{"id":1263174,"url":"https://alion.io/job/ahead-data-principal-technical-consultant","title":"Data Principal Technical Consultant","company":{"id":3614,"name":"AHEAD","domain":"ahead.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/ahead","size_band":"1001-5000","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Lever","truth_index":{"grade":"B","score":73,"open_postings":43,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":0.884,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":64,"computed_at":"2026-09-29T05:45:00Z"}},"role":"Data Science","role_family":"Data Science","seniority":"lead","employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"remote","remote_scope":"stated_countries","remote_scope_basis":"board_field","remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":[],"countries":[],"hiring_countries":["US"],"hiring_countries_total":1,"salary":{"min":230000,"max":275000,"currency":"USD","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":275000},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":12,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"AWS","optional":false},{"name":"Azure","optional":false},{"name":"Databricks","optional":false},{"name":"GCP","optional":false},{"name":"Kubernetes","optional":false},{"name":"Microsoft Fabric","optional":false},{"name":"Snowflake","optional":false}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-09-24T17:54:21Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-09-24","last_verified_at":"2026-09-29T18:52:14Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":5,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":5},"description":"The Principal Technical Consultant is the senior technical leader responsible for architectural leadership, technical oversight, solution governance, and engineering direction across complex client engagements. Working closely with the Principal Consultant (Engagement Lead), this role ensures solutions are strategically aligned, architecturally sound, scalable, secure, and successfully delivered.\nPrincipal Technical Consultants provide leadership across data, analytics, AI, cloud, governance, and modern data platform initiatives by shaping solution strategy, coaching engineering teams, resolving complex technical challenges, and ensuring delivery quality throughout the engagement lifecycle. While they remain hands-on when appropriate, their primary responsibility is enabling delivery teams through technical leadership, architectural governance, engineering excellence, risk management, and consultative guidance rather than serving as the primary individual contributor.\nBeyond client delivery, Principal Technical Consultants strengthen the Data Practice by developing technical talent, advancing delivery methodologies, improving reusable assets, driving innovation, supporting business development, and contributing to the long-term growth of AHEAD’s technical capabilities.\nRoles & Responsibilities\nTechnical Leadership and Solution Delivery\nServe as the senior technical leader across complex client engagements, providing architectural direction and technical oversight throughout the delivery lifecycle.\nPartner with the Principal Consultant and Project Manager to align technical execution with business objectives, delivery plans, and client expectations.\nEstablish technical strategy, solution architecture, integration approaches, implementation standards, and engineering best practices.\nReview and approve technical designs, architectures, code quality, data models, integrations, and engineering deliverables.\nGuide engineering teams through complex technical challenges while ensuring consistency across multiple workstreams.\nProactively identify technical risks, architectural concerns, performance issues, and implementation challenges, and develop mitigation strategies before they affect delivery.\nAct as the primary technical escalation point for delivery teams, providing guidance on complex issues and critical client situations.\nEnsure solutions are scalable, secure, maintainable, operationally supportable, and aligned with enterprise architecture standards.\nLead technical workshops, architecture reviews, design sessions, proof of concept efforts, and executive technical presentations.\nMaintain accountability for technical quality, engineering excellence, and successful technical outcomes.\nSolution Strategy and Business Development\nPartner with Client Directors, Principal Consultants, and Solution Architects during discovery, assessments, and solution development.\nLead technical discovery workshops and architecture assessments that shape client transformation strategies.\nDevelop solution architectures, technical approaches, estimates, implementation strategies, and technical proposals.\nCommunicate technical concepts effectively to executive, business, and technical audiences.\nIdentify opportunities to expand client engagements through additional capabilities, modern architectures, and emerging technologies.\nEnsure proposed solutions balance business value, technical feasibility, delivery complexity, cost, and long-term maintainability.\nTechnical Leadership and Practice Growth\nDrive the evolution of technical standards, reference architectures, engineering frameworks, reusable accelerators, and delivery best practices.\nServe as a recognized technical leader across modern data platforms, cloud technologies, AI, governance, and analytics.\nMentor and coach Technical Consultants, Senior Technical Consultants, and Solution Architects through technical reviews, architecture guidance, and career development.\nSupport recruiting, interviewing, onboarding, certification planning, technical enablement, and capability development.\nLead innovation initiatives, evaluate emerging technologies, and contribute to technical thought leadership across the Data Practice.\nPromote engineering excellence, collaboration, knowledge sharing, and continuous improvement across the organization.\nExpectations\nPrincipal Technical Consultants are expected to consistently demonstrate technical leadership, architectural excellence, consulting effectiveness, business awareness, and accountability while enabling successful delivery across complex client engagements.\nLeadership and Ownership\nDemonstrate end-to-end ownership for technical delivery, architecture quality, engineering standards, and technical outcomes.\nEstablish technical direction, governance, priorities, and decision frameworks across engineering teams.\nMake sound architectural decisions while balancing technical risk, delivery constraints, business priorities, and long-term maintainability.\nCoach technical leaders, develop engineering talent, and foster a culture of accountability and technical excellence.\nBusiness and Consulting Acumen\nUnderstand client business objectives and translate them into scalable technical solutions.\nApply structured thinking and consultative problem solving when evaluating technical alternatives and making architectural recommendations.\nClearly communicate technical tradeoffs, risks, assumptions, and recommendations to executive and technical stakeholders.\nBalance business outcomes with technical quality, delivery timelines, operational supportability, and total cost of ownership.\nTechnical Excellence\nServe as the technical authority for complex architectures, integrations, cloud platforms, data engineering, AI, governance, and modern data ecosystems.\nEnsure solutions are scalable, secure, maintainable, performant, and aligned with enterprise standards.\nDrive consistency through architecture governance, design reviews, code reviews, and engineering best practices.\nContinuously improve delivery quality by advancing reusable frameworks, standards, automation, and technical accelerators.\nClient and Technical Relationships\nBuild trusted relationships with client technology leaders through credibility, technical expertise, and consultative leadership.\nFacilitate technical decision-making across engineering teams, architects, and executive stakeholders.\nResolve complex technical conflicts while building consensus across multiple teams.\nRepresent AHEAD with professionalism, executive presence, and technical credibility.\nPractice Leadership\nStrengthen technical capabilities through mentoring, innovation, reusable assets, technical standards, and continuous improvement.\nDevelop future technical leaders and foster a culture of engineering excellence and collaboration.\nContribute to business development, technical strategy, solution innovation, and practice growth initiatives.\nQualifications\nRequired\nBachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, Mathematics, Data Science, or a related technical discipline.\nTypically 12-15+ years of experience designing and delivering enterprise data, analytics, AI, cloud, or digital transformation solutions.\nMinimum seven years of consulting or professional services experience leading technical delivery for complex enterprise engagements.\nDemonstrated success as a Technical Lead, Solution Architect, Principal Architect, or senior engineering leader on large-scale transformation initiatives.\nDeep expertise in modern data platforms, cloud ecosystems, data engineering, enterprise architecture, AI, analytics, governance, integration, and distributed systems.\nExperience leading architecture reviews, technical governance, engineering standards, and enterprise solution design.\nStrong communication, facilitation, consulting, mentoring, and stakeholder management skills, with the ability to influence executive and technical audiences.\nPreferred\nMaster’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field.\nProfessional certifications in Snowflake, Databricks, Microsoft Fabric, Azure, AWS, Google Cloud Platform, Kubernetes, or other enterprise technologies.\nExperience leading enterprise modernization, AI adoption, cloud migration, data platform transformation, or enterprise architecture initiatives.\nExperience developing technical offerings, reference architectures, engineering frameworks, reusable IP, or practice enablement 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