Principal, Applied AI (Technical Consulting)

About the Role

As a Principal, AI Data Platforms, you’ll lead clients in building the data foundations that power intelligent, AI-driven enterprises. You’ll help global organisations modernise complex, distributed data systems into agile, AI-ready platforms, solving for scale, security, privacy, and compliance along the way. You’ll architect, prototype, and experiment with new ways of managing data in the age of AI, from AI-assisted data migration to intelligent quality, lineage, and governance. This is a hands-on role for a technical innovator, someone who loves building, experimenting, and using AI to reimagine how data platforms are designed, operated, and evolved. You’ll work across industries, from global enterprises to fast-scaling portfolio companies in Private Equity, helping them unlock and activate their data for advanced analytics and A About Symphony Symphony is a global digital consultancy of over 650 technologists and consultants, combining strategy, engineering, and AI-first delivery. We partner with Fortune 500 enterprises, private equity firms, and fast-scaling startups to deliver measurable impact through data, product, and platform innovation. What You’ll Do:

• Lead and shape data-driven AI transformations
• Partner with executives and data leaders to design modern, AI-enabled data strategies and architectures.
• Lead discovery sessions to evaluate legacy ecosystems, define transformation paths, and design scalable, compliant data platforms.
• Help clients move to real-time, intelligent, and cloud-native environments that serve both operational and AI use cases.

Design and build AI-ready data platforms

• Architect modern data ecosystems using cloud technologies such as Databricks, Snowflake, BigQuery, and Redshift.
• Integrate AI and automation throughout the data lifecycle, from ingestion and transformation to observability and optimisation.
• Prototype self-optimising, self-healing, and AI-assisted data pipelines that accelerate time-to-insight.
• Build governance, privacy, and compliance directly into the architecture, ensuring platforms are both innovative and trustworthy.

Advance Symphony’s data and AI capability

• Shape Symphony’s approach to intelligent data platforms and AI-enabled engineering, creating reusable patterns and accelerators.
• Mentor teams on data modernisation, AI-driven automation, and data mesh principles.
• Collaborate closely with peers in AI, product, and engineering to deliver unified platform solutions.
• Represent Symphony as a trusted, forward-thinking partner helping clients modernise safely and intelligently.

You’ll Bring:

• 12+ years in data engineering, platform architecture, or modernisation roles, including enterprise-scale transformations.
• Deep experience with cloud data stacks (Databricks, Snowflake, BigQuery, Azure Synapse, Redshift, etc.).
• Strong understanding of data governance, lineage, and compliance frameworks across global environments.
• Hands-on expertise embedding AI or automation into the data lifecycle, discovery, transformation, quality, and observability.
• Experience with infrastructure-as-code, orchestration tools, and CI/CD for data.
• Excellent communication skills, able to engage engineers, data scientists, and C-suite stakeholders alike.A builder’s mindset, experimental, pragmatic, and focused on impact.

You’ll Thrive Here If You:

• Believe data platforms should think for themselves, adaptive, automated, and AI-ready.
• Think strategically but enjoy solving deep technical challenges.
• Want to push the boundaries of how data powers AI products and decisions.
• Care about building secure, modern data systems that are as elegant as they are effective.
• Enjoy working with curious, driven teams who like to build what others only talk about.

Why Symphony At Symphony, you’ll have the impact of a small firm with the reach of a global consultancy. You’ll work across cutting-edge AI, digital, and data initiatives — delivering meaningful, measurable outcomes for clients while shaping a consulting practice that values ownership, curiosity, and real delivery over hierarchy. Please note: Only candidates whose experience closely matches the requirements will be contacted. Applicants must have the legal right to work in their country of residence, as Symphony is unable to provide visa sponsorship for this position. Apply tot his job Apply To this Job