AI Engagement Leads

NTT DATA, Inc.; Plano (TX); Hybrid; USD 150,000 - 250,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, dental, and vision insurance

HSAs/FSAs

401(k) with company match

Paid time off

Job summary

NTT DATA, Inc. is seeking an AI Engagement Leader to drive end-to-end delivery of complex client AI engagements.

You will orchestrate cross-functional teams across architecture, data science, and security to achieve measurable business outcomes with governance and disciplined scope control. You will own engagement economics, staffing, and risk management while maintaining client confidence and ensuring value realization through production releases and stabilization.

Qualifications

• 10+ years in technology consulting or equivalent with leadership of complex client engagements.
• Experience delivering AI, data, cloud, or enterprise transformation initiatives.
• Strong financial and commercial management capabilities.
• Proven ability to build trusted relationships with senior client stakeholders and lead governance.

Responsibilities

• Own end-to-end delivery of assigned AI engagements from mobilization through production release and value realization.
• Translate client outcomes and contractual commitments into clear delivery plans with milestones and ownership.
• Serve as the primary day-to-day delivery leader for client stakeholders with transparent communication.
• Establish and run governance, RAID management, financial reviews, and escalation processes.
• Own engagement financial health including revenue, cost, margin, forecast, burn, and staffing.
• Maintain scope discipline and manage unfunded/out-of-scope activity with appropriate commercial conversations.
• Lead multidisciplinary delivery pods across architects, engineers, data scientists, PMs, and security teams.
• Scale delivery capacity by onboarding resources and aligning with global capability teams.
• Identify delivery risks and provide mitigation plans and escalation when needed.
• Collaborate with Principal AI Domain Technical Leader to resolve dependencies and balance technical trade-offs.
• Ensure adherence to global AI Studio delivery standards and governance.

Skills

Leadership

Client engagement

AI/Cloud/digital delivery

Financial management

Stakeholder management

Distributed teams

Agile/Hybrid/PM

Technical fluency

Education

Bachelor’s degree or equivalent

Job description

Role Summary

As an AI Engagement Leader, you will be the primary accountable delivery leader for one or more complex client AI engagements. Reporting to an AI Delivery Executive, you will lead day-to-day client delivery, translate transformation objectives into executable plans, and orchestrate full-stack delivery pods that scale with the size and complexity of the engagement. You will own delivery outcomes, client confidence, engagement economics, scope, schedule, quality, risk, staffing, governance, and team performance. You will work across business, architecture, engineering, data science, project management, business analysis, DevOps/MLOps, quality, security, and support capabilities, including globally distributed teams and AI Studio Centers of Excellence.

Key Responsibilities

• Own end-to-end delivery of assigned AI engagements from mobilization and deal-to-delivery transition through implementation, production release, stabilization, and value realization.
• Translate client business outcomes, contractual commitments, and technical scope into clear delivery plans, milestones, workstreams, ownership, dependencies, and measurable success criteria.
• Serve as the primary day-to-day delivery leader for client stakeholders, building trusted relationships, maintaining transparent communication, and ensuring delivery remains aligned to business objectives.
• Establish and run effective governance, including delivery reviews, RAID management, financial reviews, client status, steering committees, architecture and quality checkpoints, change control, and executive escalation as appropriate.
• Own engagement financial health, including revenue, cost, margin, forecast, burn, staffing profile, utilization, planned versus actual effort, change requests, and commercial leakage.
• Maintain strong scope and change discipline; identify unfunded or out-of-scope activity early and ensure the appropriate commercial conversation is initiated rather than allowing delivery teams to absorb uncontrolled work.
• Lead multidisciplinary delivery pods that may include AI Architects, AI Engineers, Data Scientists, Data Engineers, Project Managers, Business Analysts, UI/UX, AI DevOps/MLOps, QA, support, security, FDEs, domain SMEs, and other specialist roles.
• Scale delivery capacity to the engagement, managing resource onboarding, performance, upcoming roll-offs, skill gaps, and future demand in partnership with the AIDE, Resourcing, Technical Lead, and global capability teams.
• Identify delivery risks and early-warning signals before they become escalations; establish mitigation, ownership, due dates, and escalation thresholds, and bring the AIDE clear facts, impact, options, and a recommended path when executive intervention is required
• Partner with the Principal AI Domain Technical Leader for the vertical, architects, engineers, data scientists, security, platform, and client technical teams to resolve dependencies and technical delivery risks while retaining clear accountability for the overall outcome; technical feasibility and architecture concerns go to the Principal first.
• Ensure the engagement follows global AI Studio delivery, architecture, engineering, security, responsible-AI, quality, documentation, and governance standards, escalating gaps or technical performance concerns to the appropriate leaders
• Maintain an active understanding of client sentiment, stakeholder priorities, organizational changes, upcoming decisions, and emerging transformation needs beyond the immediate project plan.
• Identify adjacent business problems, additional AI use cases, opportunities to scale successful solutions, and follow-on transformation needs; surface these to the AIDE so the Client Executive and AI GTM team can determine the appropriate pursuit strategy.
• Support selected pre-sales, solution-shaping, transition, and proposal activities where delivery knowledge materially improves scope quality, feasibility, staffing, risk, commercial assumptions, or continuity into execution.
• Coach and develop delivery team members, create clear accountability, recognize strong performance, address performance issues quickly, and foster a client-first, outcome-focused, high-performance culture.
• Capture lessons learned, reusable delivery patterns, accelerators, and client insights that can improve future AI Studio engagements.

Basic Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent professional experience.
• 10+ years of experience in technology consulting, professional services, program delivery, product/digital delivery, or enterprise technology transformation, including significant leadership of complex client engagements.
• 10+ years total relevant experience, including approximately 5+ years leading complex client engagements or major workstreams.
• Proven end-to-end ownership of multi-workstream technology programs or engagements, including responsibility for scope, schedule, budget, quality, risk, staffing, governance, and client outcomes.
• Experience delivering AI, data, cloud, digital, application modernization, automation, or other complex technology transformation initiatives in enterprise environments.
• Strong financial and commercial management capability, including revenue, margin, forecast, burn, resource planning, change control, and management of fixed-price, time-and-materials, outcome-based, or similar delivery constructs.
• Demonstrated ability to build trusted relationships with senior client stakeholders and lead governance, expectation management, difficult conversations, and escalation resolution.
• Experience leading multidisciplinary and geographically distributed teams across onshore, nearshore, offshore, and partner delivery models.
• Strong understanding of delivery methodologies and controls, including Agile, hybrid, and/or program-management approaches, RAID management, quality management, and executive reporting.
• Sufficient technical fluency to work effectively with architects, engineers, data scientists, platform teams, security teams, and business stakeholders and to understand technical trade-offs that affect delivery. 4+ years working closely with technical teams in complex delivery environments, with sufficient fluency to understand architecture, engineering, data, platform, and security trade-offs.

NTT DATA provides a reasonable range of compensation for U.S.-based positions. The starting pay range for this role will depend on the nature of the role offered and will be$150,000 - $250,000. Actual compensation will depend on a number of factors, including the candidate’s relevant experience, technical skills, and other qualifications.

This position may also be eligible for incentive compensation based on individual and/or company performance. If the position offered in temporary, the position will not be eligible for incentive compensation.

This position is eligible for company benefits that will depend on the nature of the role offered. Company benefits may include medical, dental, and vision insurance, flexible spending or health savings account, life and AD&D insurance, short and long term disability coverage, paid time off, employee assistance, participation in a 401k program with company match, and additional voluntary or legally-required benefits.

About NTT DATA

NTT DATA is a $30 billion business and technology services leader, serving 75% of the Fortune Global 100. We are committed to accelerating client success and positively impacting society through responsible innovation. We are one of the world's leading AI and digital infrastructure providers, with unmatched capabilities in enterprise-scale AI, cloud, security, connectivity, data centers and application services. our consulting and Industry solutions help organizations and society move confidently and sustainably into the digital future. As a Global Top Employer, we have experts in more than 50 countries. We also offer clients access to a robust ecosystem of innovation centers as well as established and start-up partners.NTT DATA is a part of NTT Group, which invests over $3 billion each year in R&D.

Whenever possible, we hire locally to NTT DATA offices or client sites. This ensures we can provide timely and effective support tailored to each client’s needs. While many positions offer remote or hybrid work options, these arrangements are subject to change based on client requirements. For employees near an NTT DATA office or client site, in-office attendance may be required for meetings or events, depending on business needs. At NTT DATA, we are committed to staying flexible and meeting the evolving needs of both our clients and employees.

NTT DATA endeavors to make https://us.nttdata.com accessible to any and all users. If you would like to contact us regarding the accessibility of our website or need assistance completing the application process, please contact us at https://us.nttdata.com/en/contact-us .This contact information is for accommodation requests only and cannot be used to inquire about the status of applications. NTT DATA is an equal opportunity employer. Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability or protected veteran status. For our EEO Policy Statement, please click here . If you'd like more information on your EEO rights under the law, please click here . For Pay Transparency information, please click here .

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