Senior Consultant - Advisory

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. 

Client-facing seasoned technology consultant who leads day-to-day delivery of one or more workstreams while operating as a credible, independent advisor to client executives and senior, C-suite stakeholders 

 Supports onsite, hands-on client engagement management by running the engagement projects or workstreams.  Guides day-to-day work efforts for one or more workstreams and coordinates with other workstream leaders to ensure a comprehensive solution.  Primary troubleshooter for daily project issue and risks.  They generate proposals with the team, ensuring appropriate solutions to problems, and implement decisions on the way forward by acting as liaisons between the client and the delivery team.  

Focused primarily on successful delivery but utilizes their position to identify client needs and relationships and good will with the client.  Senior Consultants keep in close contact with clients throughout the duration of the project as part of their official duties.  

Senior Consultants require approval from their management prior to making any significant change to a given program.  

Responsibilities

Client Delivery: 

• Facilitate sections of strategy, roadmap, design, and planning workshops 

• Ensure that customer expectations are appropriately set and managed 

• Lead technical project teams in the delivery of consulting service offerings 

• Drive and manage the objectives, requirements gathering, project tasks/milestone, project status, dependencies, and timelines, to ensure engagements are delivered successfully and on time while meeting the business objectives 

• Breaks down the problem into manageable segments, identifies the factors that affect the problem and decides how to approach the project 

• Creation and editing on project deliverables 

• Presentation of deliverables to client executive management 

• Define outcome-based success measures for assigned workstreams and track them alongside traditional delivery metrics such as scope, schedule, and budget 

Business Development: 

• Support business development pursuits through client discovery meetings that help qualify opportunities and allow the ideation of a strawman proposal 

• Identify follow-on /expansion opportunities, co-author points of view and market-facing content, and represent AHEAD’s offerings with the same rigor and consistency they bring to client delivery. 

• On occasion, represent service offerings during the sales cycle, including project scoping, proposal development, and presenting proposals to clients 

• Build strong senior client relationships that go beyond the current engagement, including beginning to develop C-suite relationships, and facilitate to drive consensus and action — including addressing difficult client conversations and engaging senior stakeholders to reach meaningful outcomes 

• Assess a client’s current technology footprint to identify and prioritize value-creation opportunities that inform the broader business case. 

• Build and maintain basic business-case components (cost/benefit, ROI/TCO inputs) that connect delivery outcomes to the client’s commercial and strategic priorities 

Practice Development & Thought Leadership: 

• Participate in the development and enhancement of AHEAD Advisory services offerings, including consulting offerings and deployment services 

• Technology thought leader and evangelist 

• Maintain a broad knowledge and understanding of the current and anticipated future state of the IT marketplace including IT trends, technologies, and standards 

• Contribute analytical content and a client-tested point of view to at least one published thought-leadership asset (point of view, white paper, or webinar) per year 

• Strong understanding of digital transformation, cloud platforms, and enterprise technology strategy, sufficient to advise clients credibly on direction and trade-offs 

• Mentor to team members 

Qualifications

• Minimum 8 to 12  years of experience as a senior information technology leader, including at least six years of executive technology consulting experience. 

• Graduate degree in Engineering, Computer Science, Mathematics, or a related discipline; MBA is a plus. 

• Ability to break down complex, ambiguous problems into structured, actionable workstreams 

• Demonstrated experience as a technology change agent, leading teams through complex technology-driven initiatives. 

• Working knowledge of proposal development and the consulting sales cycle, sufficient to contribute credibly to pursuits 

• Client relationship management, including setting and managing expectations and serving as a credible, trusted advisor to client executive and C-suite stakeholders. 

• Demonstrated business acumen, with the ability to understand client industries, operating models, and strategic priorities. 

• Executive presence and polished presentation skills, with the ability to present deliverables directly to client executive management. 

• Excellent verbal and written communication skills, with strong interpersonal and active-listening ability across diverse personalities and audiences 

• Excellent interpersonal skills, good listener, ability to connect with different personalities 

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.   India Employment Benefits include:  Comprehensive health insurance coverage for employees, with options to extend coverage to dependents Paid time off and company holidays, along with additional leave benefits as per policy Flexible work arrangements, supporting work-life balance Learning and development opportunities to support continuous growth and upskilling Employee wellness initiatives and programs focused on physical and mental well-being Retirement and statutory benefits in line with India regulations Inclusive and people-first culture, with a strong focus on collaboration and ownership