Principal AI Consultant

About the Role

Marais Advisory is a boutique AI strategy and implementation firm serving private equity firms and their portfolio companies. We translate AI potential into measurable operational outcomes within PE hold periods. We're growing fast and need a senior practitioner who can own delivery — client-facing, technically deep, and comfortable in ambiguous PE-paced environments.

What You'll Do

* Lead end-to-end delivery of AI strategy and implementation engagements for PE-backed portfolio companies across sectors (telecom, financial services, healthcare, managed services)

* Design and build AI/LLM-powered solutions including data pipelines, APIs, intelligent agents, and analytics platforms

* Serve as a trusted technical advisor to C-suite and PE operating partners — translating business problems into data and AI architectures

* Contribute to proposal development, SOW scoping, and solution design for new engagements

* Mentor junior engineers and coordinate with an India-based delivery team

Required Qualifications

* 7–10 years of experience in data science, AI/ML engineering, or technology consulting

* 2+ years at a top-tier or Big 4 consulting firm (e.g., Booz Allen, Deloitte, McKinsey, Accenture) with direct client delivery responsibility

* Strong Python development skills — FastAPI, pandas, SQLAlchemy, scripting, automation

* Hands-on experience with at least two major cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure) including compute, storage, managed ML services, and deployment

* Experience building or deploying LLM-based solutions — RAG pipelines, prompt engineering, OpenAI/Anthropic/Gemini APIs, or fine-tuning

* Demonstrated ability to work directly with senior client stakeholders (VP, C-suite) in a consulting capacity

* Experience with data platform modernization — ETL/ELT pipelines, Databricks, PostgreSQL, or equivalent

Preferred Qualifications

* Exposure to private equity or financial services environments

* Familiarity with React/TypeScript for lightweight front-end delivery

* Cloud certification (AWS Solutions Architect, GCP Professional Data Engineer, Azure AI Engineer)