Senior Manager, AI Strategy & Business Development in Toronto

What You'll Do

• Origination and Business Development
  • Identify and originate new AI opportunities within existing and prospective client accounts.
  • Partner closely with sales and account teams to develop account-specific AI growth strategies.
  • Build relationships with senior client stakeholders and uncover business challenges that can be addressed through AI.
  • Lead AI opportunity qualification, discovery, value articulation, and deal-shaping activities.
  • Help clients prioritize AI use cases based on business value, feasibility, adoption requirements, risk, and scalability.
  • Develop compelling AI narratives, points of view, and executive-level propositions that differentiate our capabilities in the market.
  • Expand our AI footprint within strategic accounts by moving conversations from isolated experimentation to broader transformation programs.
  • Maintain a strong understanding of the AI market, our technology partners’ evolving portfolios, client priorities, and competitive offerings.
• Presales and Solution Shaping
  • Lead executive discovery sessions, AI strategy workshops, innovation sessions, and solution envisioning engagements.
  • Translate business priorities into credible AI transformation roadmaps and actionable consulting opportunities.
  • Shape AI pursuits from initial client conversation through qualification, proposal development, oral presentations, negotiation, and transition to delivery.
  • Create and present business cases that connect AI investments to measurable business outcomes.
  • Collaborate with architects and subject matter experts to define solution approaches, estimates, delivery roadmaps, commercial models, assumptions, and risks.
  • Ensure proposed solutions are technically credible, commercially viable, and aligned with the client’s ability to adopt and scale AI.
  • Support proposal responses, executive presentations, demonstrations, proofs of concept, and client-facing solution narratives.
  • Work with our technology partners, including Microsoft and Databricks, to develop and advance joint AI opportunities.
• Executive Client Leadership
  • Act as a trusted AI advisor to C-suite and senior client stakeholders.
  • Help clients navigate the rapidly evolving AI landscape and distinguish practical opportunities from market hype.
  • Advise clients on AI strategy, operating models, adoption, governance, value realization, and responsible deployment.
  • Facilitate conversations that connect AI capabilities to business strategy, workforce transformation, customer experience, operational efficiency, and growth.
  • Build credibility with both business executives and senior technology leaders.
  • Maintain trusted client relationships beyond individual pursuits to support long-term account growth.
• AI Thought Leadership and Market Presence
  • Represent the Data & AI practice in client briefings, executive events, industry forums, and partner discussions.
  • Develop reusable points of view, offerings, demonstrations, and sales enablement materials.
  • Contribute to the evolution of our AI go-to-market strategy and priority solution plays.
  • Bring informed perspectives on Generative AI, Agentic AI, AI-enabled business processes, intelligent applications, and enterprise AI platforms.
  • Help sales and account teams confidently position AI capabilities and initiate meaningful conversations with their clients.
  • Coach consultants, architects, and sales professionals on AI storytelling, value articulation, and opportunity development.
• Delivery and Practice Collaboration
  • Apply practical delivery experience to ensure proposed AI solutions can move successfully from concept to production.
  • Provide senior oversight during the early stages of strategic AI engagements and support a strong transition from sales to delivery.
  • Participate in architecture and delivery reviews for high-profile or strategically important AI programs.
  • Help teams identify delivery risks, adoption barriers, data dependencies, governance requirements, and Responsible AI considerations.
  • Collaborate with AI engineers, data scientists, data engineers, architects, designers, change specialists, and industry experts.
  • Support the development of reusable AI accelerators, demonstrations, reference architectures, and industry solutions.

What You'll Bring

• 10 or more years of experience across Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Data Science, advanced analytics, or related technology consulting disciplines.
• Established professional credibility in AI, with the ability to engage confidently with senior business and technology executives.
• Proven experience in consulting, professional services, technology advisory, or a comparable client-facing environment.
• Demonstrated success in opportunity origination, presales, business development, solution selling, or consulting sales.
• Experience shaping complex AI opportunities, including discovery, qualification, solution development, estimation, proposal creation, presentations, and commercial discussions.
• A track record of helping expand relationships and generate new work within strategic client accounts.
• Strong understanding of Generative AI, Agentic AI, enterprise AI adoption, and the evolution of AI-enabled business processes.
• Ability to translate complex AI concepts into clear business value, compelling executive narratives, and practical transformation roadmaps.
• Experience collaborating directly with sales executives, account leaders, technology partners, technical specialists, and delivery teams.
• Strong executive presence, communication, facilitation, storytelling, and presentation capabilities.
• Delivery experience with enterprise AI programs, providing a practical understanding of architecture, implementation, deployment, adoption, governance, and value realization.
• Strong commercial judgment and the ability to balance client value, technical feasibility, delivery risk, and commercial outcomes.

Technology and AI Experience

• The ideal candidate will have credible experience across several of the following areas:
• Generative AI and Large Language Models
• Agentic AI and multi-agent solutions
• Retrieval-Augmented Generation and enterprise knowledge grounding
• AI orchestration, integration, evaluation, observability, security, and governance
• Responsible AI principles and enterprise risk management
• AI development and agent platforms within our Microsoft and Databricks partner ecosystems
• Enterprise data and AI platforms, including Microsoft Fabric and Azure Databricks
• AI-enabled process transformation, copilots, intelligent automation, and workflow agents