Engagement Lead

Referrals Only; City of Melbourne; On-site; AUD 180,000 - 260,000; Full time

Job summary

Thoughtworks in Melbourne is seeking an experienced leader to drive AI-native advisory engagements. You will structure engagements, orchestrate AI-enabled delivery, and translate strategy into tangible outcomes with senior client stakeholders.

You will lead multi-disciplinary teams, ensure high-quality outputs, and drive measurable business impact, leveraging AI tools to accelerate analysis and delivery.

Qualifications

• 8–15 years of experience in consulting, product, and/or technology delivery roles.
• Proven Leadership as Engagement Manager, Project Leader, or similar.
• Ability to lead multi-disciplinary teams in highly ambiguous environments.
• Think critically with hypotheses, trade-offs, and business outcomes.
• Execution-focused with accountability and speed to delivery.
• Comfort with AI tools to accelerate analysis and delivery.

Responsibilities

• End-to-End Leadership: structure, lead, and maintain momentum of engagement.
• High-Quality Delivery: ensure outputs are accurate, relevant and decision-ready.
• Strategic Alignment: translate goals into actionable workstreams and milestones.
• Narrative Integration: connect workstreams into a coherent narrative.
• Operational Definition: define ways of working across teams, AI agents, and clients.
• Complex Problem Solving: break down ambiguity into actionable tasks.
• Outcome-Driven Execution: ensure engagement delivers measurable business impact.
• Asset & Workflow Optimization: capture and scale repeatable approaches.
• Knowledge Contribution: contribute to engagement models and AI workflows.
• Quality Assurance: review deliverables for business relevance and alignment.

Skills

AI Delivery Leadership

Client Delivery Leadership

Strategic Thinking

Ambiguity Management

Stakeholder Management

Clear Communication

AI Fluency

Systems Thinking

Job description

At Thoughtworks, we deliver technology strategies that survive execution. The recently established Tech Advisory Service Line engages with C-suite stakeholders to deliver AI-native business aligned technology strategies. These enable executives to execute that business critical initiatives with strategic clarity and deliver value to the business and its customers.

In this role, you will empower clients to make high-stakes technology decisions with confidence and speed, aligning modernization and engineering investments with measurable business outcomes to turn ambitious goals into rapid action.

In short, you will lead the delivery of AI-native advisory engagements—structuring work, orchestrating AI and teams, and ensuring strategy turns into real outcomes.

Job responsibilities

• End-to-End Leadership: You are responsible for structuring, leading, and maintaining the momentum, focus, and clarity of the entire engagement.
• High-Quality Delivery: You will ensure all outputs are accurate, relevant, logically consistent, technically feasible, and immediately decision-ready for the business.
• Strategic Alignment: You will translate the client's high-level goals into clear, actionable workstreams, milestones, and final outputs.
• Narrative Integration: You will connect the dots across various workstreams to ensure a single, coherent narrative and solution.
• Operational Definition: You will define the ways of working and collaboration models across team members, AI agents, and client stakeholders.
• Complex Problem Solving: You will break down highly ambiguous, complex problems into structured, actionable tasks.
• Outcome-Driven Execution: You will drive the "last mile" from initial idea to final implementation, ensuring the engagement delivers measurable business impact rather than just recommendations.
• Asset & Workflow Optimization: You have the autonomy to capture, refine, and scale repeatable approaches, workflows, and delivery assets.
• Knowledge Contribution: You will actively contribute to the organization's growing library of engagement models, AI workflows, and decision frameworks.
• Quality Assurance: You will serve as the final line of defense, reviewing all deliverables for business relevance and strategic alignment throughout the engagement lifecycle.

Job qualifications

Technical Skills

• Experience in orchestrating AI-Native Delivery.
• Experience in designing how AI is used across the engagement: Analysis; Scenario modeling; Code and workflow generation; Documentation.
• Experience in delegating work effectively to AI while maintaining quality and judgment.
• Experience with Client Delivery Leadership: Act as primary counterpart to - CTO / CIO, Program leads and Product/engineering leaders.
• Experience with translating advisory recommendations into practical execution paths.
• Experience with navigating constraints and tradeoffs in real time, identify delivery risks early (technical, organizational, or commercial).
• Experience with ensuring recommendations are grounded in what can actually be delivered.

Professional Skills

• Professional Experience: Requires 8–15 years of experience in consulting, product, and/or technology delivery roles.
• Proven Leadership: Demands a track record as an Engagement Manager, Project Leader, or Product/Engineering leader heading complex, end-to-end initiatives.
• Ambiguity Management: Ability to lead multi-disciplinary teams in highly ambiguous environments and break complex problems down into actionable work.
• Strategic Thinking: Thinks critically in terms of hypotheses, trade-offs, and final business outcomes.
• Execution & Accountability: Drives execution with sharp focus, maintaining a strong balance between rapid pace and high quality.
• Systems Thinking: Deeply understands how business processes, technology, and data interconnect to reason through end-to-end flows and dependencies.
• AI Fluency: Comfortably utilizes AI tools to accelerate analysis, generate outputs, and maximize delivery efficiency.
• AI Critical Thinking: Possesses the judgment to know when to trust AI outputs—and when to validate or question them.
• Stakeholder Management: Works fluidly and effectively across both business and technology stakeholders.
• Clear Communication: Communicates information in a clear, concise, and impactful manner.

What Makes This Role Different

• You are not just managing a team—you are designing how work gets done
• You are not producing deliverables—you are driving outcomes
• You are not competing with AI—you are orchestrating it
• You operate with the responsibility of an EM, but with significantly greater leverage

Learning & Development

There is no one-size-fits-all career path at Thoughtworks: however you want to develop your career is entirely up to you. But we also balance autonomy with the strength of our cultivation culture. This means your career is supported by interactive tools, numerous development programs and teammates who want to help you grow. We see value in helping each other be our best and that extends to empowering our employees in their career journeys.

Responsible Use of AI in Recruitment

At Thoughtworks, we use AI tools to support our recruitment team with administrative tasks such as drafting communications, scheduling interviews and writing job descriptions.

Crucially, our AI tools do not screen, assess, rank or make hiring decisions. Every application is reviewed by our team and all selection decisions are made exclusively by our interviewers and hiring managers.

We are committed to fairness and responsible AI. We actively manage our AI systems by testing, monitoring for biased outcomes and implementing mitigation measures. We hold our third-party vendors to these same high standards through a rigorous governance process. For additional information, please see our full Thoughtworks AI Policy for Recruitment.

About Thoughtworks

Thoughtworks is a dynamic and inclusive community of bright and supportive colleagues who are revolutionizing tech. As a leading technology consultancy, we’re pushing boundaries through our purposeful and impactful work. For 30+ years, we’ve delivered extraordinary impact together with our clients by helping them solve complex business problems with technology as the differentiator. Bring your brilliant expertise and commitment for continuous learning to Thoughtworks. Together, let’s be extraordinary.