Associate Vice President

Perficient is building an AI-First Marketing & Engagement practice from scratch—one designed around the premise that agentic AI, intelligent automation, and model-driven personalization are fundamentally changing how enterprise marketing technology gets designed, delivered, and operated. This is the technical strategy lead for our largest OEM client relationship: a major enterprise account spanning marketing technology, customer experience, and digital platform work across multiple business units, workstreams, and partner co-delivery motions.

Reporting to the VP, you’ll own the architecture vision, the solution roadmap, and the commercial growth strategy for the account. The role is part Solutions Architect, part Technical Account Strategist, part Practice Builder - you’ll be the senior technical voice the client’s IT leadership, marketing technology teams, and business stakeholders turn to when they need to understand what’s possible, what’s smart, and what to build next - including how AI reshapes the answer to each of those questions.

This is an AVP-level role for someone who has shaped the multi-year technology direction of a major account, influenced seven-figure-plus engagements, and operated at the level where their recommendations directly affect a client’s investment decisions. The practice is being built from scratch, the playbook doesn’t exist yet, and the person in this seat will define what AI-first technical strategy looks like at Perficient, on this account and beyond it.

Responsibilities

In This Role, You Will

• Own end-to-end technical strategy, solution architecture, and commercial growth for a flagship enterprise account: designing solutions that integrate platform, data, and AI capability from the start, not as separate layers.

• Operate as a trusted technical partner to CIOs, CTOs, IT directors, and marketing technology leaders: helping them see how agentic systems and AI-native architecture change what’s possible for their business and then building the path to get there.

• Combine hands-on solution design with consultative strategy, account growth, and organizational influence: shaping not just what we deliver on this account, but how the broader practice thinks about technical strategy and AI-first delivery.

How You’ll Make a Difference

Shape and scope client engagements

• Partner with the client’s IT directors, enterprise architects, marketing technology leaders, and business stakeholders to define engagement scope, success criteria, and solution direction, with an explicit eye toward where AI changes the scope of what’s worth building.

• Lead technical discovery and design sessions that go beyond mapping current-state pain points to existing platforms. The question isn’t just “what system do you need?” - it’s “what does your operation look like when agentic automation, model-driven personalization, and intelligent orchestration are part of the architecture?”

• Identify risks early, clarify technical and organizational dependencies, and ensure alignment between client expectations and Perficient’s delivery capabilities, including realistic assessment of where AI is production-ready and where it isn’t.

• Navigate the OEM relationship dynamics: co-delivery with the client’s internal teams, alignment with their platform and partner ecosystem, and the ability to build on and through their technology, not just alongside it.

Lead end-to-end technical strategy and solution design

• Own the architecture vision across concurrent engagements, designing for the integration of martech platforms (Adobe, Sitecore, Optimizely), CX systems, data and personalization infrastructure (CDPs, decisioning engines), AI capability, and enterprise integration architecture as a coherent whole, not as separate tracks.

• Design and present solution architectures for platform implementations and migrations, system integrations, data unification and personalization, and AI-driven automation. Every architecture should answer the question: where does intelligence live in this system, and how does it improve over time?

• Evaluate and recommend across Perficient’s partner ecosystem - and beyond it - based on what’s right for the problem. You know when Salesforce is the answer, when Sitecore is the answer, when an agentic workflow is the answer, and when the answer hasn’t been built yet.

• Pressure-test solution designs before they reach a statement of work. Ensure what your teams propose will hold up at scale, integrate cleanly with the client’s existing systems of record, and won’t create technical debt that erodes trust eighteen months later.

Embed AI-native capability into every engagement

• Design solutions with the assumption that agentic systems, intelligent automation, and modern AI architectures are the starting point, not an enhancement bolted on after the fact.

• Identify concrete AI applications within the client’s environment: where content generation and personalization move from rules-based to model-driven, where agentic orchestration automates complex marketing operations workflows, where retrieval-augmented generation improves search and self-service, and where predictive models change how the client allocates spend and resources.

• Scope AI capability as part of the core architecture from the start - integrated into platform, data, and integration work - not as a follow-on conversation or separate initiative.

• Help clients build the business case for AI investment by connecting technical capability to operational outcomes: cost reduction, speed to market, personalization at scale, and the shift from manual campaign execution to automated, insight-driven engagement.

Drive account growth and commercial strategy

• Co-own the commercial trajectory of the account alongside account leadership. You’re not supporting the growth plan; you’re shaping it, with your technical strategy and solution vision as the primary engine.

• Identify new opportunities, shape proposals, and build the technical and commercial case for expanded work, including entirely new categories of engagement that AI makes possible for the first time.

• Understand the client’s business pressures, organizational dynamics, and technology roadmap well enough to bring recommendations forward before they become formal requests. AI is expanding what’s proposable - you should be the person who sees that first.

• Quantify and communicate the value of your work: build reporting frameworks and business cases that translate technical outcomes into terms that resonate with CFOs and CMOs: operational efficiency, time to market, cost of ownership, revenue impact.

• Think in terms of client outcomes, not hours and scope. Perficient’s AI-first model is built around outcomes-based delivery: you’ll help define what that looks like commercially and architecturally for this account.

Protect delivery quality, elevate the team, and build the practice

• Stay connected through delivery to protect design intent and client trust. Work with Perficient’s delivery leads and engineering teams to ensure what gets proposed is what gets built.

• Build the repeatable delivery patterns for AI-integrated engagements: how we scope AI capability, how we test and validate it, how we measure outcomes, and how we hand off to client teams for ongoing operation.

• Mentor and elevate junior architects and delivery leads. Share learnings from this account, raise the technical bar across the practice, and turn your approaches into frameworks the broader team can use.

• Carry your technical point of view beyond this account: inform how Perficient approaches other large enterprise relationships, contribute to proposals and solution reviews on adjacent accounts, and shape the practice’s go-to-market positioning.

Qualifications

Who You Are

• 10+ years in solutions architecture, technical strategy, technical consulting, or engineering leadership: working directly with enterprise clients on complex, multi-workstream technology engagements.

• 5+ years owning the technical relationship with senior client stakeholders (CTO, CIO, CDO, VP-level and their direct reports) within large accounts: not supporting it, owning it.

• Track record of shaping the multi-year technology direction of a major account and directly influencing seven-figure-plus engagements through the quality of your technical strategy and solution vision.

• Proven ability to grow enterprise accounts through technical strategy and solution expansion: not through sales motions, but by seeing what the client needs before they ask for it and building the case to go after it.

• Experience inside a consulting, systems integration, or professional services environment. You understand utilization, scoping, commercial models, and how to design solutions that are right for the client and deliverable by your teams.

• You’ve already been working at the intersection of traditional enterprise technology and AI, whether that means architecting systems that incorporate AI components, advising clients on where AI fits their roadmap, or building delivery approaches for AI-integrated solutions. This isn’t your first conversation about what’s real and what’s hype.

Technical & Domain Skills

• Working understanding of AI and agentic system concepts: you know the difference between a rules-based automation and an LLM-powered agent, understand retrieval-augmented generation and orchestration patterns, and can evaluate where AI adds real value versus where it adds complexity. You don’t need to build models, but you need to architect around them and explain them to a CTO.

• Deep hands-on background in enterprise solution design: cloud platforms, distributed systems, SaaS, API and integration architecture (REST, webhooks, event-driven patterns), and modern data infrastructure.

• Fluency across the marketing technology and CX landscape: content management systems, digital experience platforms, personalization engines, CDPs, marketing automation, and the integration patterns that connect them to enterprise systems of record.

• Experience managing or influencing delivery teams to ensure solution quality, even without direct reporting lines. You know how to keep design intent intact from proposal through production.

Consultative & Communication Skills

• Strong communication range: you can present a solution vision to a C-suite audience and hand the same architecture to an engineering team with the specificity they need to build against it. You can explain what an agentic system does - and what it doesn’t do - to a non-technical CMO without losing credibility with their CTO.

• A soft touch with senior client stakeholders: you know how to push toward better decisions while making the client feel like they got there themselves. Executive presence without the performance.

• Able to translate ambiguous client needs into clear implementation plans and drive execution against timelines without losing the thread of strategic intent.

Working Style

• Comfort operating in ambiguity: you default to action and recommendation rather than waiting for a fully defined brief.

• High ownership mentality: you track your own commitments, maintain operational rigor, and don’t require management oversight to keep work moving forward.

• Builder’s mindset: you solve the problem in front of you deeply, then build the processes, templates, and frameworks that make it repeatable for the next engagement.

Nice to Have

• Experience in financial services, healthcare, automotive, or retail at the enterprise level.

• Hands-on experience building with or around LLMs, agentic orchestration frameworks (LangChain, custom agent pipelines), or AI-native architecture design in a consulting or delivery context.

• Prior experience in a strategic-account or named-account model where you were the primary technical leader for a single large client relationship.

• Experience contributing to practice development: methodology creation, team hiring, or capability building inside a growing organization.

• Familiarity with outcomes-based or value-based commercial models in a professional services context.

 

Perficient, Inc. proudly provides equal employment opportunities (EEO) to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, national origin, age, disability, genetic information, marital status, amnesty, or status as a protected veteran in accordance with applicable federal, state and local laws. Perficient, Inc. complies with applicable state and local laws governing nondiscrimination in employment in every location in which the company has facilities. This policy applies to all terms and conditions of employment, including, but not limited to, hiring, placement, promotion, termination, layoff, recall, transfer, leaves of absence, compensation, and training. Perficient, Inc. expressly prohibits any form of unlawful employee harassment based on race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, national origin, age, genetic information, disability, or covered veterans. Improper interference with the ability of Perficient, Inc. employees to perform their expected job duties is absolutely not tolerated.​

 

Disability Accommodations: Perficient is committed to providing a barrier-free employment process with reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities and disabled veterans in our job application procedures. If you need assistance or accommodation due to a disability, please contact us.​

 

Applications will be accepted until the position is filled or the posting is removed.​

 

The salary range for this position takes into consideration a variety of factors, including but not limited to skill sets, level of experience, applicable office location, training, licensure and certifications, and other business and organizational needs. The new hire salary range displays the minimum and maximum salary targets for this position across all US locations, and the range has not been adjusted for any specific state differentials. It is not typical for a candidate to be hired at or near the top of the range for their role, and compensation decisions are dependent on the unique facts and circumstances regarding each candidate. A reasonable estimate of the current salary range for this position is $150,000 to $250,000. Please note that the salary range posted reflects the base salary only and does not include benefits or any potential variable compensation programs. Information regarding the benefits available for this position are in our benefits overview

 

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About UsPerficient is the global AI and technology consulting firm disrupting the traditional consulting model. Powered by our 7,000+ advisors, engineers, and designers, Perficient implements AI-first solutions that break conventions and deliver outcomes that matter. Proudly serving clients that represent the world’s most innovative brands, and in collaboration with our powerful technology partner ecosystem, we bring deep industry expertise and data-driven design to redefine how businesses run and succeed. Perficient is different. For real. Learn more at perficient.com.