Associate Director - AI Architect

Job Summary:

We are seeking a commercially astute and technically exceptional Associate Director to shape and scale Firstsource's AI and Cloud product portfolio.

You will be the primary technical owner for one or more AI product lines, driving product strategy, architecture, and engineering execution from roadmap to production.

With 15+ years of experience, you bring deep Python and Generative AI expertise, proven cloud architecture skills, and the gravitas to influence at the C-suite level while staying hands-on with modern agentic development tooling.

Key Responsibilities:

1. Product Strategy and Architecture:

- Translate market and customer insight into structured, prioritized product roadmaps.

- Architect end-to-end product capabilities: from ideation and PoC through to scalable production systems.

- Drive cloud-native design on Azure, AWS, GCP or hybrid platforms.

- Define reference architectures embedding Generative AI, LLMs, and agentic workflows across the product suite.

2. Engineering Leadership and Delivery:

- Lead multi-disciplinary teams of 10 - 20 engineers, leads, and architects across geographies.

- Establish and enforce delivery governance: agile rituals, quality gates, and risk management.

- Champion CI/CD, DevSecOps, and MLOps practices across all product lines.

- Own product P&L, resourcing, and executive-level roadmap reporting.

- Drive adoption of AI coding agents to accelerate delivery.

3. Generative AI and Intelligent Automation:

- Embed Generative AI capabilities into enterprise products.

- Design and deploy AI agent workflows using industry-standard platforms.

- Evaluate and adopt emerging agentic frameworks to accelerate delivery.

- Champion responsible AI practices including governance, safety, and model observability.

4. People and Stakeholder Management:

- Build, mentor, and grow a high-performance team of engineers and technical managers.

- Manage a complex stakeholder matrix: internal leadership, Product Management, and go-to-market partners.

- Influence without authority across business units and geographies.

- Foster a culture of innovation, accountability, and continuous learning.

Qualifications and Experience:

- 15+ years in software / AI engineering; 6+ years at senior leadership or Associate Director level.

- Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related field.

- Demonstrated track record of building and shipping end-to-end applications across the full SDLC.

- Full lifecycle ownership: ideation, architecture, engineering, production, and optimisation.

- Proven cloud architecture and deployment across at least one hyperscaler.

- Demonstrable track record of taking AI products from concept to scaled, adopted production use.

- Strong commercial acumen: P&L ownership, product business-case development, and roadmap investment planning.