AI & Data Consultant - Professional Services Platform

Interim AI & Data Consultant - Professional Services Platform

London (hybrid) | 6–8 months | Start mid-September

A private-equity-backed group building a platform of accountancy practices across the UK and Europe needs a consultant to lead its AI, automation and data agenda across the portfolio.

This is a client-facing role. You'd sit in a six-person central team, working directly with the UK CEO, as the bridge between a technical centre of excellence and the managing partners of independently run SME firms.

What you'd be doing

• Working with firm leadership to identify where AI and automation genuinely improve margin on high-volume compliance work
• Getting firms' data into a structure where AI is worth deploying at all
• Scoping initiatives with the technical team, then landing them with the firms and driving adoption
• Spotting what one firm already does well, standardising it, and taking it across the group
• Making the commercial case to partners in terms they care about

Alongside that, pricing and cross-referral work across the portfolio.

The distinction that matters:

We're looking for someone who has delivered AI and automation, not directed it. Not the person who owned the vendor relationship or presented the roadmap - the person who was in the detail when it went live and stayed until people were actually using it.

Equally, this is not purely a technical role. You'd be in front of partners most weeks. You need enough depth to be credible with a build team and enough polish to sit with a managing partner and explain what a change is worth to their business.

You'll likely bring:

• A consulting background - Big 4, mid-tier or a specialist AI and data practice
• Hands-on delivery of AI, automation or data initiatives that reached live use and adoption
• Experience inside professional services: accountancy, legal or similar partnership environments
• An accounting or commercial grounding, or consulting with genuine commercial instinct
• Comfort being the most client-facing person in a technical conversation, and the most technical person in a client one

Probably not a fit if your AI experience is strategy, roadmaps or vendor selection; you've overseen deployments rather than delivered them; or your background is enterprise IT rather than professional services.

Please reach out for more info.