Technical Director

The role

IF is increasingly being asked to help organisations design and build trustworthy AI‑enabled products and services. To address this need, we’re looking for a Technical Director to join our small but growing team.

As a Technical Director you will be responsible for shaping, supporting and growing our approach to technology within our client work. This will require you to straddle technical strategy and delivery, hire and manage our technical practitioners (perm and freelance), and work across multidisciplinary project teams to deliver working prototypes, proof of concepts and pilots.

As a Director, you will also play a key role helping IF win new work and build strong relationships with clients, as well as contributing to broader new business and marketing efforts.

• You will provide strategic technical guidance across multiple projects. This will involve shaping the overall technology approach, helping the team understand the relevant technical opportunities, challenges and trade‑offs, and ensuring a strong and coherent technical narrative within our project work, and helping teams articulate the role of technology clearly to clients.
• You will support engineers and technical practitioners on project teams, helping them work effectively with the rest of the team, and providing clarity and confidence as the senior technical voice across projects.
• While the main focus of your role will be at a strategic level, you will sometimes play a hands‑on role, working with the broader team on specific technical deliverables.
• You will ensure that project teams deliver high‑quality technical deliverables that align to agreed outcomes.

• You will help qualify, shape and respond to incoming new business, identifying opportunities to sell our technical capabilities.
• You will build relationships across industries and widen the reach of the IF brand to make sure our technical capabilities are understood and sought by potential clients.
• You will work with teams to look for opportunities to use our technical capabilities to extend work or start new streams, helping us deepen and widen our relationships with clients and opening up opportunities for IF to play new roles across programmes of work.
• You will contribute to IF’s thought leadership content: writing blogs, conceptualising frameworks based on our continued findings, and growing our set of tools used by practitioners globally.

• You will ensure that the whole company understands the role of technology and its role in allowing us to deliver impactful client work.
• You be accountable for the hiring of new engineers and technologists (perm and freelance), ensuring we’re building a high‑quality technical capability that enables us to deliver great work.
• You will lead the development of IF’s technical practice, working with the team to create the necessary guidance, processes and tools.
• You will coach and give regular feedback to teams, driving performance through our people and supporting their progression while at IF.

• You have an engineering background with hands on experience launching and supporting multiple digital products and services.
• You have a breadth of experience working with different AI solutions and technologies. You have a solid understanding of both the theory and the practice.
• You have experience supporting and managing senior engineers / technical practitioners, working within multidisciplinary teams.
• You are confident shaping technical strategy and defining technical architectures.
• You have experience in consulting and are comfortable leading client sessions.
• You have experience coaching and developing a practice of technical practitioners.
• You have a clear picture of what good looks like and how to put the right processes and tools in place to ensure consistent high‑quality technical deliverables.
• You are commercially minded and understand how to define a technology approach that aligns with a organisation’s strategy and budget.
• You have a track record of helping win new work for a consultancy.
• You have an interest in and experience of speaking at conferences, engaging in communities of interest and…