Senior Managing Consultant - Data & AI (Wayfinders Consulting)

Position Overview

Wayfinders Engagement Consultant – Data & AI Engagement Managers are senior client and delivery leaders responsible for owning complex AI and data engagements from initial framing through sustained value realization. They lead multi-disciplinary teams, serve as the primary point of accountability for clients, and ensure that AI initiatives translate into durable business outcomes. This role combines client leadership, delivery ownership, and commercial accountability, while guiding teams that design, build, and operate AI-first systems in production environments. Engagement Managers are expected to shape how AI is applied to real business problems, manage risk and expectations, and ensure that Wayfinders’ work delivers measurable impact at enterprise scale.

Key Responsibilities

• Own day-to-day client leadership for complex AI and data engagements
• Partner with client business, data, and technology leaders to frame problems and define success metrics
• Translate business objectives into executable AI and data delivery plans and roadmaps
• Manage scope, risks, dependencies, and stakeholder expectations throughout the engagement lifecycle
• Provide hands-on technical leadership across AI and data workstreams without being the primary engineer
• Guide solution design across data pipelines, ML models, LLM-based systems, agents, and orchestration layers
• Validate architectural decisions for scalability, reliability, security, and maintainability
• Drive alignment on when to use rules-based logic, ML, LLMs, or hybrid approaches
• Act as the first escalation point for complex technical, architectural, or delivery challenges
• Lead teams of Managing Consultants, Senior Consultants, and Consultants across multiple workstreams
• Ensure engineering discipline, testing, and MLOps practices are applied consistently
• Oversee deployment, monitoring, and lifecycle management of AI systems in production
• Ensure Responsible AI, data governance, and security standards are upheld
• Team Leadership & Development
• Coach and develop delivery leaders and high-potential team members
• Set clear expectations for technical quality, delivery rigor, and professional growth
• Support staffing, onboarding, and performance management in partnership with leadership
• Practice & Commercial Contribution
• Support opportunity shaping, proposals, and client expansion efforts
• Contribute to development of reusable delivery patterns, playbooks, and accelerators
• Share lessons learned and best practices across the Wayfinders community

Required Skills & Experience

• Experience & Education: 6–10 years of experience in consulting or equivalent industry delivery leadership roles, Bachelor’s degree required; advanced degree preferred
• Technical & Delivery Competency: Strong understanding of modern AI and data systems, including: Cloud-based data platforms and pipelines, ML and advanced analytics solutions, LLM-based systems (prompting, RAG, agents), orchestration, deployment, and monitoring patterns, Ability to assess and guide architectural and tooling decisions without needing to code daily, Experience delivering production AI systems with attention to reliability, drift, and operational risk, Working knowledge of MLOps, Responsible AI, and enterprise data governance
• Literature: Strong client-facing communication and stakeholder management skills, Ability to lead cross-functional teams and manage ambiguity, Structured problem solving with a bias toward action and outcomes, Ability to balance speed, quality, and technical debt