Data & AI Lead- Director

Publicis Groupe · Bucharest, Braşov, Cluj-Napoca

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Publicis Sapient is a digital transformation partner supporting established organizations in achieving a future, digitally enabled state, both in how they operate and how they deliver value to their customers. We help unlock value through a start-up mindset combined with modern, proven methods. Our approach integrates strategy, consulting, and customer experience with agile engineering and creative problem-solving to deliver measurable business outcomes. Guided by our core values and our purpose, helping people thrive in the brave pursuit of what’s next—our global team of more than 20,000 professionals across 53 offices brings together expertise in technology, data science, consulting, and customer-centricity. By combining these capabilities, we enable our clients to accelerate their businesses through the design and delivery of products and services that their customers truly value.

Publicis Sapient is looking for a Director of Engineering with a strong enterprise-level background to join our team of bright thinkers and doers. You will lead large-scale technology transformations for global organizations, combining enterprise architecture, Data and AI strategy, engineering leadership and consulting expertise. You will shape solutions from executive advisory and opportunity definition through architecture, mobilization and delivery at scale. We are on a mission to transform the world, and you will be instrumental in shaping how we do it with your ideas, thoughts and solutions. 

Responsibilites:

• Partner with C-level and senior business and technology stakeholders to shape, pitch, design and deliver enterprise transformation programs that create measurable business value.
• Lead enterprise technology strategy, architecture, planning and delivery across applications, integration, data, AI, security and cloud operations.
• Define enterprise Data and AI strategies spanning modern data platforms, analytics, machine learning, Generative AI and agentic solutions, with a clear path from proof of value to governed, production-scale adoption.
• Lead discovery and current-state assessments, translating business objectives, regulatory requirements and technology constraints into target architectures, transition roadmaps and investment options.
• Shape strategic pursuits, RFP responses and statements of work, covering solution architecture, delivery approach, team structure, estimates, assumptions, risks and governance.
• Act as technical delivery lead for large, geographically distributed engineering teams, ensuring architecture integrity, engineering quality, delivery predictability, security, resilience and operational readiness.
• Establish enterprise engineering standards and reusable patterns, including reference architectures, platform foundations, CI/CD templates, infrastructure-as-code modules, quality gates and governance controls.
• Build and grow engineering, data and AI capabilities through hiring, mentoring, career development, technical assessment, succession planning and internal enablement. 
• Contribute thought leadership and help define the long-term vision for Publicis Sapient's enterprise technology, Data and AI capabilities.

Skills and Experience:

• A strong track record in consulting or enterprise technology organizations, with proven experience advising executive boards and senior leaders, including CTOs, CIOs and CDOs. Extensive experience defining and governing enterprise architectures across complex, multi-vendor landscapes, including core business systems, legacy platforms, integration, data and cloud.
• Technical management and delivery experience of globally distributed engineering teams of up to 100 people or more, from mobilization through delivery and transition to operations. Experience leading enterprise-scale programs, including portfolio planning, budget and risk management, vendor and partner coordination, and architecture governance. Strong presentation, executive communication, client pitching, proposal leadership and Agile delivery experience.
• Experience leading architecture workshops, current-state assessments, option analysis, dependency mapping and phased transformation roadmaps.
• Solid knowledge of enterprise data platforms and architectures, including lakehouse and medallion patterns, batch and streaming integration, data governance, master data, data quality, semantic layers and self-service analytics.
• Understanding of AI and Generative AI architecture, including RAG, agentic patterns, MLOps and LLMOps, evaluation, observability, cost control and responsible-AI governance.
• Architecture and design knowledge of cloud-native and distributed systems, including APIs, microservices, event-driven integration, containers and serverless, on at least one major cloud platform, preferably Microsoft Azure.
• DevSecOps and automation experience for large-scale delivery, including CI/CD, infrastructure as code, automated testing, policy enforcement and release governance. Strong understanding of security, identity, privacy, data residency, operational resilience, disaster recovery and auditability in regulated enterprise environments.
• Industry knowledge in one or more sectors such as financial services, public sector, energy and utilities, or consumer products and retail, with the ability to connect technology decisions to industry-specific business and regulatory drivers.
• Experience with contemporary engineering technologies such as .NET/C#, Java, JavaScript/TypeScript, Python, SQL and Spark, with the ability to guide architecture and engineering decisions across multidisciplinary teams.
• Strong Quality Engineering mindset, covering test automation, performance, reliability, security and production readiness. 

You Set Yourself Apart With:

• Specific industry knowledge combined with expertise in Microsoft Foundry and Data & AI architecture. 
• Experience designing and delivering AI solutions with Microsoft Foundry, including model selection, agents, RAG with Azure AI Search, evaluation, safety and governance.
• Experience architecting Microsoft Data & AI platforms such as Microsoft Fabric, Azure Databricks, Microsoft Purview and Power BI.
• Microsoft certifications such as Azure Solutions Architect Expert or Azure AI Engineer Associate.
• Experience working with Microsoft account and partner teams, including co-sell motions and funding programs.
• Exposure to other major cloud platforms such as AWS and Google Cloud, and multi-cloud or sovereign-cloud architecture patterns.
• Recognized contribution to thought leadership, reusable accelerators, and organizational capability building

Besides an exciting job, here's what you can expect:

• A fast-paced tech environment
• Continuous growth & learning
• Open feedback culture
• Room for own initiative & ideas
• Transparency about results & strategy
• Recognition & reward for hard work
• Working with a flexible schedule 
• Medical subscription
• Meal tickets
• Extra vacation days - starting with 25 vacation days
• Many others perks 

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