Senior Manager, FDE/Delivery & Operations Lead, A2O

Job Description & Summary

About the team

Applied Intelligence & Autonomous Operations (A2O) is part of PwC Czech Republic and operates within the xTG / Financial Crime practice. While rooted in Regulatory Compliance and Financial Crime, the team works across banking, insurance and other regulated industries, delivering AI, data and technology solutions that move beyond proof of concept into production. A2O combines PwC’s network, regulatory expertise and market reach with a hands-on, execution-focused approach to solving complex client challenges.

Job description & summary

This is a hands-on leadership role combining ownership of A2O’s flagship client engagements with end-to-end ownership of the FDE bench. You will own technical execution, staffing readiness and the operational health of the teams delivering client engagements. This is not a design-and-hand-off role. We are looking for someone who can take solutions from build to production while ensuring teams remain staffed, developed and ready to meet client demand.

Delivery & Technical Leadership

• Personally lead as tech lead / FDE on one to two flagship client accounts, hands-on through the full build.

• Own the PoC-to-production transition using A2O's auditability-as-architecture methodology, and defend it when clients or internal teams try to shortcut it under deadline pressure.

• Own delivery quality gates and evaluation-framework adherence, working with the eval platform function; escalate early when a build is drifting off scope or timeline rather than waiting for a status meeting to surface it.

• Keep a live view of what is actually shipping across every engagement, so problems are caught in-flight rather than reported after the fact.

Decision Rights

• Hold final call on trade-offs between shipping now and building it properly; no engineering sign-off is required to ship.

• Own day-to-day allocation of the shared engineering pool for active client work, including engineers whose architecture mentorship runs through the Engineering Lead.

• Escalate genuine standoffs on delivery direction to the Director; the Engineering Lead is a technical resource and standard-setter in this structure, not a gate on delivery decisions.

Staffing & Resourcing

• Own the FDE bench end to end: sourcing, onboarding, upskilling, and retention, treating bench depth as a standing risk to manage, not a one-time hiring project. Niche or specialist sourcing channels sourced via the BD/Growth Lead's talent-pipeline partnerships feed into this, but final hiring and bench-integration decisions sit here.

• Staff, allocate, and mentor FDE pods across concurrent engagements, adjusting the bench in real time as scope, risk, or client urgency changes.

• Forecast resourcing needs against pipeline in partnership with the BD/Growth Lead and PMO, and flag staffing gaps before they become a delivery risk.

• Own margin tracking per engagement against the practice's contribution-margin target, and act on it, not just report it.

IP & Product

• Own the practical integration of the reusable accelerator library into live engagements: reference architectures, canonical data models, and evaluation harnesses, so delivery is not rebuilt from zero on every engagement.

• Feed engagement learnings back to the Engineering Lead on what's outdated and what the next twelve months of client demand will require; the library itself is built and owned by Engineering.

• Technical Input to Pursuits (supporting, not owning)

• Provide technical due diligence and solution design input on RFPs, grounded in what has actually shipped, not what is aspirational.

• Represent A2O's delivery credibility in client-facing pursuit conversations when requested by the BD/Growth Lead or Director.

What matters to us

• 8–10 years of professional experience, including 3–5 years of hands-on experience delivering software, IT, AI/ML or data products into production within a regulated or large enterprise environment.

• Demonstrated technical leadership of multidisciplinary data or AI teams, including direct responsibility for staffing, allocating or managing a bench or resourcing pool.

• Confidence owning operational metrics, including resourcing forecasts, engagement margin and bench utilisation.

• Technical fluency across lakehouse and streaming or event-driven architectures, RAG and agentic AI systems, enterprise platforms, vector databases, MLOps/LLMOps and DataOps.

• Experience with IT software development lifecycle practices and their evolution towards Agentic AI lifecycle practices.

• Advanced English and a direct communication style, with the ability to surface technical, staffing and delivery risks early.

What will help you stand out

• Experience with Azure AI Foundry, Microsoft Fabric, Databricks, Azure OpenAI, Azure ML, AWS Bedrock, SageMaker, GCP Vertex AI or BigQuery.

• Hands-on knowledge of LLMs, RAG architectures, AI agents, multi-agent systems, semantic search, evaluation frameworks and agentic loop engineering.

• Experience with MLflow, Docker, Kubernetes, CI/CD, model serving, monitoring, responsible AI, security and compliance controls.

• Familiarity with the EU regulatory landscape for AI and data, particularly GDPR and the EU AI Act. Knowledge of DORA or AMLR is also welcome.

• PSM, PSPO or an equivalent Agile, Scrum or SAFe credential.

• German, French or Spanish language skills.
   

Why you’ll enjoy working here

• Professional growth that matches your ambitions and pace. Gain in months the kind of experience that can take years to build elsewhere.

• Fair pay with no gaps. We are among the few companies in the Czech Republic certified for Equal Pay.

• A flexible benefits programme with 55,000 points to spend on what matters most to you.

• 35 days of paid time off, including three well-being days and two additional days off at the end of the year.

• An opportunity to give back to the community with one paid volunteering day every year.

• The chance to work from one of PwC’s international offices (available from the Senior Associate level).

• We support your learning and development journey: We offer training in business, soft, and digital skills (e.g. Alteryx, Power BI, and more), along with a wide range of additional courses and workshops designed to help you further develop your professional expertise and personal skills.

• A buddy programme, regular feedback, and access to a coach who can support your professional development and career path.

• Extensive well-being support and initiatives promoting a healthy lifestyle, from Dr. Digital and Human Dynamic programmes to workplace yoga and running events.

• An ultrabook and an iPhone with unlimited data.

• Social events and Away Days.

At PwC, we help clients solve today’s and tomorrow’s challenges across audit, consulting, tax, legal, technology, and data. We create an environment where people can learn, grow, and build a career in their own way. We believe the best results come from diverse experiences and perspectives. That’s why we foster an inclusive culture where everyone can be themselves, build on their strengths, and contribute to work that makes a real impact.

Interested in joining us? We’d love to hear from you and tell you more about this opportunity.

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