Director - AI/ML

• Own and drive the design and delivery of production-grade agentic AI/ML solutions and platforms for global enterprise clients. • Translate complex business requirements into opinionated, prescriptive architectures and implementation plans that leverage modern agentic stacks, LLMs, and cloud-native AI/ML platforms. • Lead Zero-to-One delivery for the India Agentic Delivery Center, taking engagements from initial discovery through to production-ready agents and closed-loop intelligence workflows. • Ensure engagements are delivered on time, within scope, and with measurable business value for clients, including under fixed-price and outcome-based commercial models. • Communicate the business value, ROI, and risks of agentic solutions to both technical and non-technical stakeholders, including executive and C-level audiences. • Collaborate with cross-functional partners including global leadership, forward-deployed US-based engineers, data engineering, analytics, partner, and marketing teams to deliver successful client engagements. • Partner with the Global Leadership team to prioritize agentic solutions and accelerators based on market demand, key technology stacks (e.g., Snowflake, AWS), and phData's strategic roadmap. • Provide technical and strategic leadership during client workshops, discovery sessions, architecture reviews, and delivery governance forums. • Serve as the primary point of escalation for India-based delivery, resolving technical issues, client misalignments, and performance concerns with urgency and ownership. • Ensure high quality in deliverables through engineering best practices, including robust SDLC processes, code reviews, documentation, testing, and production-readiness standards. • Architect and stand up the foundational India Agentic Delivery Center, designing delivery models, operating mechanisms, and integrations with the broader consulting organization. • Recruit, onboard, and develop an elite team of architects and engineers, setting a high technical bar and ensuring consistent performance management and calibration. • Drive the development of reusable accelerators, modular agentic codebases, and solution templates that can be applied across clients and industries. • Contribute to internal initiatives such as IP development, capability management, partner engagement, and thought leadership aligned to AI/ML and agentic architectures. • Represent phData with professionalism in all interactions, communicating clearly with both technical and non-technical stakeholders and acting as the face of the India agentic team with clients. • Act as a trusted advisor to senior client stakeholders and C-suite executives, shaping AI/ML and agentic roadmaps, influencing strategic decisions, and guiding long-term transformation initiatives. • Mentor and coach architects and engineers, fostering a culture of extreme ownership, high performance, continuous learning, and feedback. • Help define and refine global practice standards, technical bars, and delivery frameworks for agentic AI/ML solutions, ensuring alignment across regions. • Drive strategic growth of the Agentic Delivery Center by identifying new opportunities, informing go-to-market strategies, and partnering with alliances and marketing on field-facing assets. 🎯 Requirements • 14-18 years of experience in the IT industry, preferably within IT services or consulting organizations. • 8+ years as a hands-on architect with a proven track record of designing and implementing production-grade AI/ML platforms and solutions. • 5+ years of leadership experience in a Zero-to-One environment, building and scaling high-performing engineering teams from the ground up. • 3+ years of consulting leadership experience, including leading projects, maintaining client relationships, and aligning technical solutions to business value. • Demonstrated experience delivering complex technical projects under fixed-price or outcome-based commercial models, with a focus on project margins and delivery efficiency. • Deep technical understanding of Large Language Models (LLMs), agentic architectures, and retrieval frameworks, including building modular solutions and accelerators reusable across clients. • Hands-on experience with LLM orchestration frameworks (e.g., LangChain, LlamaIndex) and the broader agentic stack beyond standard GenAI chat applications. • Deep expertise in cloud-native AI/ML platforms (e.g., AWS SageMaker, Bedrock, GCP Vertex AI, Azure ML, AI Studio, Databricks) and building robust, automated data and ML pipelines. • Proven experience deploying and maintaining machine learning models in production environments with an emphasis on scalability, reliability, monitoring, and lifecycle management. • Demonstrated expertise using agentic AI and assisted development tooling and methodologies to accelerate delivery while ensuring quality and alignment of deliverables. • End-to-end ownership of the Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC), including design, development, testing, deployment, observability, and incident response for AI/ML solutions. • Experience delivering projects for external or internal clients in a professional services or consulting environment. • Ability to break down complex AI/ML and agentic challenges into structured, actionable workstreams and drive them through to successful completion. • Demonstrated experience navigating complex, multi-stakeholder client environments, including US-based enterprises, and influencing senior and C-level stakeholders. • Strong written and verbal communication skills in English, including the ability to clearly articulate technical concepts, trade-offs, and business value. • Proven track record of building, leading, and collaborating with distributed, cross-functional engineering teams across regions. • Demonstrated ability to take extreme ownership of delivery outcomes, manage multiple priorities, and resolve high-pressure escalations with composure and rigor. • Commitment to cultivating a high-performance, feedback-driven culture centered on accountability, continuous improvement, and delivery excellence. • 4-year Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field (or equivalent practical experience).