Senior AI Centre of Excellence Consultant

Senior AI Centre of Excellence Consultant
Multiple appointments | Select one specialist capability
Location
Johannesburg, South Africa - Onsite / Pan India - Remote
Engagement
12-month, full-time consulting assignment
Sector
Enterprise AI Centre of Excellence - telecommunications
Level
Senior / Lead consultant
Important: This is one recruitment campaign for multiple Senior AI CoE Consultant appointments. You only need to match one specialist capability area. You are not expected to have all eight skill sets.
About the opportunity
We are assembling a senior consulting team to help establish, operate and transfer an enterprise-scale AI Centre of Excellence for a leading telecommunications environment. The programme will move AI initiatives from isolated proofs of concept into secure, governed and measurable production services across multiple business and technology domains.
We are hiring several consultants under one umbrella role. Each successful applicant will lead or support the workstream that matches their primary expertise. Applicants are not required to cover every capability listed below.
What you will contribute
Lead delivery within your selected AI CoE specialist capability and work closely with business, technology, data, risk and security stakeholders.
Turn strategic objectives into practical architectures, controls, delivery artefacts, production services and measurable business outcomes.
Support a governed enterprise agent and AI-solution portfolio, including reusable patterns, human oversight, monitoring and operational controls.
Produce clear, audit-ready documentation, dashboards, runbooks, decision records and handover material relevant to your workstream.
Coach and transfer capability to internal teams through a do-shadow-reverse-shadow-own approach.
Work in a Johannesburg-led, multi-market delivery environment and collaborate across the full AI lifecycle.
Choose the specialist capability that best matches you
1. AI Strategy and Value Realisation: 8+ years in AI strategy, data analytics or business intelligence, with strength in value-pool modelling, business cases, ROI/TCO, benefits tracking, portfolio prioritisation, Power BI and executive reporting.
2. Data and AI Platform Engineering: 8+ years in AI platform architecture, deployment or optimisation. Relevant skills may include Azure/AWS/GCP, Databricks and lakehouse, data products, feature stores, APIs, Docker, Kubernetes, TensorFlow, PyTorch, Keras, MLOps, 5G, IoT or edge platforms.
3. AI Infrastructure Architecture: 8+ years in infrastructure, cloud computing or AI systems architecture. Relevant skills include hybrid/cloud architecture, Kubernetes, Terraform, Ansible, Infrastructure as Code, GPU/CPU/storage optimisation, workload orchestration, monitoring, resilience, security and FinOps.
4. Applied and Agentic AI Solutions: 8+ years designing and delivering enterprise AI solutions, preferably in complex telecommunications environments. Relevant skills include agent frameworks and orchestration, LLMs, RAG, vector stores, prompt/evaluation patterns, TensorFlow, PyTorch, Scikit-learn, Spark, Kafka, microservices, APIs, CRM/ERP integration and human-in-the-loop design.
5. AI Operations - MLOps/LLMOps: 8+ years in MLOps, site reliability engineering or cloud operations for production AI. Relevant skills include CI/CD, model and prompt registries, evaluation and guardrails, observability, drift and safety monitoring, incident and release management, Kubernetes, rollback, service levels and AI FinOps.
6. Responsible AI, Governance and Risk: 8+ years in AI governance, technology risk, privacy or audit in a regulated environment. Relevant knowledge includes responsible-AI controls, BRAiN/GSMA, NIST AI RMF, ISO/IEC 42001, model risk, bias/fairness/safety testing, DPIAs, POPIA, NDPC, GDPR and the EU AI Act.
7. AI Information Security: Minimum 4+ years in information security or cybersecurity, including experience securing AI/ML environments. Relevant skills include AI threat modelling, secure coding, cloud security, privacy, incident response, vulnerability assessment, penetration testing, third-party security reviews, access controls, monitoring and resilience.
8. AI Demand, Governance and Reporting: 8+ years in project/programme governance and reporting, preferably within AI, telecommunications or technology. Relevant skills include demand intake, use-case scoring, forecasting, requirements, commercial feasibility, portfolio prioritisation, six-tollgate governance, programme and capex reporting, Power BI, audit, training and capability handover.
Minimum requirements
Meet the minimum experience requirement for your selected capability: normally 8+ years; 4+ years minimum for the AI Information Security specialisation.
Bachelor's degree in a relevant discipline such as Computer Science, Data Science, Engineering, Information Technology, Cybersecurity, Law or Business Administration, aligned to the selected stream.
Evidence of delivery in a large, complex enterprise; telecommunications or another regulated environment is strongly preferred.
Ability to operate at senior stakeholder level while remaining hands-on enough to produce the required technical, governance or value artefacts.
Strong written and verbal communication, structured problem-solving and knowledge-transfer capability.
Full-time availability for the 12-month engagement, subject to final mobilisation and contracting.
Preferred certifications
Relevant certifications are advantageous and should align with your selected stream. Examples include Azure/AWS/GCP AI or cloud credentials; Databricks; data engineering; MLOps/DevOps; CISSP or CISM; CIPP or CIPM; ISO/IEC 42001; PMP or PRINCE2; and recognised AI/ML, analytics or business-intelligence certifications.
How to apply
Please apply once and clearly identify your primary specialisation. Your CV should include:
Selected capability number and title at the top of the CV.
Current location, availability date and preferred working arrangement.
Relevant qualifications and certifications, including validity where applicable.
Two or three comparable assignments, your personal responsibilities and measurable outcomes.
Specific platforms, frameworks and tools you have used in production.
A good fit in one specialist stream is enough to apply. Please do not self-reject because you have not used every tool named in that stream; we will assess your depth, comparable delivery experience and ability to meet the programme outcomes.

Work arrangement
No