Associate Director/Director - Data Analytics & AI

As an Associate Director / Director in the Data Analytics and AI Practice at QKS Group, your role will involve leading and driving QKS research practices across Data Management & Governance, Analytics, and AI platforms. You will be expected to come from backgrounds such as data engineering, analytics, AI platform, product management, or solution architecture. Your responsibilities will include: - **Practice Leadership:** - Own practice strategy for Data, Analytics & AI, with adjacent scope in BPM and EA. - Build market landscapes, segmentations, trend reports, and research frameworks. - Define SPARK Matrix evaluation criteria and lead vendor assessments. - **Technology Evaluation:** - Analyze vendor architectures across data platforms (lakehouse, warehouse, ingestion, pipelines), AI/ML & LLMOps platforms, metadata, governance, quality, lineage tools, process mining & low-code automation ecosystems, and enterprise architecture platforms. - Assess product capabilities, roadmap maturity, and competitive differentiation. - **Advisory & Insights:** - Conduct advisory sessions with CIO, CDO, CAIO, Heads of Data/AI, Enterprise Architects. - Provide guidance on platform choices, modernization, AI adoption, and automation roadmaps. - **Content & Thought Leadership:** - Publish whitepapers, architecture deep dives, trend predictions, and benchmarking studies. - Present key insights through webinars, videos, and community interactions. - **Cross-functional Collaboration:** - Work closely with SPARK Plus team to produce persona-focused insights. - Mentor junior analysts and scale a small research team over time. **Core Technical Experience:** You must have deep hands-on or architecture-level experience in Data Management, Analytics & AI Platforms, BPM & Automation (Awareness Required), and Enterprise Architecture. Tools like Snowflake, Databricks, BigQuery, Redshift, AI/ML platform architecture, SageMaker, Azure ML, Vertex AI, DataRobot, Process mining, TOGAF principles, LeanIX, Orbus, MEGA, Planview are preferred for this role. **Experience Profile:** Ideal candidates for this role include Data Architects, AI Architects, Analytics Architects, Principal Data Engineers, Senior Product Managers, Directors for Data or AI Platforms, Solutions Consultants, and Pre-sales Architects with 15-20 years of total experience. Candidates with experience in designing, implementing, or evaluating real enterprise data/AI systems are preferred. By joining QKS Group, you will have the opportunity to lead global research in a high-growth domain, gain direct visibility with senior industry leaders, shape QKS's Data Analytics and AI Technology practice, and contribute to SPARK Matrix evaluations in a fast-moving, product-led, analyst-driven environment.,