Practice Director & Chief AI Architect

About the Role:

Within the TCS Industrial Autonomy & Engineering business unit, we are redefining how industrial giants operate by injecting AI into the core of Connected Services and IoT through the shift towards industrial autonomy.

We are looking for an entrepreneurial Practice Director & Chief AI Architect to build, scale, and lead our new AI-First Solutioning capability from the ground up.

In this dual-mandate role, you will be the primary engine for growth. As a Practice Builder, you will incubate a world-class team of AI engineers and data scientists, develop repeatable Go-To-Market (GTM) assets, and drive our strategic AI narrative. As a Solution Architect, you will roll up your sleeves as a forward-deployed leader, architecting multi-million-dollar AI/IoT transformations, designing DataOps/AIOps frameworks, and closing complex deals with CxO-level clients.

Key Responsibilities:

1. Practice Building & Business Growth:

• Zero-to-One Incubation: Build and scale an elite AI capability within the Connected Services unit, establishing Centers of Excellence (CoE) for Agentic AI, GenAI, Vision AI, and Industrial Machine Learning.
• Revenue Generation & Pre-Sales: Act as the tip of the spear for major RFPs and proactive pitches. Drive order book growth by creating compelling, AI-led value propositions for smart manufacturing, predictive maintenance, and edge-to-cloud IoT ecosystems.
• Asset & IP Monetization: Lead the development of reusable AI frameworks, industry-specific accelerators, and autonomous agents that reduce time-to-market and differentiate TCS from global system integrators.
• Talent Leadership: Attract, mentor, and retain top-tier talent in AIOps, DataOps, and LLMOps. Foster a culture of continuous innovation and ‘builder‘ mentality.

2. Chief Solution Architecture & Delivery Execution:

• End-to-End AI Architecture: Architect complex, scalable AI and IoT solutions. Translate ambiguous industrial pain points into robust technical roadmaps utilizing Edge AI, Digital Twins, and Computer Vision.
• Full Lifecycle Management: Oversee the successful delivery of massive AI programs. Ensure rigorous governance across problem formulation, data engineering (DataOps), model training, deployment, and continuous observability (AIOps).
• Ecosystem Orchestration: Partner with major hyper-scalers (AWS, Azure, GCP) and industrial technology partners (NVIDIA, Databricks, Snowflake, Siemens) to build joint Go-To-Market architectures.
• CxO Advisory: Serve as a trusted advisor to client technology leaders, leading design thinking workshops and defining ‘AI-First‘ operating models for legacy industrial engineering operations.

Qualifications & Experience:

• Experience: 12+ years of total industry experience in IT, Engineering, or Consulting, with a minimum of 4+ years in a leadership role scaling Data, AI, or IoT practices with direct revenue/growth accountability.
• Technical Credibility: Deep, hands-on background as an Enterprise Architect or Lead Data Scientist. Must have a strong command of modern AI stacks (GenAI, LLMs, RAG, Multi-Agent frameworks) and classical ML.
• Industrial Domain Expertise: Prefer experience in IoT platforms, telemetry data ingestion, IT/OT integration, and intelligent industry use cases (e.g., smart factories, autonomous vehicles, connected fleets).
• Engineering Operations: Deep understanding of modern operational paradigms, specifically building robust DataOps pipelines and AIOps frameworks for large-scale, distributed industrial assets.
• Consulting DNA: Exceptional executive presence and storytelling abilities. Track record of shifting client mindsets from traditional engineering to AI-driven value realization.
• MBA Preferred