5-7 years of experience in managing large-scale technology or AI programs in regulated environments.
Strong skills in project management, governance, and stakeholder engagement.
Proven ability to influence senior leaders without direct authority.
Exceptional communication skills, both written and verbal, for executive reporting.
Familiarity with AI operating models and financial governance in technology contexts.
Experience in cross-functional collaboration and managing complex dependencies.
Understanding of AI delivery concepts and lifecycle management.
Responsibilities
Establish and manage the Enterprise AI PMO with governance and reporting standards.
Translate multi-year AI strategy into actionable program plans with measurable outcomes.
Oversee the AI use-case intake process and prioritize proposals based on strategic value.
Coordinate delivery across AI workstreams, ensuring alignment on milestones and outcomes.
Track program budgets and financial reporting in partnership with Finance teams.
Embed necessary controls into the program lifecycle, ensuring compliance and risk management.
Prepare concise status reports for senior leadership and facilitate decision-making forums.
Benefits
Highly competitive compensation and benefits package.
Opportunity to work in a multinational organization with offices in 22 countries.
10 days of paid annual leave plus sick leave and national holidays.
Comprehensive insurance plans including medical, dental, and vision.
Retirement savings plans and higher education certification policy.
Access to extensive training opportunities and on-demand courses.
Coaching opportunities with experienced colleagues in innovation labs.
Full Job Description
Our challenge
The AI Lead will help establish and operate the governance, planning, financial management, delivery coordination, and executive reporting capabilities required to scale AI across the enterprise. This role will translate the organization's multi-year AI strategy into an integrated portfolio of initiatives, establish consistent delivery standards, manage dependencies and risks, and provide leadership with clear visibility into progress, investment, value realization, adoption, and control readiness.
Additional Information*
The base salary for this position will vary based on geography and other factors. In accordance with law, the base salary for this role if filled within New York, NY is $140k - $160k/year & benefits (see below).
The Role
Responsibilities:
Enterprise AI Program Management
Establish and operate the Enterprise AI PMO, including program governance, reporting cadence, delivery standards, dependency tracking, escalation paths, and decision forums.
Translate the multi-year AI strategy into an integrated program plan with workstreams, accountable owners, milestones, dependencies, required inputs, and measurable outcomes.
Maintain a single enterprise view of roadmap progress, risks, issues, actions, decisions, dependencies, resource constraints, and executive follow-ups across the AI program.
Use Case Intake, Planning & Prioritization
Manage the AI use-case intake process and ensure proposals are captured consistently with business objective, sponsor, expected value, feasibility, delivery approach, control considerations, and required funding.
Coordinate prioritization discussions so leadership can evaluate use cases against strategic value, readiness, complexity, cost, delivery capacity, risk, and expected adoption.
Partner with business transformation leads and workstream owners to convert approved use cases into clear project plans, milestones, acceptance criteria, and success metrics.
Funding Governance, ROI & Value Realization
Support milestone-based funding governance across approval, proof-of-value, scale-up, and transition to business-as-usual, in partnership with Finance and accountable initiative owners.
Partner with the CFO organization and Controllers to validate assumptions, baselines, savings, realized outcomes, and ongoing investment performance.
Produce portfolio-level views of investment, forecast, value at risk, realized benefits, adoption, and expected returns for senior leadership.
Delivery Coordination & RAID Management
Coordinate delivery across cross-functional AI workstreams and pods by aligning accountable technical, business, and control-function owners around shared plans, milestones, and outcomes.
Maintain integrated project plans, timelines, milestone trackers, RAID logs, dependency maps, action registers, and escalation items across the Enterprise AI Program.
Facilitate structured delivery cadences, identify blockers early, drive follow-ups to resolution, and help ensure workstream owners have the inputs and decisions needed to maintain execution momentum.
Financial Management, FinOps & Cost Transparency
Track program-level budget, forecast, resource assumptions, funding approvals, and financial reporting inputs for the Enterprise AI Program in partnership with Technology Finance and workstream owners.
Partner with FinOps and Technology Finance to establish transparency over compute, token consumption, infrastructure, licenses, vendor, and consulting costs.
Provide clear views of committed spend, utilization, run rate, forecast variance, cost risks, and linkage to approved use cases and business outcomes.
Controls, Risk & Regulatory Readiness
Coordinate with security, data governance, privacy, legal, compliance, model risk, architecture, and audit partners to embed required controls into the program lifecycle.
Help ensure initiatives progress through defined control gates with appropriate documentation, approvals, evidence, and traceability.
Maintain program-level risk reporting and support timely escalation of material control issues, decisions, and remediation actions through the appropriate forums.
Executive Reporting & Stakeholder Management
Prepare concise, decision-oriented status reporting for the CIO, CFO, Enterprise AI leadership, steering forums, QBRs, and other senior governance venues.
Facilitate working sessions and leadership forums, capture decisions, document actions, confirm owners, track deadlines, and support timely escalation where needed.
Act as a central coordination point for program status, priorities, risks, dependencies, escalations, and accountability across business, technology, and corporate functions.
Change, Adoption & Organizational Readiness
Partner with Change and Training leadership to embed communications, role-based enablement, safe-use guidance, feedback loops, and adoption measures into funded initiatives.
Support divisional champion models and strengthen local ownership of outcomes, utilization, workflow change, and sustained business impact.
Coordinate launch- and scale-readiness reviews to ensure capabilities can be adopted safely and sustainably.
Requirements:
Significant experience supporting or managing large-scale technology, AI, digital transformation, or strategic programs within financial services or another complex, regulated environment.
Proven ability to bring structure to complex or evolving programs through integrated project plans, governance routines, RAID management, stakeholder forums, milestone tracking, and executive reporting.
Strong understanding of program delivery, portfolio management, business-case development, prioritization, financial governance, benefits realization, risk management, and organizational change.
Demonstrated ability to influence senior business, technology, finance, and control-function leaders without relying on direct authority.
Exceptional written, verbal, financial, commercial, and executive communication skills, including the ability to create concise decision-ready materials.
Experience managing AI, automation, digital transformation, data, platform, infrastructure, or innovation delivery programs within investment banking, capital markets, or broader financial services.
Familiarity with enterprise AI operating models, responsible AI, model and data controls, FinOps, consumption-based technology economics, and regulated technology environments.
Working familiarity with AI delivery concepts such as use-case lifecycle management, model/data dependencies, production readiness, responsible AI controls, evaluation, adoption tracking, and post-implementation monitoring.
Experience with scaled product delivery, cross-functional pods, use-case lifecycle governance, and transition from pilot to production.
We offer:
A highly competitive compensation and benefits package.
A multinational organization with 58 offices in 22 countries and the possibility to work abroad.
10 days of paid annual leave (plus sick leave and national holidays).
Maternity & paternity leave plans.
A comprehensive insurance plan including medical, dental, vision, life insurance, and long-/short-term disability (plans vary by region).
Retirement savings plans.
A higher education certification policy.
Commuter benefits (varies by region).
Extensive training opportunities, focused on skills, substantive knowledge, and personal development.
On-demand Udemy for Business for all Synechron employees with free access to more than 5000 curated courses.
Coaching opportunities with experienced colleagues from our Financial Innovation Labs (FinLabs) and Center of Excellences (CoE) groups.
Cutting edge projects at the world's leading tier-one banks, financial institutions and insurance firms.
A flat and approachable organization.
A truly diverse, fun-loving, and global work culture.
About Synechron
Synechron is a digital consulting firm that provides technology solutions to financial services companies. The company's services include digital, business consulting, technology, and data analytics. Synechron serves customers in the banking, capital markets, insurance, and asset management industries. The company has offices in North America, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.
