AI Lead

Basware is building its AI capability deliberately — not as a procurement exercise, but as a structural shift in how the business operates. This role leads that build. The AI Lead heads our AI & Automation Centre of Excellence, the organisation’s centre of gravity for AI adoption. It’s a role with a mandate to make AI real in how Basware works: the right tools in people’s hands, an organisation that knows how to use them well, and the guardrails, processes, and governance that let adoption scale safely. You’ll set the patterns, run the experiments, and drive the enablement that turn AI from interest into everyday practice across every function — and you’ll lead the team that delivers it.

This role is about the enterprise’s own adoption of AI and automation: deploying and supporting tools like Claude and Copilot, running fast proofs of concept, setting best practice, and helping every function get more out of these tools than they could alone. This is a hands-on leadership role with a mandate to deliver. We’re looking for someone who has passion for AI adoption and driving change in a complex enterprise, made the hard tooling and prioritisation calls, and got real usage rather than pilots that stall.

What you’ll own:

• Tooling & deployment: Own the enterprise AI and automation toolset — Claude, Copilot, etc. and the platforms around them. Decide what we roll out, to whom, and how we support it. Manage licensing, access, and the integration into how people already work.
• Experimentation & PoCs: Run a fast, disciplined pipeline of proofs of concept. Test where AI genuinely helps, kill what doesn’t, and turn what works into repeatable patterns the rest of the organisation can adopt.
• Best practice & enablement: Build the playbooks, prompt patterns, and training that make people effective with the tools. Run the federated AI champion model — train the people who train their teams — and translate capability into adoption.
• Process, automation & orchestration: Identify where AI and automation can reshape how work flows across functions. Design and stand up the orchestration that connects tools, data, and people into something more than the sum of its parts.
• Governance & compliance: Define and operate AI usage policy, risk tiering, tool approval, and regulatory compliance (GDPR, EU AI Act). You’re the person Security and Legal call when there’s a question about how AI is being used.
• Cross-org collaboration & leadership: Partner across every function — and with Product & Technology — to align on tooling, share what works, and avoid duplicated effort. Build and lead the CoE team, set the roadmap, and maintain the executive view of AI maturity, value, and risk for the CIO and AI steering group.

Must-have skills:

• A background in technology or data — software development, data engineering, solution architecture, or similar — deep enough that you reason about systems from first principles, not just at the surface.
• Driven AI and automation adoption across a complex enterprise — got real, sustained usage, not just successful pilots.
• Hands-on with enterprise AI tools (Claude, Microsoft Copilot, Ai foundry or equivalent) you know what good use looks like, can build a working PoC yourself, and can coach others to it.
• Working fluency with cloud platforms (Azure, AWS, or GCP) and how AI tools are deployed, integrated, and secured within them — identity and access (SSO, SCIM), APIs, and data flows.
• Solid grasp of information security and data privacy as they apply to AI — data residency, classification, what leaves the tenancy and what doesn’t, and how to assess a tool against GDPR and the EU AI Act.
• Strong instinct for where AI and automation add value and where they don’t — able to run fast PoCs, read the results honestly, and make the call.
• Built enablement at scale — training, best practice, champion networks, change management — and changed how people actually work.
• Strong cross-functional operator — builds trust across business teams, IT, and Security, and partners well with adjacent technical functions.
• Proven people and team leadership; able to build a function and develop the people in it.
• Executive-grade communication.

Nice to have:

• Built a Centre of Excellence or enablement function from scratch.
• Deep experience with Microsoft 365 Copilot, Power Platform, other automation and orchestration platform rollout and adoption.
• Familiarity with workflow automation and orchestration tooling.
• Familiarity with finance, Sales, marketing and other central business processes.
• Understanding of FinOps principles applied to AI and tooling spend.