Consulting Director -Forward Deployed Engineering

We believe in the power of ingenuity to build a positive human future. As strategies, technologies, and innovation collide, we create opportunity from complexity. Our teams of interdisciplinary experts combine innovative thinking and breakthrough technologies to progress further, faster. Our clients adapt and transform, and together we achieve enduring results. We are over 4,000 strategists, innovators, designers, consultants, digital experts, scientists, engineers, and technologists with deep expertise in various sectors.

Why consider joining as a Consulting Director? Join a team where you're trusted to shape your own path, manage your time, and influence real change for our clients and communities. Grow a flexible and unique career within a trust-based, inclusive environment that values excellence, innovation, and curiosity.

What you can expect:

• Be part of our management team, helping shape and launch new service propositions while driving strategic business growth.
• Lead business development initiatives — building trusted client relationships, owning outcomes, and delivering innovative, high-impact solutions.
• Collaborate with FTSE 100 clients as a respected advisor, guiding them through complex challenges with clarity and creativity.
• Support your team’s growth through coaching, knowledge-sharing, and creating opportunities for them to thrive.
• Contribute to thought leadership and the development of market-relevant offerings that showcase innovation and deliver value to clients.

Hybrid working with the team on client site or in our office a minimum of two days per week. However, the actual time you spend and where you spend it will vary by role or assignment, including up to 5 days per week on a client site.

Our Forward Deployed Engineers (FDEs) are embedded with strategic customers, lead end-to-end deployments of AI systems in production, and measure success through adoption and workflow impact rather than strategies. You will build this unit from scratch, defining the operating model, recruiting the founding cohort, and landing the first client deployments.

The role includes:

• Building and leading the FDE unit, from a founding cohort of 8 to 12 engineers to a 100 plus person team within 24 months.
• Designing the operating model: embedded deployment structure, delivery cadence, eval-driven quality gates, and commercial packaging including outcome-linked pricing.
• Standing up the DALM and SLM enablement stack: model selection, fine-tuning pipelines, evaluation harnesses, and secure deployment patterns for regulated clients.
• Owning the productivity thesis, defining metrics, instrumenting every deployment, and publishing evidence of the multiplier FDEs achieve against baseline.
• Supporting client Partners and leading the first deployments in priority sectors: data centres, semiconductors, water, and energy infrastructure.
• Setting the hiring bar and recruiting fellow FDE engineers who ship production systems.

What good looks like at 12 months:

• Three or more paying FDE deployments live, adopted by client users, with referenceable outcomes.
• A working DALM/SLM toolchain in production, with documented productivity gains of 3x or more against baseline.
• A founding team of 40 plus engineers, a hiring pipeline, and a repeatable eval-driven delivery method.
• At least 15 existing engineers transitioned into FDE roles through a defined upskilling pathway.
• A commercial offer with published pricing and at least one outcome-linked contract signed.

Qualifications:

• A track record building and scaling engineering or applied AI teams.
• Hands-on credibility with modern AI engineering.
• Direct experience deploying small or domain-adapted models in enterprise settings.
• Revenue ownership at £2-3m+, including shaping, pricing, and closing complex engagements.
• Sector exposure to asset-intensive industries is an advantage.
• The instincts of a builder.

Why this role:

• Founder economics inside an established platform: existing clients, delivery infrastructure, and a global brand.
• A clear path to Partner tied to the growth of the unit you build.
• Direct sponsorship from the Digital.