Head of AI Product & Architecture Consulting

Job description

We’re hiring a Head of AI Product & Architecture Consulting! **Employment Type: Full-Time/Direct Hire** **Location: Richmond, VA, Atlanta, GA, Washington, DC, New York City & Charlotte, NC Metro Areas** **Location Type: Hybrid - 1-2 days onsite per week - Home Office/Local Ippon office** **About Ippon:** The Ippon story started in 2002 in Paris, France - cue in the accordion. Our founder and CEO Stéphane Nomis used his unique experience as an international Judo champion to create a culture based on the sports values of ambition and excellence. Our USA Headquarters office is located in Richmond, VA, with additional offices in New York, NY, Washington DC, and Atlanta, GA. We are a technology consulting firm that specializes in helping accelerate our client’s digital roadmap in the areas of Product Management, Cloud, DevOps, Data, AI, and Software Engineering. Expanding partnerships is the top priority in our strategy, and we are proud to be a Premier Snowflake Partner and an Advanced AWS Partner. Ippon stands out through its financial services industry expertise, technical excellence, and a distinctive coaching mindset. **About the position:** The Practice Head of AI Product & Architecture will lead Ippon's APA practice, combining deep expertise in software development, product engineering, agile delivery, architecture, and applied AI. This role is responsible for growing a high-performing consulting team, shaping the practice's methods and offerings, and ensuring delivery excellence across complex client engagements. The ideal candidate is a proven leader with strong consulting instincts and a track record of delivering meaningful technology outcomes. They bring deep grounding in modern engineering practices and software craft, alongside hands-on AI experience — applied practically across product development, software delivery, customer experiences, and enterprise operations. ### Roles and Responsibilities: ### Practice Leadership & Team Development - Lead and grow the practice across people, offerings, delivery standards, and market positioning. - Continuously improve consulting methods, delivery playbooks, technical standards, and ways of working in collaboration with Customer Success and Senior Leadership. - Build a strong team culture grounded in software craft, product thinking, architectural discipline, and practical AI adoption — with an emphasis on psychological safety, accountability, and measurable improvement. - Recruit, develop, coach, and retain high-performing consultants, engineers, architects, product leaders, and delivery practitioners. ### Delivery Excellence - Provide senior oversight across client engagements involving software development, product engineering, AI-enabled delivery, modernization, and architecture. - Ensure solutions are maintainable, secure, scalable, and aligned to client outcomes, promoting modern practices such as continuous delivery, test automation, observability, and platform thinking. - Use metrics such as DORA, flow metrics, and business outcome measures to drive evidence-based improvement. - Help clients adopt flexible, sustainable delivery models that balance speed, governance, quality, and business value — coaching cross-functional teams on effective collaboration across product, engineering, architecture, security, and compliance. ### AI Leadership - In collaboration with the CTO, shape APA's approach to applied AI across product engineering, software development, architecture, and delivery transformation. - Help clients identify and pursue practical AI use cases that improve delivery speed, product quality, customer experience, or operational efficiency. - Guide teams in the responsible use of AI-assisted development tools, agentic workflows, and intelligent applications, with clear understanding of associated risks including governance, security, privacy, and regulatory considerations. - Partner with Ippon's data and cloud leaders to connect APA's AI capabilities with strengths in AWS, Snowflake, and data architecture. ### Client and Thought Leadership - Support sales pursuits, proposals, and executive conversations — translating ambiguous client needs into clear engagement strategies, delivery plans, and measurable outcomes. - Act as a trusted advisor to senior client stakeholders at the intersection of product, engineering, architecture, data, cloud, AI, and governance. - Define and package APA offerings across AI-enabled product engineering, software modernization, delivery effectiveness, and engineering excellence. - Drive brand awareness through thought leadership initiatives including events, blogs, white papers, and client success stories. ### Competencies we are looking for: Minimum Qualifications: - 5+ years of consulting experience - 5+ years of experience leading software engineering, product engineering, architecture, or technology consulting teams. - 5+ years of experience building, managing, coaching, and growing high-performing technical teams. - 7+ years of experience and deep understanding of modern software development practices, including software architecture, software craft, DevOps, CI/CD, testing strategies, and cloud-native delivery. - 7+ years of experience with product development and product-oriented ways of working. - Strong working knowledge of agile delivery practices, with the judgment to adapt methods to fit client context rather than applying process mechanically. - Hands-on experience with AI tools, AI-enabled software development, intelligent applications, or applied enterprise AI use cases. - 7+ years of experience in financial services, banking, insurance, capital markets, or related regulated industries - Excellent organizational skills, including the ability to manage people, priorities, offerings, delivery quality, and practice operations simultaneously. - Strong client-facing communication skills, including the ability to engage credibly with executives, product leaders, engineering leaders, architects, and delivery teams. - Experience supporting business development, proposal creation, solution design, or account growth in a consulting environment. - Ability to travel up to 20% of the time Preferred Qualifications: - Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or a related field - Experience leading a consulting practice, capability, center of excellence, or large technology delivery organization. - Experience using DORA metrics, SPACE, flow metrics, or other engineering effectiveness frameworks to improve delivery performance. - Experience with AI-assisted development tools, agentic workflows, LLM-enabled applications, or enterprise AI governance. - Familiarity with AWS, Snowflake, modern data platforms, and cloud-native architecture. - Experience with modernization programs, legacy system transformation, platform engineering, or large-scale digital product delivery. - Experience creating market-facing offerings, white papers, executive presentations, workshops, and assessment frameworks. - Understanding of regulatory requirements and compliance standards (e.g., GDPR, HIPAA) within the Financial Services and Insurance industries. - Knowledge of IT strategy and management - Demonstrated experience of presenting talks at conferences, publishing white papers, and public speaking. ### What we offer: - Competitive salary – Great starting salaries for well qualified candidates - Generous Paid Time Off policy - Ippon offers flexible time off to help you be your best - Health, dental, and vision insurance – We are dedicated to helping our employees live healthier lives through comprehensive health programs - 401k with company match - Ippon offers an industry leading 401(k) matching plan - Family Leave - We support the importance of family and offer maternity, paternity and family medical leave plans - The chance to work in a startup-esque environment with a fun, smart, and healthy work environment, focused on our values, teamwork, and 5406 custom Slack emojis