Principal Consultant - Data & AI

Role overview

This is a full-time Principal Consultant - Data & AI position based in Christchurch. The role sits at the point where data strategy, modern architecture, and AI enablement meet, helping organisations move from early ideas to enterprise-scale delivery.

The consultancy is growing and is looking for someone who can help clients shape the next phase of enterprise technology. This opportunity suits a senior consultant who enjoys solving complex problems, influencing at executive level, and also getting hands-on with design and delivery.

You will guide clients through defining and implementing data and AI roadmaps, building trustworthy foundations for AI, and designing architectures that can evolve from experimentation into operational use.

What you will do

• Lead strategic client engagements that define practical data and AI roadmaps, including the foundations needed for reliable AI and the architectures required for more advanced agentic use cases.
• Own pre-sales activity and solution shaping by contributing technical depth to client conversations, preparing proposals, answering complex RFPs, drafting statements of work, and setting realistic expectations around scope, cost, and delivery.
• Design and deliver scalable, governed modern data platforms across technologies such as MS Fabric, Databricks, Snowflake, and related ecosystems.
• Build strong relationships with business and technical stakeholders and act as a trusted advisor on both AI strategy and detailed data design.
• Ensure solutions are built to appropriate standards for governance, security, lineage, access control, and data quality so that AI systems are dependable and low-risk.
• Coach and support mid-level consultants, sharing expertise and helping lift the overall capability of the team.
• Keep up with rapid changes across the data and AI landscape and bring informed, current thinking into client work and internal discussions.

About you

You are expected to bring a confident, collaborative, and innovative approach, along with senior consulting or delivery experience. The role suits someone who is comfortable working in fast-moving environments, tackling difficult problems, learning continuously, and contributing to better client outcomes.

You should be able to move between strategic conversations and technical detail with ease, while maintaining credibility with executives and engineers alike.

Required experience and background

• At least 15 years of experience in data consulting, data architecture, or advanced analytics roles.
• Practical delivery experience with cloud data platforms such as Azure, AWS, Snowflake, Databricks, MS Fabric, BigQuery, or comparable tools.
• Hands-on exposure to agentic AI solutions, AI/ML data pipelines, or real-time streaming architectures.
• Strong pre-sales experience, including proposals, commercial shaping, discovery discussions, and turning client goals into a viable, costed engagement.
• Experience using data transformation and orchestration tools such as dbt, Coalesce, Apache Airflow, or Prefect.
• Solid understanding of how data architecture decisions influence AI and ML outcomes.
• Broad capability across data strategy, governance, architecture, modelling, and engineering.
• Ability to engage credibly with both senior executives and technical teams.
• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Data Science, or a related discipline.
• Relevant certifications across cloud platforms, tools, and delivery methods such as Databricks, Snowflake, MS Fabric, data modelling, PRINCE2, Agile, or DAMA.
• People leadership experience.

Additional information

This is a full-time onsite role. The source provided lists Christchurch as the location in the role description, while the job header shows Auckland, New Zealand. No salary, stipend, opening count, start date, application deadline, or applicant count was specified.