Functional Expert – London.

Consult; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 120,000 - 190,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Sprint-based engagements

£4,500 training budget per year

London market-rate compensation

Job summary

Convolving GmbH, a Swiss-based AI services firm, seeks a senior Functional Expert for London engagements. You translate client language into AI process requirements, defend controls, and own trade-offs with senior operators.

The hire sits across the table from the client’s senior leaders, guiding redesigns and ensuring adoption. In fixed-fee sprints (3–12 weeks), you lead discovery, assess workflows, and push back when redesigns impact controls or regulatory reporting.

Qualifications

• Fifteen+ years in a single function (finance, operations, risk, procurement, legal, clinical, or HR) with senior-level experience.
• Proven ability to redesign a core workflow inside one operating environment with controls and audit trails.
• Comfort engaging with CFO/COO/GC level leaders and pushing back when redesign is not acceptable.
• Fluency reading AI tools like Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini; no coding required.
• Strong bias for written work product like memos, runbooks, and exception logs.
• Clear, senior, jargon-free communication style.

Responsibilities

• Lead discovery interviews with the client’s line operators, exception handlers, and function head, and document the current process before any model is wired.
• Score candidate workflows on business impact, data readiness, change-management cost, and risk, defending the ranked list to the client’s sponsor.
• Stand alongside the AI Process Engineer during build and flag where redesign breaks a control, regulator report, or a judgment call that must stay human.
• Own the senior-operator conversation: explain model trade-offs, identify new risks, and outline post-launch tracking needs.
• Train the client’s function leadership on new week-to-week workflow changes, escalation rules, and exception paths.
• Feed engagements back into the firm’s reference library to accelerate future work.

Skills

15+ years in single function

Workflow redesign

Executive stakeholder management

AI tools fluency

Written-work bias

Clear communicator

Job description

Full-time London

Posted 18 May 2026

The firm

A senior firm, sized like a startup. Convolving is a Swiss-based AI services firm running fixed-fee sprints for clients across five regulated industries. Delivery is partner-led on every engagement, and the team has shipped 30+ engagements to date. We pair tenured functional operators with AI-native engineers and a Technical Program Manager on every sprint, so the redesign lands in production rather than in a slide deck. Engagements run 3 to 12 weeks at a flat fee. No retainer creep, no timesheet tracking, no change orders. When the artifact is shipped and adopted, the engagement closes. The hiring bar is senior across the firm: we do not build pyramids and we do not staff with juniors.

The role

The senior person in the room. This is the seat for someone who has done the work, not advised on it. We hire Functional Experts out of 15 to 25 years inside a single function such as finance, operations, risk, procurement, legal, clinical practice, or HR. The hire is normally moving out of a head-of-function or operating-partner role into a portfolio of redesign engagements. Your seat sits across the table from the client’s senior operators. You translate between their language and what the AI Process Engineer is building, defend the controls and exceptions that matter, and own the trade-off conversation when the model proposes something the function cannot live with. The Partner running the engagement leans on you for institutional credibility with the client’s line leadership. First 90 days: shadow two live sprints, lead the discovery phase on a third, and start to specialise the redesign templates against your function. By month six you are the named Functional Expert on three to four parallel engagements.

What you’ll do

The work, week to week.

• Lead discovery interviews with the client’s line operators, exception handlers, and function head, and put the current process on paper before any model is wired up.


• Score candidate workflows against business impact, data readiness, change-management cost, and risk perimeter, and defend the ranked list in front of the client’s executive sponsor.


• Sit beside the AI Process Engineer through the build and call out where the redesign breaks a control, a regulator-facing report, or a judgement call that has to stay human.


• Own the senior-operator conversation: explain the trade-offs the model is making, where the redesign creates new risk, and what the client needs to track post-launch.


• Train the client’s function leadership on what changes in their week-to-week workflow once the artifact ships, including new exception paths and escalation rules.


• Feed every engagement back into the firm’s reference library so the next Functional Expert in the same domain starts a week ahead of where you started.

What we’re looking for

The shape of the hire.

• 15+ years inside a single function (finance, operations, risk, procurement, legal, clinical, or HR), at least five of them at head-of-function, operating-partner, or senior-director level.


• Visible track record of redesigning a core workflow inside one operating environment, with the controls and audit trail to back it up.


• Comfort sitting across the table from a CFO, COO, General Counsel, or equivalent function head, and pushing back when the redesign is wrong for their controls posture.


• Working fluency with at least one major AI assistant in your own week (Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini). You don’t need to ship code, but you need to be able to read the artifact.


• Demonstrated bias for written work product: discovery memos, exception logs, runbooks. We publish a lot of internal writing.


• Plainspoken, senior, allergic to consulting jargon and conference-deck rhetoric.


• UK work authorisation required (we do not sponsor visas at this stage). Based in central London; co-working arrangements supported.

Nice to have

Useful, not required.

• Prior in-house experience at a Big 4 or MBB firm before going operational, so you can speak both languages without translating.


• A regulator-facing reputation (SEC, FCA, FINMA, MHRA, FDA, or similar) you can quietly trade on with a client’s compliance team.


• Reading knowledge of a second European language (German, French, Italian) for Swiss and pan-European engagements.


• A point of view on agentic systems in your function that you have written down somewhere, even informally.


• Prior board observer or operating advisor role at a private-equity portfolio company.

What you’ll get

The package, plainly.

• Comp. We pay senior market rates for the hub. Compensation is calibrated to London market, not Swiss-discounted. Paid through a UK contractor arrangement with Convolving GmbH. Base plus a sprint-completion bonus tied to adoption, not utilisation.


• Sprint model. Engagements are fixed-fee, 3 to 12 weeks. No retainer creep. No timesheet tracking. You finish a sprint, you take a week before the next one starts.


• Training budget. Annual GBP 4,500 for conferences, courses, or paid research time on a question that matters to your function or to the firm.


• The work itself. One engagement at a time, with the room to push back on the design and own the artifact end-to-end.