and executive-ready output.
- Create a high-performance team environment with clear ownership, strong feedback, and a consistent quality bar.
- Help build reusable methods, tools, templates, and delivery approaches for AHEAD’s AI Services practice.
- Identify follow-on opportunities within client engagements and help shape the path from initial advisory work to broader transformation programs.
- Contribute to proposals, solution design, client presentations, and account growth efforts.
- Help develop AHEAD’s AI offerings, points of view, go-to-market materials, and thought leadership.
- Stay current on enterprise AI trends, including generative AI, agentic AI, AI governance, responsible AI, AI-enabled software delivery, data platforms, and cloud ecosystems.
Lead client engagements from strategy through execution
2. Shape AI strategy, transformation roadmaps, and business cases
3. Partner with technical teams to move ideas into implementation
4. Lead and develop teams
5. Support business and practice growth
What You’ll Bring
- Typically 7–12+ years of experience in management consulting, technology advisory, digital transformation, enterprise technology, AI strategy, or related client-facing roles.
- Proven experience leading client engagements, workstreams, or project teams with senior business and technology stakeholders.
- Strong structured problem-solving skills, including the ability to break down ambiguous problems, develop hypotheses, conduct analysis, synthesize insights, and communicate recommendations.
- Excellent executive communication and facilitation skills, including experience creating and presenting senior-leadership-ready materials.
- Experience in one or more of the following areas: AI strategy, digital transformation, use case prioritization, business case development, process redesign, automation, operating model design, AI governance, or technology-enabled transformation.
- Sufficient AI and technology fluency to work credibly with business leaders, CIO / CTO organizations, architects, engineers, data teams, and risk/governance stakeholders.
- Demonstrated ability to lead teams, coach talent, manage timelines, and maintain a high bar for client-ready work.
- Background in top-tier management consulting, Big 4 advisory, technology consulting, enterprise transformation, or a similar high-performing professional services environment.
- MBA or other advanced degree preferred.
- Experience working with AI, data, cloud, software delivery, MLOps, responsible AI, or enterprise technology platforms.
- Experience helping clients move from strategy and roadmap development into pilot delivery, implementation, adoption, and value realization.
- Prior experience supporting business development, proposal development, account growth, or practice-building activities.
- You do not need to be a hands-on machine learning engineer.
- You do not need to have deep coding experience.
- You do need to be comfortable leading business and technology conversations, asking the right questions, and translating between executive priorities and technical delivery realities.
Required qualifications
Preferred qualifications
What is not required
The compensation range indicated in this posting reflects the On-Target Earnings (“OTE”) for this role, which includes a base salary and any applicable target bonus amount. This OTE range may vary based on the candidate’s relevant experience, qualifications, and geographic location.
Why AHEAD:
Through our daily work and internal groups like Moving Women AHEAD and RISE AHEAD, we value and benefit from diversity of people, ideas, experience, and everything in between.
We fuel growth by stacking our office with top-notch technologies in a multi-million-dollar lab, by encouraging cross department training and development, sponsoring certifications and credentials for continued learning.
USA Employment Benefits include:
- Medical, Dental, and Vision Insurance
- 401(k)
- Paid company holidays
- Paid time off
- Paid parental and caregiver leave
- Plus more! See benefits https://www.aheadbenefits.com/ for additional details.
Use of AI:
We may use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support parts of the hiring process, such as reviewing applications, analyzing resumes, assessing responses, or to capture recordings and create transcriptions or summaries during interviews. These tools assist our recruitment team but do not replace human judgment. Final hiring decisions are ultimately made by humans.
If you would like more information about how your data is processed, please refer to the Candidate Privacy Notice or contact us at [email protected].
You may opt-out of the review or analysis of your application and resume by AI tools by using the General Application. Please include the role you wish to apply for in the Additional Information field. You may also choose to opt-out of recording and transcription at any time, including after joining an interview. Candidates will not be penalized for choosing to opt-out.
Skills Required
- 7-12+ years of experience in management consulting or related roles
- Experience leading client engagements with senior stakeholders
- Strong problem-solving skills
- Excellent communication and facilitation skills
- Experience in AI strategy or digital transformation
AHEAD Compensation & Benefits Highlights
The following summarizes recurring compensation and benefits themes identified from responses generated by popular LLMs to common candidate questions about AHEAD and has not been reviewed or approved by AHEAD.
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Retirement Support — 401(k) contributions are matched dollar-for-dollar on the first $5,000 each year, with matching made each pay period and immediate 100% vesting. This structure signals above-standard employer support for retirement savings.
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Affordable Benefits — Medical options include low employee premiums for PPO and HDHP plans, and the HDHP adds employer HSA funding plus a dollar-for-dollar HSA match up to stated amounts. Dental and vision plans list very low per-paycheck costs, helping keep overall healthcare spend manageable.
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Wellbeing & Lifestyle Benefits — No-cost telemedicine (including virtual mental health when enrolled), free Calm access for the employee and dependents, and an EAP with counseling are included. Company-paid life and disability plus voluntary protections (legal/ID, pet insurance) and other extras round out a comprehensive set of supports.
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The Company
What We Do
AHEAD builds platforms for digital business. By weaving together cloud infrastructure, intelligent operations, and modern applications, we help enterprises deliver on the promise of digital transformation.
