Purpose of the Role
The AI Transformation & Governance Manager is the project and programme manager for PASHA Financial Holding's agentic AI programme, accountable for delivery of its full scope while the external consultant, the platform vendor and the operating company teams execute the work. This role manages the integrated plan, drives delivery assurance, chairs programme governance, and oversees the selection and management of the group agentic platform and governance framework across the organisation.
Strategic Context
This role sits within the AI Office and reports to the Director, AI Transformation & Governance. It manages the integrated plan, milestones, dependencies, critical path, risks and change control across the programme; runs the consultant engagement through to formal deliverable acceptance; and chairs the programme cadence and governance forums.
The role provides delivery assurance across the programme by reviewing and challenging the process taxonomies, prioritisation results, agentic roadmaps, business cases and technical deliverables produced by others before endorsement or sign-off. It also manages selection of the group agentic platform — requirements, structured evaluation, proof of concept, business case and recommendation — and manages the platform vendor together with the infrastructure provider.
Beyond platform selection, the role defines the group agentic governance framework and agent lifecycle, runs their establishment as a managed programme, and assures implementation in each operating company. It owns the programme budget and total cost of ownership, reports programme performance to Holding leadership and company sponsors, and manages rollout of the proven approach across the remaining operating companies.
Key Responsibilities
Programme Management
• Manage the agentic AI programme end to end: integrated plan, milestones, dependencies, critical path, risk and issue management, and change control across all workstreams and operating companies.
• Manage the external consultant engagement: scope, schedule, agreed acceptance criteria, deliverable review, formal acceptance or return, escalation and commercial change requests.
• Chair the programme cadence and maintain programme governance: working sessions, programme reviews, steering committees, decision log and action tracking.
• Manage operational company side and cross-company dependencies: data access, system owners, information security review, business owner availability and procurement.
Delivery Assurance
• Provide delivery assurance across the programme: review and challenge deliverables produced by the consultant, the platform vendor and company teams against agreed criteria before endorsement or sign-off.
• Assure the quality of transformation deliverables produced by the companies and the consultant — process taxonomy, prioritisation results, agentic roadmaps and business cases — through structured review and challenge.
Platform Selection and Vendor Management
• Manage selection of the group agentic platform: requirements definition, structured evaluation, proof of concept, business case and recommendation for leadership approval.
• Manage the platform vendor together with the infrastructure provider: implementation milestones, delivery quality, release cadence, service levels, escalations, and a single consolidated requirements backlog across the operating companies.
Governance
• Define the group agentic governance framework and agent lifecycle — decision rights, stage gates, evidence requirements, agent registry, identity and access standards, and AgentOps requirements — and run its establishment as a managed programme.
• Assure implementation of the governance in each operating company: accountable owners appointed, agents registered, lifecycle gates operated, approvals and information security sign-off in place, review forums running.
Budget and Reporting
• Manage the programme budget and total cost of ownership: cost model, unit economics and FinOps reporting, budget allocation across the operating companies, and spend and benefit tracking against business case.
• Report programme performance to Holding leadership and company sponsors: milestone delivery, deliverable acceptance, risk exposure, cost variance, adoption and benefits realisation.
• Capture delivery experience from the first implementation and manage the rollout of the same approach across the remaining operating companies, transferring execution to their teams.
Requirements
Required:
• Proven experience in complex programme delivery carried from initial scoping through to production deployment.
• Proven proficiency in delivering complex projects across multiple companies and stakeholder groups in parallel, with shared dependencies and competing priorities.
• Experience defining governance frameworks and implementing them in operating entities: control objectives, decision rights, policies, stage gates, forums and reporting lines.
• Knowledge of IT governance, ITGC, GRC, data governance and information security.
• Experience with vendor contract, service level and performance management; accountability for a delegated budget and a cost model.
• Experience on both sides of a consulting relationship: engagement delivery to clients and management of external consultants as the client.
• Senior stakeholder management across multiple legal entities without direct reporting authority.
• Delivery experience in banking, insurance or a comparable regulated sector, on work subject to risk, compliance, information security and audit review.
• Technical university degree in applied mathematics, computer science, data science, artificial intelligence or engineering.
• Working knowledge of agentic AI concepts: agent architecture, orchestration, tool calling, evaluation methods, runtime observability and production failure modes. Direct production experience with agentic systems is not required.
• Demonstrated ability to acquire a new technical domain from primary sources — standards, vendor documentation and hands-on testing — and convert it into decisions and written standards.
• Ability to work inside the delivery scope directly: review designs against the architecture, test delivered functionality, and verify workflow behaviour before sign-off.
• Professional working proficiency in English, Russian and Azerbaijani (all three required).
Preferred:
• Postgraduate qualification in a quantitative, data, IT management, transformation, governance or business discipline.
• Project or programme management certification (PMP, PRINCE2, MSP or equivalent).
Skills Required
- Proven experience delivering complex programmes from initial scoping through production deployment
- Proven proficiency delivering complex projects across multiple companies and stakeholder groups in parallel
- Experience defining and implementing governance frameworks in operating entities
- Knowledge of IT governance, ITGC, GRC, data governance, and information security
- Experience with vendor contracts, service levels, performance management, delegated budgets, and cost models
- Experience both delivering consulting engagements and managing external consultants as a client
- Senior stakeholder management across multiple legal entities without direct reporting authority
- Delivery experience in banking, insurance, or a comparable regulated sector
- Technical university degree in applied mathematics, computer science, data science, artificial intelligence, or engineering
- Working knowledge of agentic AI concepts, including architecture, orchestration, tool calling, evaluation, observability, and production failure modes
- Ability to learn technical domains from standards, vendor documentation, and hands-on testing and convert findings into decisions and written standards
- Ability to review architecture and designs, test delivered functionality, and verify workflow behavior before sign-off
- Professional working proficiency in English, Russian, and Azerbaijani
- Postgraduate qualification in a quantitative, data, IT management, transformation, governance, or business discipline
- Project or programme management certification such as PMP, PRINCE2, or MSP
What We Do
PASHA Holding is an Azerbaijani investment company and conglomerate that invests in various sectors including banking, insurance, construction, information technology, property development, and tourism through its subsidiaries.
