Generative AI CoE Lead — Hands-on Client Impact

JobSpace; Tauranga; Hybrid; NZD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Hybrid working model (min 2 days in-­-

Fully subsidised medical insurance

Parental leaveTop-up

Staff Assistance Programme

Flexibility and inclusive culture

Job summary

Theta is seeking a senior leader to head its Generative AI Centre of Excellence in New Zealand. You will ship AI systems for top NZ organisations, set the engineering standards, and remain hands-on across the stack.

You will design proofs of concept, craft the harness, and drive end-to-end loops from planning through verification and repair. You will act as the senior technical voice for clients, shape approaches, assess feasibility, cost and risk, and uplift Theta developers through coaching

Qualifications

• Experience leading AI projects and delivering production-grade AI systems.
• Proven ability to work with clients, stakeholders and teams across multiple disciplines.
• Hands-on coding and architecture work with agentic systems.

Responsibilities

• Design and deliver proofs of concept and early-stage builds with agentic systems.
• Engineer the model harness: tool definitions, context, routing, and observability.
• Lead and mentor engineers; drive quality, cost and delivery for client projects.
• Establish standards, patterns and guardrails for the AI Centre of Excellence.

Skills

Python

C#/.NET

TypeScript

Technical leadership

AI coding agents

Design AI systems

Tools

Claude Code

GitHub Copilot

Azure AI Foundry

Copilot Studio

Job description

Theta is seeking a senior leader to head its Generative AI Centre of Excellence in New Zealand. You will ship AI systems for top NZ organisations, set the engineering standards, and remain hands-on across the stack.

You will design proofs of concept, craft the harness, and drive end-to-end loops from planning through verification and repair. You will act as the senior technical voice for clients, shape approaches, assess feasibility, cost and risk, and uplift Theta developers through coaching