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Provides senior technical leadership across complex data, analytics, AI, cloud, governance, and digital transformation engagements. Responsibilities include solution architecture, technical governance, engineering oversight, risk mitigation, technical discovery, executive presentations, mentoring, practice development, innovation, and business development. The role guides engineering teams, approves designs and deliverables, develops technical strategies, and ensures scalable, secure, maintainable solutions.
AHEAD builds platforms for digital business. By weaving together advances in cloud infrastructure, automation and analytics, and software delivery, we help enterprises deliver on the promise of digital transformation.
At AHEAD, we prioritize creating a culture of belonging, where all perspectives and voices are represented, valued, respected, and heard. We create spaces to empower everyone to speak up, make change, and drive the culture at AHEAD.
We are an equal opportunity employer, and do not discriminate based on an individual's race, national origin, color, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, religion, age, disability, marital status, or any other protected characteristic under applicable law, whether actual or perceived.
We embrace all candidates that will contribute to the diversification and enrichment of ideas and perspectives at AHEAD.
The Principal Technical Consultant is the senior technical leader responsible for architectural leadership, technical oversight, solution governance, and engineering direction across complex client engagements. Working closely with the Principal Consultant (Engagement Lead), this role ensures solutions are strategically aligned, architecturally sound, scalable, secure, and successfully delivered.
Principal Technical Consultants provide leadership across data, analytics, AI, cloud, governance, and modern data platform initiatives by shaping solution strategy, coaching engineering teams, resolving complex technical challenges, and ensuring delivery quality throughout the engagement lifecycle. While they remain hands-on when appropriate, their primary responsibility is enabling delivery teams through technical leadership, architectural governance, engineering excellence, risk management, and consultative guidance rather than serving as the primary individual contributor.
Beyond client delivery, Principal Technical Consultants strengthen the Data Practice by developing technical talent, advancing delivery methodologies, improving reusable assets, driving innovation, supporting business development, and contributing to the long-term growth of AHEAD’s technical capabilities.
Roles & Responsibilities
- Serve as the senior technical leader across complex client engagements, providing architectural direction and technical oversight throughout the delivery lifecycle.
- Partner with the Principal Consultant and Project Manager to align technical execution with business objectives, delivery plans, and client expectations.
- Establish technical strategy, solution architecture, integration approaches, implementation standards, and engineering best practices.
- Review and approve technical designs, architectures, code quality, data models, integrations, and engineering deliverables.
- Guide engineering teams through complex technical challenges while ensuring consistency across multiple workstreams.
- Proactively identify technical risks, architectural concerns, performance issues, and implementation challenges, and develop mitigation strategies before they affect delivery.
- Act as the primary technical escalation point for delivery teams, providing guidance on complex issues and critical client situations.
- Ensure solutions are scalable, secure, maintainable, operationally supportable, and aligned with enterprise architecture standards.
- Lead technical workshops, architecture reviews, design sessions, proof of concept efforts, and executive technical presentations.
- Maintain accountability for technical quality, engineering excellence, and successful technical outcomes.
- Partner with Client Directors, Principal Consultants, and Solution Architects during discovery, assessments, and solution development.
- Lead technical discovery workshops and architecture assessments that shape client transformation strategies.
- Develop solution architectures, technical approaches, estimates, implementation strategies, and technical proposals.
- Communicate technical concepts effectively to executive, business, and technical audiences.
- Identify opportunities to expand client engagements through additional capabilities, modern architectures, and emerging technologies.
- Ensure proposed solutions balance business value, technical feasibility, delivery complexity, cost, and long-term maintainability.
- Drive the evolution of technical standards, reference architectures, engineering frameworks, reusable accelerators, and delivery best practices.
- Serve as a recognized technical leader across modern data platforms, cloud technologies, AI, governance, and analytics.
- Mentor and coach Technical Consultants, Senior Technical Consultants, and Solution Architects through technical reviews, architecture guidance, and career development.
- Support recruiting, interviewing, onboarding, certification planning, technical enablement, and capability development.
- Lead innovation initiatives, evaluate emerging technologies, and contribute to technical thought leadership across the Data Practice.
- Promote engineering excellence, collaboration, knowledge sharing, and continuous improvement across the organization.
Technical Leadership and Solution Delivery
Solution Strategy and Business Development
Technical Leadership and Practice Growth
Expectations
- Demonstrate end-to-end ownership for technical delivery, architecture quality, engineering standards, and technical outcomes.
- Establish technical direction, governance, priorities, and decision frameworks across engineering teams.
- Make sound architectural decisions while balancing technical risk, delivery constraints, business priorities, and long-term maintainability.
- Coach technical leaders, develop engineering talent, and foster a culture of accountability and technical excellence.
- Understand client business objectives and translate them into scalable technical solutions.
- Apply structured thinking and consultative problem solving when evaluating technical alternatives and making architectural recommendations.
- Clearly communicate technical tradeoffs, risks, assumptions, and recommendations to executive and technical stakeholders.
- Balance business outcomes with technical quality, delivery timelines, operational supportability, and total cost of ownership.
- Serve as the technical authority for complex architectures, integrations, cloud platforms, data engineering, AI, governance, and modern data ecosystems.
- Ensure solutions are scalable, secure, maintainable, performant, and aligned with enterprise standards.
- Drive consistency through architecture governance, design reviews, code reviews, and engineering best practices.
- Continuously improve delivery quality by advancing reusable frameworks, standards, automation, and technical accelerators.
- Build trusted relationships with client technology leaders through credibility, technical expertise, and consultative leadership.
- Facilitate technical decision-making across engineering teams, architects, and executive stakeholders.
- Resolve complex technical conflicts while building consensus across multiple teams.
- Represent AHEAD with professionalism, executive presence, and technical credibility.
- Strengthen technical capabilities through mentoring, innovation, reusable assets, technical standards, and continuous improvement.
- Develop future technical leaders and foster a culture of engineering excellence and collaboration.
- Contribute to business development, technical strategy, solution innovation, and practice growth initiatives.
Principal Technical Consultants are expected to consistently demonstrate technical leadership, architectural excellence, consulting effectiveness, business awareness, and accountability while enabling successful delivery across complex client engagements.
Leadership and Ownership
Business and Consulting Acumen
Technical Excellence
Client and Technical Relationships
Practice Leadership
Qualifications
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, Mathematics, Data Science, or a related technical discipline.
- Typically 12–15+ years of experience designing and delivering enterprise data, analytics, AI, cloud, or digital transformation solutions.
- Minimum seven years of consulting or professional services experience leading technical delivery for complex enterprise engagements.
- Demonstrated success as a Technical Lead, Solution Architect, Principal Architect, or senior engineering leader on large-scale transformation initiatives.
- Deep expertise in modern data platforms, cloud ecosystems, data engineering, enterprise architecture, AI, analytics, governance, integration, and distributed systems.
- Experience leading architecture reviews, technical governance, engineering standards, and enterprise solution design.
- Strong communication, facilitation, consulting, mentoring, and stakeholder management skills, with the ability to influence executive and technical audiences.
- Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field.
- Professional certifications in Snowflake, Databricks, Microsoft Fabric, Azure, AWS, Google Cloud Platform, Kubernetes, or other enterprise technologies.
- Experience leading enterprise modernization, AI adoption, cloud migration, data platform transformation, or enterprise architecture initiatives.
- Experience developing technical offerings, reference architectures, engineering frameworks, reusable IP, or practice enablement assets.
Required
Preferred
The compensation range indicated in this posting reflects the On-Target Earnings (“OTE”) for this role, which includes a base salary and any applicable target bonus amount. This OTE range may vary based on the candidate’s relevant experience, qualifications, and geographic location.
Why AHEAD:
Through our daily work and internal groups like Moving Women AHEAD and RISE AHEAD, we value and benefit from diversity of people, ideas, experience, and everything in between.
We fuel growth by stacking our office with top-notch technologies in a multi-million-dollar lab, by encouraging cross department training and development, sponsoring certifications and credentials for continued learning.
USA Employment Benefits include:
- Medical, Dental, and Vision Insurance
- 401(k)
- Paid company holidays
- Paid time off
- Paid parental and caregiver leave
- Plus more! See benefits https://www.aheadbenefits.com/ for additional details.
Use of AI:
We may use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support parts of the hiring process, such as reviewing applications, analyzing resumes, assessing responses, or to capture recordings and create transcriptions or summaries during interviews. These tools assist our recruitment team but do not replace human judgment. Final hiring decisions are ultimately made by humans.
If you would like more information about how your data is processed, please refer to the Candidate Privacy Notice or contact us at [email protected].
You may opt-out of the review or analysis of your application and resume by AI tools by using the General Application. Please include the role you wish to apply for in the Additional Information field. You may also choose to opt-out of recording and transcription at any time, including after joining an interview. Candidates will not be penalized for choosing to opt-out.
AHEAD Chicago, Illinois, USA Office
401 N Michigan Ave, Chicago, IL, United States, 60611
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