Head of AI Business Partners

Janus Henderson • Denver, CO

1d • Hybrid

About The Position

Janus Henderson is undertaking a firm-wide AI transformation programme to embed AI capabilities across every business function and become the most technologically sophisticated asset manager in the world. The AI Academy has already been established with a focus on helping users consume AI inside M365. Our next major expansion is to move from user self service to Forward deployed engineers (Business Partners) to encode AI into the way core business process are delivered and operated. The Head of AI Business Partners will lead the program’s expansion, partnering with executive leadership and subject matter experts to drive agentic workflow improvements. You’ll collaborate with Technology teams to promote modern AI tooling and knowledge sharing, and work with Percepta and the AI technology team to maximize AI-native application development using the firm’s proprietary tools, including NEXUS. This role is at the heart of our AI transformation—not only training or governance, It sits at the intersection of hands-on technical credibility, program design, and change enablement — helping the business work differently and accelerate our AI transformation. You’ll tackle high-impact projects, spread innovation across the organization, and lead a dynamic team of 8 AI Business Partners. As the primary bridge between business units and central AI, you’ll drive strategy, accelerate adoption, and deliver solutions, directly shaping our future alongside the Head of AI. Your primary toolkit includes the modern AI engineering stack—coding agents, agentic harnesses, MCP, in-platform AI in Snowflake and Databricks, and the firm’s proprietary NEXUS platform. However, our AI strategy is platform-agnostic, and you’ll be expected to evaluate, learn, and deploy new tools as the landscape evolves.

Requirements

• Hands-on engineering credibility. You have shipped software, and you currently use modern coding agents (GitHub Copilot agent mode, Claude Code, OpenCode, or equivalent) on real work. You can sit down with a senior engineer, pair on their codebase, and add value within the hour
• Working fluency with the modern AI engineering stack — agentic harnesses, MCP, repo-level context (CLAUDE.md / SKILLS.md), agentic CI/CD patterns, long-running agents, and the tradeoffs between line completion, agent mode, and orchestrated multi-agent workflows
• Curriculum design and facilitation experience — you have built and run technical training, workshops, or enablement programmes for engineers and other technologists, and you know the difference between a session people endure and one they apply on Monday morning
• Strong cross-persona communication. Equally credible with a staff engineer debating verification strategy, a product owner rewriting a spec for an agent, an architect worried about review throughput, and an SLT sponsor asking about ROI
• Practical change management instincts. You understand that tools and training are only half the job; surfacing and removing adoption blockers — access, acceptable-use, budget, fear — is the other half
• Business analysis and measurement literacy. Comfortable with DORA metrics, SPACE, developer experience research, and the difference between adoption (a prerequisite) and value (the goal). You can design a survey, interpret pipeline telemetry, and avoid vanity metrics
• Proactively take ownership of this brand-new initiative, confidently shaping its direction and operations; leverage executive sponsorship to define and build the playbook, rather than waiting for detailed guidance
• Strong documentation instincts. You produce reusable curriculum, patterns, and playbooks that outlast your direct involvement and can be picked up by cohort members and other Academy leads
• Experience working in a regulated environment (financial services, healthcare, legal, government) where governance, compliance, and data sensitivity shape how tools are evaluated, approved, and deployed

Nice To Haves

• Direct experience in financial services or asset management, particularly exposure to investment technology, quant platforms, trading systems, or data engineering in a regulated context
• Experience building or operating AI-native applications — agent orchestration, retrieval systems, evaluation pipelines, LLM application architecture
• Familiarity with the Janus Henderson Technology stack or similar environments: Azure AI Foundry, APIM-fronted LLM gateways, Snowflake Cortex, Databricks Genie Code, GitHub Enterprise, Jira / ServiceNow workflows
• Developer, platform engineering, or building internal tooling background — where success is measured by other engineers’ productivity, not your own commits
• Experience leading a community of practice, internal guild, or cohort-based enablement programme
• Product management sensibility — MVPs, iteration, user feedback, prioritisation — applied to curriculum and enablement rather than software features
• Familiarity with DORA research, SPACE, Accelerate, and current industry thinking on AI’s impact on the software development lifecycle
• Public contributions — talks, writing, open source — that demonstrate ongoing engagement with the AI engineering community

Responsibilities

• Design and lead the AI Business Partners model, establishing a robust foundational program for all stakeholders to rapidly deploy agentic solutions to every day business problems
• Act as lead AI Business Partner for Technology (covering tools, models, agentic patterns, and cross-persona level-setting), alongside tailored tracks for app engineers, data engineers, architects, security specialists, product owners, and analysts; ensure the curriculum accelerates AI adoption while understanding technology guardrails and governance best practices across all functions
• Design and lead the Technology cohort — the technologist equivalent of Air Traffic Controllers — running them through the material first, iterating with their feedback, and equipping them to cascade training through their teams
• Run hands-on, workshop-style sessions grounded in participants’ real sprint work covering coding agents, agentic CI/CD, planning with LLMs, spec writing and verification, long-running agents, and team-level skill sharing (CLAUDE.md, SKILLS.md, shared prompt libraries)
• Collaborate with Technology teams including Security, and Architecture to proactively identify and resolve adoption blockers—such as acceptable-use guidance, access pathways, budget signals, and approved tools—ensuring Business Partners have clear, frameworks to experiment confidently while upholding technology guardrails and governance standards
• Actively contribute to AI initiatives and hands-on solution delivery while simultaneously managing, advocating, and guiding the AI Business Partners team; foster a culture of responsible innovation, continuous learning, and adherence to technology governance by modelling best practices and providing strategic leadership
• Develop and implement appropriate metrics within the AI Academy framework: pipeline telemetry (deploy frequency, lead time, change failure rate, time to restore), survey-based signals (focus time, perceived effectiveness), and adoption data across GitHub Copilot, AI Foundry, APIM, Cortex, Databricks Genie Code, and the forthcoming LLM Gateway
• Continuously research and monitor the rapidly evolving AI engineering landscape—including coding agents, agentic harnesses, MCP, model releases, benchmarks, DORA metrics, and industry studies—critically evaluate emerging trends and translate relevant findings into practical, evidence-based curriculum enhancements for the AI Academy
• Collaborate with the Innovation and, Technology teams (including Cyber Security), and the business end users to ensure that curriculum, tools, and patterns taught within the AI Academy are aligned with the firm’s governance, data privacy, and compliance framework, while supporting responsible and scalable AI adoption across the organization

Benefits

• Hybrid working and reasonable accommodations
• Generous Holiday policies
• Excellent Health and Wellbeing benefits including corporate membership to Wellhub
• Paid volunteer time to step away from your desk and into the community
• Support to grow through professional development courses, tuition/qualification reimbursement and more
• Maternal/paternal leave benefits and family services
• Unique employee events and programs including a 14er challenge
• Complimentary beverages, snacks and all employee Happy Hours
• Annual Bonus Opportunity: Position may be eligible to receive an annual discretionary bonus award from the profit pool. The profit pool is funded based on Company profits. Individual bonuses are determined based on Company, department, team and individual performance.
• competitive compensation
• pension/retirement plans
• various health, wellbeing and lifestyle benefits

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: No Education Listed