{"id":2676799,"url":"https://alion.io/job/walker-smith-ai-delivery-lead","title":"AI Delivery Lead","company":{"id":4423671,"name":"Walker Smith","domain":"walkersmith.co.nz","url":"https://alion.io/company/walkersmith","size_band":null,"is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Manatal","truth_index":null},"role":"AI/ML","role_family":"AI/ML","seniority":"lead","employment_type":null,"work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["Auckland, New Zealand"],"countries":["NZ"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":{"min":180000,"max":220000,"currency":"NZD","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":123596},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":null,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"AI Agents","optional":false},{"name":"AWS","optional":false},{"name":"Snowflake","optional":false}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-10-16T05:18:16Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-10-16","last_verified_at":"2026-10-16T10:27:23Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":0,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":0},"description":"AI Delivery Lead Role\nAI Delivery Lead - Enterprise AI & Transformation (Permanent)\nAI, Data & Digital Delivery | Auckland, New Zealand\nThe Client\nOur client is a well-established New Zealand Financial Services organization with a strong digital reputation and a growing portfolio of financial products used by Kiwi’s all over the country, including through bank and partner channels. They’ve already taken AI out of the pilot stage and into everyday frontline use. Now they’re scaling it into claims and underwriting, and they need someone to own delivery so the AI team can stay focused on building. Our client has moved into the building phase of an ‘Onthology’ so this is legitimate frontier work in the AI space.\nThe Opportunity\nThis is genuinely hands-on delivery leadership in a regulated environment. It’s not a role for someone who has only run traditional IT programmes, or who has only seen AI at demo stage. It suits a delivery or product leader who has taken emerging technology from prototype into production, and who knows what it takes to do that safely when risk, privacy and legal teams are in the room. This newly created role will suit someone who is deeply curious about how patterns (systems, people behaviours and thinking) work.\nYou’ll be the single point of delivery coordination across a multi-channel AI platform (web, messaging and voice) and the use cases that run on it, starting with claims and underwriting journeys. You’ll turn an agreed product roadmap into a delivery plan, keep engineering, data, architecture and the business moving together, and be the person who can tell a promising prototype from something ready to run on live customer claims. There will be opportunities that appear to be vague and almost hidden, those opportunities might not have the right voice or representative sponsorship but you will have an innate ability to see through all of that and then drive into a real-world offering.\nWhat You’ll Be Doing\nOwning intake and prioritisation of AI use cases, and shaping them for value, feasibility, data readiness and risk.\nTurning product priorities into a delivery roadmap with clear milestones, dependencies and capacity.\nCoordinating product owners, business analysts, architects, platform and data engineers, testers and operations across multiple concurrent workstreams.\nBuilding the backlog and driving work through discovery, prototype, pilot, production and scale.\nMaking sure experiments have clear hypotheses and explicit stop, pivot or scale decisions.\nEmbedding responsible AI controls, evidence and go/no-go reviews with risk, security, privacy and legal.\nManaging delivery partners and vendors, and tracking cost, adoption and realised benefits with Finance.\nWhat You’ll Bring\nStrong programme, product or delivery leadership across complex, technology-enabled transformation (8+ years).\nProven experience taking AI, data or emerging technology from prototype into production and scaled use.\nConfident working in a regulated environment, with risk, security, privacy and legal teams as everyday partners.\nEnough technical fluency to challenge architects and engineers, and to spot when a prototype isn’t production-ready.\nPractical understanding of generative AI, agentic AI and automation delivery, including evaluation and monitoring.\nExperience with demand management, prioritisation, capacity planning and executive reporting.\nA self-starter who takes ownership of a problem and drives it to an outcome.\nExperience in insurance or financial services, and exposure to AWS and Snowflake, is strongly regarded.\nWhy Apply\nGenuinely rare opportunity to lead AI delivery in a New Zealand household brand name that’s already past the hype and into production.\nReal scope to shape how AI is governed and scaled, working directly with the Head of AI & Insights which means that you will have a voice at the table.\nA strong, collaborative team and a business that’s growing through new partner channels.\nHow to Apply\nFor a confidential discussion about this role, contact Adam Roi at Walkersmith or apply with confidence via Seek. We look forward to hearing from you. We are only considering candidates who are currently in New Zealand with a Valid Working Rights.","description_format":"text","description_chars":4230,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":null,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":null,"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":[],"hiring_locations":[],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":[],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-10-16T05:18:16Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":86,"band":"hot","label":"Hiring now","p_open":1,"p_active":0.86,"p_room":1,"age_days":0,"expected_fill_days":24,"reasons":["conf:0","win:early"],"computed_at":"2026-10-16T05:45:00Z"},"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":123596,"is_top_pay":false},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/walker-smith-ai-delivery-lead","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/walker-smith-ai-delivery-lead.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-16T10:48:56Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":9418,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-10-17T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":4423671},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=4423671"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fwalker-smith-ai-delivery-lead"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Fwalker-smith-ai-delivery-lead"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Fwalker-smith-ai-delivery-lead"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/walker-smith-ai-delivery-lead\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fwalker-smith-ai-delivery-lead"}]}