Head of Data & AI

We are searching for an experienced Head of Data & AI to join our client’s global transformation agenda. As Head of Data & AI, you will establish, scale and lead the center of excellence that powers our client’s Agentic AI, Data Science and Forward Deployed Engineering capabilities for some of the world’s most admired brands.

This is not a staff augmentation role or a traditional delivery center leadership title. You will build a magnet for the best AI and data talent in Southern Europe, design a nearshore operating model that partners seamlessly with our global client teams, and create the cultural and technical conditions under which agentic systems get architected, shipped and scaled. You will have the backing of our client’s global network, WPP Open’s platform capabilities, and a senior leadership team that sees Athens as foundational to how they deliver transformation at scale.

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Our client is a leader in personalized customer experiences. The company is a world-leading Centre of Excellence that helps businesses humanize the relationship between the brand and the customer through hyper-personalization at scale, marketing automation, and CRM. With the brain of a consultancy, the heart of an agency, and the power of technology and data, they work with some of the world’s most admired brands on their transformation journey to becoming truly customer-centric. Together, they are 1000+ technology specialists, data scientists, strategic thinkers, consultants, operations experts, and creative minds from 55+ nationalities.

Key Responsibilities

• Building the Hub from the Ground Up: Standing up the Athens Talent Hub as a true center of excellence, defining the physical and cultural footprint, establishing the operating model, and architecting how the hub integrates with our client’s global delivery network and WPP’s broader ecosystem. You will own the full GM mandate: space, structure, headcount plan, P&L contribution, and the rhythm of how the office runs.
• Attracting and Growing Elite AI & Data Talent: Leading the strategy to attract, hire, develop, and retain AI Data Engineers, Agentic Experts, Data Scientists, and Forward Deployed Engineers. You will build deep roots into the Greek and broader Southern European tech ecosystem, universities, research labs, senior ICs, and returning-diaspora talent, and make Athens the place the region’s best engineers want to work.
• Leading Nearshore Delivery for Global Clients: Partnering with their global account teams and the Head of Agentic AI to embed Athens-based pods into multi-million-dollar, multi-year agentic AI programs for enterprise clients. You will ensure the hub delivers with the same client intimacy, quality bar, and commercial discipline as any client-facing market, while operating within a nearshore cost and time-zone advantage.
• Co-Delivering at the Senior Client Level: Acting as a visible leader in front of global clients, joining CMO/COO/CIO conversations where Athens capability is being brought to bear, sponsoring major programs, and ensuring that nearshore delivery never feels like a handoff. You will be the senior face of the hub in client-facing moments that matter.
• Setting the Standard for Technical & Delivery Excellence: Establishing the engineering culture, delivery methodology, quality gates, and ways-of-working that make Athens synonymous with technical excellence in AI engineering, data science, and agentic systems. You will define what “great” looks like for the hub and hold the organization to it.
• Building Strategic Partnerships Across WPP & Our Client: Forging deep relationships with their market leads, practice heads, and WPP Open platform teams so that Athens is integrated into the global network, not isolated from it. You will make sure the hub is the first call when global teams need senior AI, data, or agentic capability.
• Shaping the Future of Nearshore AI Delivery: Acting as a leading voice for how nearshore centers should operate in the agentic era, influencing internal strategy, shaping how they scale similar hubs, and representing our client in the regional ecosystem through speaking, partnerships, and community building.

Required Qualifications

• Proven Hub Builder: Demonstrated track record of building a delivery or capability hub from near-zero to scale, ideally in a nearshore or offshore context. You know what it takes to go from the first ten hires to a hundred-plus without losing the culture that made the first ten great.
• Global Consultancy or Big 4 Pedigree: Experience operating inside a global consultancy, systems integrator, or Big 4 environment - you understand how to run a center that serves global clients, how to manage utilization and margin, and how to work across matrixed international organizations.
• AI, Data & Engineering Leadership Credibility: A strong enough technical foundation across AI/ML engineering, data science, and modern agentic tooling that senior engineers and scientists respect you and clients trust you. You do not need to out-engineer your best engineers, but you need to credibly lead them.
• Talent Magnet: A natural ability to attract, recruit, and retain top-tier AI and data talent. You have a strong personal network in the Greek and/or broader Southern European tech ecosystem, or the credibility and conviction to build one quickly.
• Client-Facing Seniority: Comfort and credibility sitting in senior client conversations alongside the Head of Agentic AI and global account leaders. You can translate between the hub’s technical depth and the client’s commercial reality, and you represent the hub externally without needing air cover.
• Nearshore Operating Fluency: Deep understanding of how nearshore models work, time-zone design, pod structures, handoff protocols, cultural bridging, commercial structuring and a clear point of view on how to make nearshore feel indistinguishable from onshore for the client.
• Cultural Architect: A commitment to building a specific kind of place - one where engineers, scientists, and forward-deployed experts genuinely want to work. You think deliberately about culture, rituals, physical space, career paths, and the small details that make an office a community rather than a cost center.
• Commercial & Operational Discipline: Experience owning a P&L or significant operational mandate. You understand utilization, margin, pricing, capacity planning, and the operating rhythm of a professional services business.
• Global Collaboration & Influence: Proven ability to operate inside a global matrix, partnering with market leads, practice heads, and platform teams across geographies, and pulling the wider network’s resources toward your hub and your clients.
• Language & Market Fit: Fluent English; Greek strongly preferred. Deep familiarity with the Athens market, talent pools, salary benchmarks, real estate, regulatory and employment context or a clear credible plan to get there in the first ninety days.
• Builder’s Temperament: Comfortable with ambiguity, energized by a blank page, and pragmatic about the unglamorous parts of hub-building (the lease, the laptops, the first ten offers, the first client escalation). You lead from the front on the hard stuff.

Nice-to-Have Skills

• Experience in building and scaling AI, Data Science, or Engineering Centers of Excellence within international organizations.
• Established relationships with universities, research institutions, and technology communities across Greece or Southern Europe.
• Previous involvement in Agentic AI initiatives, advanced AI/ML platforms, or emerging AI technologies.
• Experience representing an organization at industry events, conferences, speaking engagements, or ecosystem partnerships.
• Familiarity with the operational, legal, and commercial aspects of setting up and managing technology hubs in multiple countries.
• Ability to drive organizational change and influence executive stakeholders in large, matrixed environments undergoing digital transformation.

What They Offer

• Work at the cutting edge of agentic AI, solving real-world problems for large Global

  clients like Coke, IKEA, Volvo, DELL, etc.

• Shape the playbook, don’t inherit it. The patterns for enterprise agentic AI are being written now, and you’ll be writing theirs.
• Be part of a well-established global hub in Athens, with international exposure and career opportunities across their offices around the world.