Senior Data Platform & AI Lead

Strategic Growth Partners • Washington, DC

3d • Hybrid

About The Position

Strategic Growth Partners is recruiting for its client, a leading global professional services firm whose Corporate Performance Improvement practice helps organizations address complex business issues, maximize stakeholder value, and deliver sustainable change. The Senior Data Platform & AI Lead will drive large-scale data platform modernization and AI enablement for clients with complex, distributed data environments, including federal and defense environments involving classified and cross-boundary data. The role calls for someone who has designed and implemented enterprise data and AI platforms at scale, rather than solely operating existing pipelines and models.

The lead will assess current data and AI capabilities, design target architectures and modernization roadmaps, and support scalable AI/ML development, deployment, and monitoring across hybrid and multi-cloud environments. The work includes data governance and readiness, AI infrastructure considerations, federated data ownership and access, and data integration across Military Departments. The position also contributes to practice development through internal training, content creation, and people development.

The role is hybrid and involves travel up to 80%. Full-time employment. An active Secret Clearance is required; TS/SCI eligibility is strongly preferred. U.S. citizenship and residency are required. Compensation is an hourly rate, determined by experience.

Requirements

• At least 10 years of professional experience in data platform architecture and/or AI/ML engineering for complex, large enterprises, with consulting or advisory delivery experience.
• Demonstrated experience leading data platform modernization, AI/ML enablement, or data-driven transformation programs.
• Bachelor's degree required.
• Active Secret Clearance required.
• U.S. citizenship and residency required.
• Comfortable with travel up to 80%.
• Experience designing and implementing large-scale, complex data and AI platform transformations, rather than only operating existing pipelines and models.
• Ability to understand dependencies between data platform readiness and AI/ML program success and work across data engineering, AI/ML, security, and business stakeholder teams.
• Baseline competency with AI-assisted development, testing, and monitoring tools, and ability to explain how AI accelerates platform build and data operations.

Nice To Haves

• TS/SCI eligibility.
• Government or defense experience; regulated-industry experience in financial services or healthcare, or deep transformation experience in other complex environments, may substitute.
• Advanced degree in a technical field.
• Cloud data or ML certifications from AWS, Azure, GCP, or Databricks.
• Experience with modern data platforms including data lakes, lakehouses, and cloud data warehouses such as Snowflake, Databricks, BigQuery, and Redshift.
• Experience with data pipeline and ETL/ELT design, orchestration tooling, and integration across structured and unstructured sources.
• Experience with AI/ML platform engineering, including MLOps, model deployment pipelines, feature stores, and LLM/GenAI platform integration.
• Experience with data governance, lineage, cataloging, and metadata management frameworks.
• Experience with AWS, Azure, and/or GCP data infrastructure, including cost modeling and platform consolidation.
• Experience with data security, privacy, and regulatory compliance. DoD data and cloud policy experience, including the DoD Data Strategy and cloud impact levels IL4 to IL6, is a strong advantage; GDPR, CCPA, or industry-specific data regulation can substitute.
• Experience negotiating with data and AI platform vendors and understanding commercial models, licensing structures, vendor competition, and avoiding sole-source dependence.
• Proven experience designing highly available, scalable data platforms supporting real-time and batch processing, disaster recovery, and multi-region redundancy.
• Federal contracting experience.
• Experience with sovereign AI hosting, including running LLMs and accessed data inside controlled boundaries, with consideration for high-density GPU compute and low-latency networking.
• Experience with data classification and cross-boundary or cross-domain data movement, ensuring users and AI agents see only approved data at appropriate impact levels.
• Experience establishing data ownership, taxonomy, governed access, and stewardship roles across large federated organizations.
• Experience with data mesh or federated data architecture, including connecting data across Military Departments while maintaining domain ownership and enforcing common standards, catalogs, and access policies.
• Experience working with classified or cross-boundary data and understanding its constraints on platform and AI design.

Responsibilities

• Lead data platform architecture and engineering assessments, including current-state analysis, target-state design, and modernization roadmaps.
• Design AI/ML enablement architectures that support scalable model development, deployment, and monitoring across hybrid and multi-cloud environments.
• Assess data governance and AI readiness and develop implementation roadmaps aligned with compliance and business timelines.
• Evaluate dependencies between data platform modernization and AI/ML initiative sequencing.
• Assess AI infrastructure readiness, including compute, power, networking, and hosting boundaries, alongside data center and network leads.
• Define data foundation scope, including ownership, taxonomy, governed access, and integrated reporting, and identify opportunities to accelerate in-flight programs.
• Define the federated data model (DataMesh) for collecting and connecting data across Military Departments, covering domain data products, interoperability standards, and cross-MilDep access.
• Define and integrate findings into A&M's broader engagement scope and deliverables.
• Support practice development through internal training, content creation, and people development.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior