Deployment Strategist

We are building a premium AI consultancy targeting an underserved whitespace: transforming small-to-mid-cap portfolio companies and finance firms that cannot afford to get AI wrong. We hire only top-tier talent.

You will own client engagements at PE-backed portfolio companies (portcos) end-to-end, from first scoping conversation through to a live system the client team runs without us. You map the workflow, identify the highest-leverage automations, scope the solution, run delivery, and manage stakeholders across PE partners, portco C-level, and technical teams.

You sit between investors, portco operating teams, and our AI engineers. You bring deep workflow understanding, commercial judgment, and operator instincts; the engineers bring technical depth. Together you design AI solutions that actually get implemented and create measurable value.

Track record so far includes engagements with Nviya-Prime, Maoki, Europol, NYPL, J.P. Morgan, and Intel x Activeloop, and a growing book of PE and portfolio company work.

Client-facing and senior. Significant time with PE clients, portfolio companies, and finance firms, with structured residencies on-site for kickoff, key delivery moments, and major reviews. Other work runs from our team.

• -Own deployment engagements at PE-backed portcos end-to-end: scoping, delivery, rollout, handover, outcome.
• -Map workflows, identify high-impact automations, and scope solutions calibrated to portco constraints and PE hold-period economics.
• -Co-design AI solutions with our senior AI engineers and forward deployed engineers (FDEs). You bring deep PE and finance domain expertise; they bring technical depth. Together you shape the workflow target, the architecture trade-offs, the success metrics, and the rollout plan.
• -Run delivery from kickoff to live system. Hold the engineering pod accountable to timeline, scope, quality, and adoption.
• -Manage stakeholders across PE partners, portco C-level executives, and technical teams.
• -Build sequenced AI value-creation plans for portfolio companies. Quick wins and longer plays, calibrated to hold period and earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) contribution.
• -Run cross-portfolio programs. Spot reusable patterns, template winning solutions, roll them across multiple portfolio companies.
• -Lead client education for non-technical executives. Demystify model capability, sequence priorities, calibrate expectations.
• -Help originate new client work across PE firms, family offices, investment platforms, and finance firms.
• -Help build the firm's PE practice intellectual property (IP): diligence frameworks, value-creation playbooks, sector points of view, executive workshops, and reusable AI assets.

This role requires daily, fluent use of frontier AI tools across the bulk of your professional output. You should already be a heavy user of Claude, ChatGPT, and similar systems for research, drafting, analysis, memo preparation, deck building, market scanning, due diligence, and synthesis. You know which model to reach for and when, how to structure context and prompts, how to read outputs critically, and how to combine AI speed with your own commercial judgment. AI-native strategists outpace traditional consultants and operating partners on most knowledge work, and that gap is the bar for this role.

You will also design reusable AI assets that compound your effectiveness and your clients' over time: custom Claude Skills, agent skills, prompt libraries, market-mapping workflows, diligence templates, scoping playbooks, and executive briefing patterns. You bring deep domain expertise into structured AI assets the firm and clients can reuse. Where useful, you work alongside our engineers to turn your patterns into agents, sub-agents, or Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers running in production.

A meaningful share of the value you deliver to PE and portfolio company clients will be teaching them this same way of working: how to use frontier AI tools safely, how to structure workflows, how to review outputs critically, how to avoid false confidence, and how to combine AI leverage with human expertise. Many of our clients need this education as urgently as they need new engineering.

• -2+ years at a tier-1 institution: top-tier strategy consulting (McKinsey, BCG, Bain), private equity, investment banking, value creation, portfolio operations, or PE-adjacent advisory.
• -Consistently performed at a high level throughout your career so far.
• -You take pride in measurable impact at real companies, not in slide decks.
• -Comfortable owning client relationships and engagement outcomes.
• -Real fluency with AI capability today. You do not need to write production code; you should be able to read an architecture, push back on an engineering proposal, co-design a solution with engineers, and call out an over-engineered or under-scoped plan.
• -Strong commercial instincts. You can scope an engagement, defend a price, and structure a multi-quarter program.
• -Operator judgment. You have helped management teams change how work gets done, not only delivered slides.
• -Strong written and verbal communication. You can write a board-ready memo and run a workshop with non-technical executives.
• -Daily, expert AI user. You work with Claude, ChatGPT, and similar tools across most of your professional output, design reusable prompts and skills, and can teach others to do the same.

• -Direct experience inside a PE firm, portfolio operations team, or value-creation function.
• -Sector depth in financial services, asset management, insurance, or B2B services.
• -An existing book of senior relationships across PE, investment platforms, or finance firms.
• -MBA, CFA, or comparable analytical signal.
• -Authorship, speaking, or thought leadership on AI in finance, PE, or operations.
• -Hands-on experience designing Claude Skills, agent skills, MCP servers, or custom AI workflows.

• -How to design and ship PE playbooks that actually get implemented inside real businesses.
• -How to work effectively alongside top-tier PE partners and operating partners at leading funds.
• -Daily fluency with the latest AI tools at the frontier of the field.
• -Proven AI-enabled workflows across procurement, sales, finance, document automation, and broader portco operations.
• -How to translate engineering trade-offs into board-ready commercial language without losing the substance.

Calibrated to candidate experience and seniority.

Towards AI is the AI deployment and education firm, founded in 2019: 500,000+ AI practitioners taught, 200,000+ newsletter subscribers, 100,000+ community members, and 10,000+ copies sold of our O'Reilly book Building LLMs for Production. Our Towards AI Deployment practice runs a specialist team of 15+ AI engineers focused on investment firms, PE, portfolio companies, and finance firms in regulated industries.

Co-founded by Louie Peters (ex-J.P. Morgan VP, credit research) and Louis-Francois Bouchard (ex-Mila, Polytechnique Montreal). Our engineers grow up through our own community and Learning programmes into Deployment pods, so you would work with people who stay at the forefront of the field. In a pod you own a real system end to end, in production, from day one.