AI & Data Utilities Leader

Accenture; Ottawa; Hybrid; CAD 132,000 - 278,000; Full time

Job summary

Accenture is seeking a Senior Leader in Data & AI for the Utilities sector in Canada. You will guide AI strategy, design scalable data solutions, and lead the delivery of enterprise-scale initiatives across multiple client engagements.

You will own governance, responsible AI, and executive relationships with CIO/CTO/CDAO, while mentoring diverse teams to drive measurable business outcomes. You will influence strategy, develop reusable data/AI capabilities, and contribute to market growth within

Qualifications

• 12+ years of relevant experience in enterprise data platforms and/or AI/ML engineering, including architecture and operationalization.
• Proven track record of building and growing an industry portfolio – multi-$MM originated sales and managed revenue.
• Strong leadership and ability to manage C-suite and board-level executives in large enterprise utility clients.
• Experience leading large, multi-year transformation programs with measurable outcomes.

Responsibilities

• Set direction for AI & Data Utilities: target-state vision, architecture, and roadmap across complex landscapes.
• Lead large-scale client engagements: end-to-end delivery leadership across strategy, design, build, and transition-to-run.
• Operationalize reusable accelerators: reference architectures, reusable pipelines, governance workflows, data product frameworks, MLOps/LLMOps practices.
• Governance & responsible AI leadership: data governance, privacy, security-by-design, and responsible AI embedded into utility capabilities.
• Client & executive stakeholder management: manage CIO/CTO/CDAO relationships and align delivery to business outcomes.
• People leadership & talent development: lead multi-disciplinary teams and ensure delivery rigor and continuous improvement.
• Commercial ownership and growth support: contribute to proposals, shape solutions, estimate effort, and support expansion.

Skills

AI strategy

Data delivery

Stakeholder management

Leadership

MLOps/LLMOps

Data governance

Public sector experience

Education

Bachelor's or master's degree in computer science, business administration, commerce, or engineering

Tools

Azure

AWS

GCP

CI/CD

Job description

We Are:

Accenture Data & AI — the people who love using data to tell a story. We're the world's largest team of data scientists and experts in machine learning and AI. A great day for us means solving big problems using the latest tech, serious brain power, and deep knowledge of just about every industry. We believe a mix of data, analytics, automation, and responsible AI can do almost anything — spark digital reinvention, widen the range of what humans can do, and breathe life into smart products and services.

In the Public Sector, we partner with government agencies, crown corporations, and public institutions to drive meaningful, citizen-centred transformation. We bring the full depth of Accenture's AI and data capabilities to solve complex challenges that matter at a societal scale.

You Are:A thought leader and practitioner at the intersection of AI strategy and data delivery — As a senior leader in the Data & AI practice, you will coach and mentor up-and-coming leaders, guide diverse multi-disciplinary teams, and help clients embed AI and data capabilities as a lasting part of their organisational culture — with a strong focus on responsible AI, data governance, and public trust.

Role Summary

As aSenior Leaderin Accenture’sData &AI practice, you will lead the strategy, design, and scaled delivery ofAI & Data solutions for Utilitiesindustry and clients. You will build reusable data/AI capabilities—covering ingestion, orchestration, governance, data products, analytics enablement, and model/AI lifecycle—so clients can accelerate time-to-value while meeting enterprise-grade requirements for security, privacy, quality, and responsible AI. The Utilities industry is at the center of the largest infrastructure transformation in a generation—the collision of decarbonization, unprecedented load growth from electrification and data centers, grid resilience against extreme weather events, affordability and regulatory pressure, and the shift to distributed, digitized, AI-enabled operations. You will own the Data & AI agenda for our Utilities portfolio across Canada, personally leading the most consequential CxO relationships, and set the pace for how the portfolio grows, delivers and shows up in the market.

Key Responsibilities

• Set direction for AI & Data Utilities: Own the target-state vision, architecture, and roadmap for data/AI utilities across complex enterprise landscapes (multiple systems, domains, and stakeholders).

• Lead large-scale client engagements: Drive end-to-end delivery leadership across strategy, design, build, and transition-to-run, ensuring outcomes and adoption.

• Operationalize reusable accelerators: Establish standards and scalable patterns (reference architectures, reusable pipelines, governance workflows, data product frameworks, and MLOps/LLMOps practices).

• Governance & responsible AI leadership: Ensure data governance, lineage, quality, access controls, privacy/security-by-design, and responsible AI practices are embedded into utility capabilities.

• Client & executive stakeholder management: Lead executive communications, manage relationships with CIO/CTO/CDAO/Operations leadership, and align delivery to business outcomes and enterprise priorities.

• People leadership & talent development: Lead and mentor multi-disciplinary teams (architecture, engineering, data operations, analytics/AI, delivery), ensuring strong delivery rigor and continuous improvement.

• Commercial ownership and growth support: Contribute to proposal development, shape solution approaches, estimate effort, and support expansion within industry/enterprise accounts.

• Delivery governance: Ensure quality, risk management, and delivery health across workstreams; manage dependencies, budgets (where applicable), and escalations.

• Shape the Utilities Data & AI agenda: own the industry point of view and go-to-market, including energy-transition advisory, rate case and regulatory environment, OT/IT convergence, grid-modernization and DERMS-enabling data platforms, wildfire and resilience analytics, customer-experience transformation and AI-enabled workforce and field operations. Represent Accenture externally with clients, alliance partners, regulators and industry bodies.

• Bachelor's or master's degree in computer science, business administration, commerce, or engineering

• 12+ yearsof relevant experience in enterprisedata platforms and/or AI/ML engineering, including architecture and operationalization.

• Proven track record of building and growing an industry portfolio – origination, sales and expansion – with personally attributable multi-$MM record in annual originated sales and ownership of multi-$MM in managed revenue at portfolio scale, sustained across multiple years and through all least one full economic or industry cycle.

• Recognized trusted advisor to C-suite and Board-level executives at large enterprise Utility industry clients, with the credibility and presence to lead the most challenging conversations on strategy, investment, and transformation outcomes in a rapidly changing Utilities landscape.

• Demonstrated experience leadinglarge, multi-year transformation programswith measurable outcomes (platform adoption, performance improvement, reduced time-to-insight, improved operational efficiency, etc.).

• Strong background inenterprise data architectureand delivery for utility-style platforms (integration, orchestration, data products, governance, and data operations).

• Proven leadership inMLOps/LLMOpsand lifecycle management (deployment, monitoring, evaluation, governance, and continual improvement).

• Deep understanding ofdata governance(quality, lineage, catalog, access controls) andresponsible AI(risk controls, evaluation, auditability, transparency principles).

• Strong experience instakeholder and executive managementand ability to translate technical strategy into business value.

• Track record ofbuilding, leading & developing high-performance teamsat scale and influencing without authority across client organizations and internal leadership.

• Recognized eminence and thought leadership in Data & AI for Utilities – evidenced by such recurring keynote or mainstage presence at flagship industry forums (e.g. DistribuTECH, CERAWeek, Enlit, WEF Energy), published points of view carried by tier-one industry or business media in the last 24 months, and standing relationships with the leading Utilities in Canada as well as AI/Data analysts (Gartner, Forrester, Wood Mackenzie, S&P Global).

Skills & Experience (Preferred)

• Familiarity with industrial/enterprise contexts aligned toI&E(manufacturing, industrial operations, industrial IoT/data, maintenance & reliability analytics, supply chain/asset performance).

• Direct senior-client experience across at least two of: North American Utilities & Power companies, European integrated utilities and network operators, and Asia-Pacific power, water or renewables majors.

• Experience with cloud-based data and AI platforms (e.g., Azure/AWS/GCP), data engineering frameworks, CI/CD, observability, and automation practices.

• Experience deliveringbatch + streamingdata solutions and integrating enterprise systems (ETL/ELT, APIs, event streaming, integration frameworks).

• Hands-on or strong working knowledge of data/AI tooling for orchestration, feature/data management, and governance workflows.

Travel / Working Conditions (Typical)

• May require traveldepending on client needs (industry/enterprise engagements).

• Combination of client collaboration and remote delivery.

#LI-NA-FY25

Information on benefits is here:

Compensation at Accenture varies depending on a wide array of factors, which may include but are not limited to the specific office location,
role, skill set, and level of experience. As required by local law, Accenture provides a reasonable range of compensation, based on full-time
employment, for roles that may be hired as set forth below.
The recruiting efforts for this position are intended to fill a brand new position.
The base pay range shown below is intended as a guideline to reflect the majority of offers for this role.
It does not represent a maximum limit — in some cases, actual compensation may exceed the range where appropriate.

Role Location Annual SalaryRange

British Columbia/Ontario/New Brunswick$131,700 to $278,100