Senior Director, Data Solutions & Architecture

Company Overview

We are the better way to work in finance. As private equity’s value creation partner, we sit at the heart of PE—where sponsors and CFOs meet. Through financial consulting rooted in data, technology, and AI, we help clients drive value—supporting the office of the CFO to drive end-to-end value creation.

If you crave challenging work and are looking to grow, come solve complex issues alongside 1,600+ finance & technology experts in a supportive, collaborative environment.

As we build our European footprint, the London office presents a unique entrepreneurial opportunity to shape our presence and accelerate growth across the region—while benefiting from the support and stability of an established, industry-leading firm.

Backed by premier private equity firms and headquartered in New York with 11 offices around the globe, we are a high-growth, entrepreneurial firm looking for people who want to be part of building something great. Come make your mark. 

Practice Description

Accordion's Data, Analytics & AI team offers intelligent solutions to a global clientele, leveraging a blend of domain knowledge, sophisticated technology tools, and deep analytics capabilities to tackle complex business challenges.

We partner with Private Equity sponsors and their Portfolio Companies across diverse sectors, designing, building and scaling practical data solutions that improve reporting, analytics, decision-making and value creation.

We deliver data and analytical solutions designed to streamline reporting capabilities and enhance business insights across finance, sales, operations, marketing, pricing, customer and other complex data sets.

This role is based in London with flexibility to work remotely, and covers clients across the UK and Europe. Ideal candidates should be local to the desired location.

Role Overview

We are looking for a Senior Director to help lead AI Solutions across the UK and Europe.

This is a senior, client-facing role for someone who combines genuine technical depth in AI with a sharp understanding of how it creates commercial and operational impact for our clients. The right candidate will be able to identify where AI can move the needle on revenue, cost, productivity or decision-making, articulate that value clearly to senior stakeholders, guide proof-of-concepts and work with engineering teams to turn ideas into scalable solutions.

This is not a research-only AI role. It is focused on applied AI, client impact and delivery. The role will support AI use cases across finance, reporting, transformation, analytics and operational workflows.

The Senior Director will also support business development and origination, working closely with Managing Directors and other Accordion practices to shape opportunities, develop proposals and expand client relationships.

This role will require regular and extensive travel across Europe to work with clients in the relevant jurisdictions.

What You’ll Do:

Client Leadership & Advisory

• Lead senior client conversations across the C-Suite, transformation leaders, technology leaders and private equity sponsors.
• Act as the day-to-day senior point of contact for clients and sponsors on relevant AI engagements.
• Build trusted relationships with senior stakeholders and become viewed as a subject-matter expert in applied AI.
• Translate AI concepts into practical business language.
• Articulate the commercial and operational impact of AI in terms clients care about — revenue, cost, productivity, decision speed and risk reduction.
• Help clients understand what is feasible, what is valuable and what needs to be true before AI can scale.
• Shape AI roadmaps that connect to business priorities, data readiness and value creation plans.
• Manage client expectations, resolve issues quickly and maintain strong client satisfaction.

Applied AI Use Cases

• Help clients identify practical AI use cases across finance, reporting, transformation, operations and management decision-making.
• Lead AI opportunity assessments and use case prioritisation.
• Size the commercial and operational impact of each use case — quantifying value, effort, risk and time to benefit — and use that to drive prioritisation and investment decisions.
• Help clients separate AI hype from practical business value.
• Design use cases that reduce manual effort, improve insight, support better decisions or enhance user experience.
• Recommend solutions in the right order — first leveraging the client's existing technology stack and AI capabilities, then identifying the most relevant off-the-shelf or point solutions in market, and only custom-building where neither can deliver the required outcome.
• Support AI-enabled use cases across areas such as board reporting and narrative generation, management reporting summaries, finance process automation, forecasting and planning support, document ingestion and extraction, reconciliation and workflow automation, insight generation from structured and unstructured data, and workflow agents and task automation.

Proof-of-Concepts & Solution Delivery

• Design and lead AI proof-of-concepts, prototypes, demos and reusable accelerators.
• Define clear success criteria for AI POCs and ensure delivery is focused on measurable outcomes.
• Work with engineering, data science and analytics teams to build working solutions.
• Help move AI ideas from experimentation into practical delivery.
• Own the quality of AI deliverables, actively reviewing outputs before they are shared with Managing Directors, sponsors or clients.
• Supervise project plans and take accountability for changes in scope, timeline or delivery approach.
• Identify risks, latent issues and delivery blockers early.
• Lead distributed teams across the UK, US and Hyderabad.
• Be willing and able to get hands-on with solution design and POC development when needed.

AI Architecture & Platforms

• Understand how AI solutions run across modern cloud and data ecosystems.
• Advise on AI patterns across Azure OpenAI, Microsoft Fabric, AWS Bedrock, GCP Vertex AI, Snowflake Cortex, Databricks, Anthropic Claude, OpenAI and other relevant enterprise platforms.
• Understand the foundations required for safe and scalable AI delivery, including identity, permissions, environments, data lineage, observability, evaluation, auditability, LLM access patterns and responsible AI controls.
• Work closely with Data Solutions & Architecture colleagues to ensure AI use cases are built on the right data foundations.
• Understand data readiness for AI, including structured data, unstructured data, document ingestion, semantic layers, vector search, permissions and governance.

Business Development

• Support Managing Directors in business development and origination activity across the UK and Europe.
• Contribute to qualified lead generation, proposal development, account planning and pitch preparation.
• Help shape AI workshops, demos, proposals, solution designs and delivery plans.
• Identify follow-on opportunities within existing accounts.
• Support cross-sell opportunities across Data, Analytics, Strategic Finance, CFO Tech and Transformation.
• Build and nurture relationships with clients, sponsors and relevant market contacts.
• Use applied AI credibility to support deal conversion where needed.

People & Practice Development

• Coach and mentor junior team members on applied AI, client communication and practical delivery.
• Set clear expectations for teams and provide regular feedback.
• Support internal training, knowledge sharing and practice development.
• Contribute to reusable AI frameworks, demos, tools, accelerators and delivery methods.
• Promote a high-performance, collaborative culture across UK, US and Hyderabad teams.
• Create a culture of experimentation, pace, quality and responsible AI delivery.

You Have:

• Significant experience in applied AI, machine learning, data science, analytics engineering, automation or AI-enabled transformation.
• Strong understanding of generative AI, LLMs, RAG, agents, workflow automation, prompt engineering, evaluation and AI solution design.
• Experience designing or delivering AI proof-of-concepts, prototypes, demos or production solutions.
• Familiarity with platforms such as Azure OpenAI, Microsoft Fabric, AWS Bedrock, GCP Vertex AI, Snowflake Cortex, Databricks, Anthropic Claude, OpenAI and related enterprise tooling.
• Understanding of the data foundations required for AI, including structured data, unstructured data, semantic layers, vector search, permissions and governance.
• Knowledge of safe and scalable AI delivery, including identity, access, environments, observability, evaluation, auditability and responsible AI controls.
• Experience working with senior clients and translating technical concepts into commercial language.
• A track record of tying AI and data work to commercial and operational outcomes — revenue, margin, cost, productivity, decision quality — and articulating that impact to executive audiences.
• Ability to manage distributed technical teams.
• Consulting, transformation, private equity-backed or CFO-related experience would be valuable.
• Commercial confidence, with the ability to support business development and identify new opportunities.

You Are:

• Commercially and operationally minded — instinctively asking what AI changes for the business, not just what it does technically.
• Able to separate hype from real business value, and to explain that difference to non-technical stakeholders.
• Comfortable explaining AI to senior non-technical stakeholders.
• Hands-on enough to shape POCs and challenge technical teams.
• Clear, concise and confident in communication.
• Focused on adoption, usability and measurable impact.
• Excited by rapid prototyping, experimentation and solution design.
• Collaborative, direct and comfortable working across multiple Accordion practices.

We’re committed to building a team that reflects a broad range of backgrounds, perspectives, and skills. We do not discriminate on the grounds of race, colour, religion, marital status, age, nationality, ancestry, physical or mental disability, medical condition, pregnancy, genetic information, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other status protected under applicable law.

Please note that, in line with Accordion policy, we do not accept unsolicited CVs from third-party recruitment agencies unless such agencies have been formally engaged to provide candidates for a specified vacancy and in alignment with our inclusive diversity values. Any employment agency, individual, or entity that submits an unsolicited CV does so with the understanding that Accordion reserves the right to hire that applicant at its discretion without any fee owed to the submitting agency, individual, or entity.

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