Delivery Head

Xebia; Gurugram District; On-site; INR 2,500,000 - 3,500,000; Full time

Job summary

Xebia is looking for a visionary Delivery Head to lead their Data & AI Center of Excellence based in Gurugram, India. This strategic role calls for an individual with over 18 years of IT experience and a strong background in building Data & AI practices. The Delivery Head will oversee delivery excellence, manage stakeholder relationships, and drive a culture of innovation within the organization. The ideal candidate should possess strong leadership skills, client management expertise, and a deep technical understanding of data engineering and analytics.

Qualifications

• 18+ years of IT experience with at least 5–7 years in a senior delivery leadership role focused on Data & AI.
• Proven track record of building or scaling a Data/AI practice or COE.
• Strong client-facing experience at CXO level across global accounts.

Responsibilities

• Own end-to-end delivery of Data & AI programs across multiple client accounts.
• Serve as the primary delivery point of contact for CXO-level client stakeholders.
• Drive a culture of innovation, accountability, continuous learning, and delivery excellence.

Skills

Leadership in Data & AI

Client Management

Data Engineering

Machine Learning

Analytics

Financial Acumen

Tools

AWS

Azure

GCP

Databricks

Snowflake

Apache Spark

TensorFlow

LangChain

Job description

We are looking for a visionary and execution-driven Delivery Head to lead our Data & AI Center of Excellence. This is a strategic leadership role responsible for building, scaling, and delivering high-impact Data & AI solutions across enterprise clients. The ideal candidate will combine deep technical fluency with strong business acumen, client management skills, and the ability to build a world-class delivery organization from the ground up.

Key Responsibilities

Delivery Leadership

• Own end-to-end delivery of Data & AI programs across multiple client accounts, ensuring quality, timeliness, and business impact
• Define and enforce delivery governance frameworks, escalation protocols, and risk mitigation strategies
• Drive consistent delivery excellence across data engineering, data science, ML/AI, and analytics workstreams
• Establish KPIs, SLAs, and OKRs for the COE and ensure teams consistently meet or exceed targets
• Architect and scale the Data & AI COE — including talent strategy, capability building, tooling, accelerators, and reusable assets
• Define the COE's service offerings across Data Engineering, Advanced Analytics, Machine Learning, Generative AI, and MLOps
• Build and manage a pool of high-quality AI/ML, data engineering, and analytics resources ready for rapid deployment
• Stay ahead of market trends in AI/ML, LLMs, Generative AI, and data platforms to continuously evolve COE capabilities

Stakeholder & Client Management

• Serve as the primary delivery point of contact for CXO-level client stakeholders
• Build and nurture long-term client relationships, driving satisfaction, retention, and account growth
• Collaborate with sales and pre-sales teams to support RFP responses, solution design, and effort estimation
• Identify upsell and cross-sell opportunities within existing accounts
• Lead, mentor, and grow a team of program managers, architects, data engineers, data scientists, and AI specialists
• Drive a culture of innovation, accountability, continuous learning, and delivery excellence
• Define career paths, competency frameworks, and performance benchmarks for the COE team
• Partner with talent acquisition to attract and retain top Data & AI talent

Technology & Innovation

• Provide oversight and direction on solution architecture for Data & AI programs leveraging cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP)
• Champion adoption of modern data stacks — Databricks, Snowflake, dbt, Apache Spark, Kafka, and AI frameworks like LangChain, PyTorch, TensorFlow
• Drive POCs and innovation sprints to bring emerging AI/GenAI capabilities to client engagements
• Ensure responsible AI practices including model governance, explainability, and compliance

Must-Have Skills

• 18+ years of IT experience with at least 5–7 years in a senior delivery leadership role focused on Data & AI
• Proven track record of building or scaling a Data/AI practice or COE
• Deep understanding of the full Data & AI stack — data engineering, ML/AI, analytics, MLOps, and GenAI
• Strong client-facing experience at CXO level across global accounts
• Experience managing large, multi-disciplinary teams (50+ members) across geographies
• Hands-on experience with cloud platforms — AWS, Azure, or GCP
• Strong financial acumen — P&L ownership, budgeting, and resource optimization

Good to Have

• Experience with Generative AI, LLMs, RAG architecture, or AI agents
• Background in building partner ecosystems or hyperscaler alliances (AWS, Microsoft, Google)
• Published thought leadership, conference speaking, or active presence in the AI community
• Experience in BFSI, Healthcare, Retail, or Airline