AHEAD builds platforms for digital business. By weaving together advances in cloud infrastructure, automation and analytics, and software delivery, we help enterprises deliver on the promise of digital transformation. At AHEAD, we prioritize creating a culture of belonging, where all perspectives and voices are represented, valued, respected, and heard. We create spaces to empower everyone to speak up, make change, and drive the culture at AHEAD.  We are an equal opportunity employer, and do not discriminate based on an individual's race, national origin, color, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, religion, age, disability, marital status, or any other protected characteristic under applicable law, whether actual or perceived.  We embrace all candidates that will contribute to the diversification and enrichment of ideas and perspectives at AHEAD.  As a Principal Technical Consultant, you will utilize your expertise and experience to architect, design, develop and deploy solutions for an array of technologies. In addition, a Principal Technical Consultant can drive a collaborative team leading, mentoring and ensuring development efforts are well documented and delivered with quality, owning the overall outcome of projects. A Principal Technical Consultant is a highly experienced field professional, who combines an excellent breadth of knowledge across open-source and cloud technologies with a proven track record of delivery. They are expected to exhibit a high degree of commercial awareness along with exceptional communication skills. They are trusted to lead large engagements with our most technically complex and politically demanding customers and can be called upon for escalations into other accounts.. There is an expectation of at least 25% travel. Roles and Responsibilities:

Lead project teams to deploy solutions across open-source and cloud technologies.

Ability to architect open-source and cloud related technology solutions involving such challenges as storage, messaging, streaming, analysis, scalability, development operations and security

Participate in pre-sales cycle as technical expert including assisting Sales, System Engineers and Professional Services teams to drive open-source and cloud technologies adoption and maturation

Ensuring integration components are cohesive and meet project requirements

Supporting capacity planning functions to ensure adequate infrastructure exists to support growth

Assisting development team in troubleshooting, coding, testing, implementation, and documenting solutions

Lead complex programs of multiple resources

Lead the architecture and design of complex solutions

Lead the creation of written deliverables

Lead client demos and working sessions

Lead integration design sessions

Lead client workshops as process and technical expert

Escalation point for project team

Work to influence team members, broader internal team, and external customers, likely including senior management, to agree and accept new concepts, practices, and approaches

Obtain and maintain certifications with associated qualifications

Maintain expert level certifications

Identify and communicate opportunities

Provide thought leadership to Ahead and our customers

Communicate with customers, which may include top management, on matters that require explanation, interpretation, and / or advising

Generate differentiated marketing thought leadership for marketing

Craft innovative and high impact solutions for complex client programs, relying on large teams to implement

Contribute to projects/programs that may address future concepts, products, and technologies.

Achieve high team standards.  Contributes to the refinement of methodology and best practices to establish quality and effectiveness

Understands performance, scaling and functional characteristics of software technologies

Drive consensus with customer in solving complex solutions

Mentor junior staff and support project leadership

Qualifications:

10+ years of professional technical experience, 5+ years of hands-on Big Data architecture experience

5+ years of experience building highly scalable Big Data solutions using Hadoop, Spark, stream processing, and Lambda architecture

Experience with Big Data administration, pipeline or code optimization, and complex event processing

Experience implementing complex solutions in large enterprise companies

Experience working in data platforms & cloud environments (AWS and / or Azure), Snowflake, Databricks

Strong client-facing communication and facilitation skills 

Customer facing role for min. of 7+ years

7+ years designing, securing and deploying large-scale applications and solutions

Experience with one of the major cloud vendor environments (development, access, migration)

Effectively communicate with, and present to all levels of the organization

Proven presentation and negotiating skills

Diplomatic approach able to facilitate issue resolution

Subject matter expert in open-source and cloud technologies

Architect level development skills in at least one development language (ex. Java, Python, etc.)

Architect level development skills in at least one messaging protocol (ex. Kafka, RabbitMQ, JMS, etc.)

Recognized expertise in at least one area within the organization

Demonstrate deep expertise across multiple technologies

Able to articulate trade-offs between architectural approaches

Strong skills integrating third party tools/technologies

Strong project and situational awareness

Strong attention to detail

Self-starter

Able to travel of at least 25%

Expectations:

A lead contributor to their team and the organization as a whole

Bring thought leadership to our organization and our customers.  Influences strategic direction and ensure quality assurance for projects

Contribute to projects/programs that may address future concepts, products, and technologies. 

Coordinate cross-practice and can contribute to cross-practice deliverables can help draft standards

Lead multiple resources when on a cross-practice project

Establishes strong, long term professional relationships with team members across Sales, Pre-Sales and Post-Sales

Ability to “sell” company values, resources and product as warranted to the customer

Be an early adopter of new certifications

Utilized by presales for opportunity identification, scoping and positioning services and products including opportunities across practices and engages pre-sales to begin new campaigns that cross practices

Primary contributor to complex workshops that span multiple practice areas inside of AHEAD

Be able to provide advanced data or situational analysis that requires the evaluation of intangibles

Drive scoping, planning, and methodology for critical projects

Work on impactful and unique issues

Support initiatives beyond area of responsibility

Encourage cross team interaction

Motivate people to think creatively

Achieve success through others