Head of Intelligence

This is us At Avenga, we believe that human creativity empowers technology that matters. Operating globally, our 6000+ specialists provide a full spectrum of services, including business and tech advisory, enterprise solutions, CX, UX and Ul design, managed services, product development, and software development.

This is the job

We’re growing an AI-native engineering practice inside an established European technology services company. The positioning, architecture framework, and commercial model are in place. We now need the leader who structures and scales the practice, turning the foundation into a strong revenue-generating practice.

If that sounds like running a startup inside a big services company — it is. That’s exactly what this is.

You’ll sit on the CTO Office leadership team and own the Intelligence pillar end to end.

In your first six months, you’ll be hands-on: leading the delivery of our first lighthouse engagements, recruiting the team, and converting existing client relationships into AI pipeline.

In the twelve months that follow, you’ll scale: repeatable delivery, published IP, a maturing partner ecosystem, and a practice that stands on its own.

The strategy is defined, but it isn’t sealed. You’ll inherit a fully articulated foundation — market positioning, layered reference architecture, workshop toolkit, technology radar, proposition cards, sales enablement — and you’ll pressure-test it against real client engagements and real internal debate.

We want someone who can execute against the plan and sharpen it as it meets the market.

This is you

Non-negotiable

• You’ve led an AI, ML, or data science team in a services or consulting context. You understand the economics of a client-facing practice: utilisation, pre-sales, pricing, proposition-to-delivery handover.

• You can personally lead delivery. In the first half of the year you’ll be the lead architect on engagements — writing architecture documents, reviewing code, and presenting to client CTOs. Management-only operators will struggle here.

• You have deep, current technical credibility across the modern AI stack: frontier LLMs, RAG architectures, agent frameworks, MLOps, modern data platforms, and vector databases. You stay close enough to the tooling to make sharp build-versus-buy calls.

• You understand enterprise architecture and integration. AI systems that don’t connect to SAP, ServiceNow, Salesforce and the rest of the enterprise estate don’t deliver value. You’ve shipped AI solutions wired into real enterprise backends, not just notebooks and demos.

• You can stand in front of a client CTO and articulate why an architecture decision matters. You’re the technical authority that gives clients confidence to commit.

Strong preferences

• EU-based or willing to be. The AI Governance proposition rests on European regulatory credibility. Sofia, London, Berlin, or remote-with-EU-travel all work.

• Regulatory fluency. Working familiarity with the EU AI Act, GDPR, or regulated-industry AI deployment (financial services, pharma, healthcare).

• Scaling track record. You’ve grown a team from small (<10) to mid-size (20–50). You know the difference between founding (you do everything) and scaling (you build the systems so others can deliver).

• Services-business instinct. You’ve worked in or alongside a staff augmentation business and understand the commercial tension between selling hours and selling outcomes. You know how to protect a high-value practice from commoditisation pressure.

• Public profile. Published articles, talks, open-source contributions, a visible LinkedIn presence. This is also a brand role.

This probably isn’t the right fit if

• You’re primarily a researcher or data scientist who hasn’t shipped client-facing production systems.

• You need the strategy fully settled before you start — there’s clarity of direction, but the market will reshape the plan, and you’ll be part of that reshaping.

• You need a team of fifty and a large budget before you can move. You’ll have a small founding team and a disciplined investment envelope in year one.

What you'll have

• A direct reporting line to the Group CTO, a seat on the CTO Office leadership team, and visibility to the CEO and board.

• A fully articulated strategy and asset library: positioning, layered reference architecture, workshop toolkit, technology radar, proposition cards, competitive positioning, sales enablement.

• An established European client base to sell into — you’re converting existing relationships, not cold outreach.

• The Avenga AI Centre of Excellence as your primary delivery hub: EU-based, within EU AI Act jurisdiction, with access to a strong engineering talent pool.

• A partnership roster in progress with hyperscalers, frontier model providers, and data platform vendors — ready for you to take from paper to productive.

• Autonomy to hire, choose tools, design the practice, and set the culture — within an investment envelope agreed with the CFO.

Why this role

You’ll take a front-row seat in Avenga’s journey as an AI-native engineering business. The role sits close to where strategic decisions are made, with authorship over the direction of that journey — backed by the clients, engineering depth, and delivery reach of an established European technology business.

It’s a role that grows as you grow it.

Build a reputation, not just a team.