Forward Deployed Consultant (Private Equity)

The problem we're obsessed with

The best analytical work in the world is locked inside human heads and PowerPoint slides. It doesn't compound. It doesn't scale. Every engagement starts from zero.

A market map built this year gets filed away. The judgment a senior consultant develops over a decade; about what questions to ask, where the risks hide, how to structure a narrative; disappears when they move firms. Extraordinary talent. Workflows that haven't changed in twenty years.

Riplo is a software company. We build the operating layer that makes expert analytical work repeatable, scalable, and compounding; starting with private equity diligence, the most rigorous, high-stakes analytical workflow in finance.

We raised $3.1M in pre-seed in December 2025, led by Cherry Ventures, with angels from McKinsey, BCG, QuantumBlack, OpenAI, Goldman Sachs, and Hg Capital.

The category is being defined right now. This role is how we define it.

What you will do

• Own the engagement end to end. You lead live AI-enabled diligence engagements; commercial DD, vendor DD, market analysis. You own the output and the client relationship from kickoff to delivery. A PE partner receives a finished product ready to present to their IC. The bar is the same as McKinsey. The timeline is a fraction of it.

• Close the product feedback loop. Every engagement surfaces what the AI got wrong, where the analyst had to intervene, which question the system couldn't answer. You translate that into structured product input that makes the next engagement faster and better. You are the connective tissue between the work and the platform.

• Build the knowledge architecture. A great diligence framework built today should not have to be rebuilt tomorrow. You turn repeatable patterns into building blocks the platform runs autonomously next time. You are not just delivering work. You are codifying expertise into software.

• Contribute to growth. You know what deal partners care about, what makes a good output, and what the alternatives cost. You use that; opening doors, joining early sales conversations, helping build a GTM motion grounded in genuine expertise.

• Everything else that matters. At this stage, the job changes week to week. What stays constant: you are in the room for every critical decision, and you co-own what follows.

The mindset

• Obsessed with quality. You know what great diligence looks like. You hold the work to the standard you learned in consulting; and you are energised by the challenge of making AI match it, then exceed it.

• Systems thinker. You ask: why did this take as long as it did? Where did the process break down? What would make it ten times faster? You see the workflow underneath the work and you build to fix it.

• Owner, not executor. You do not wait for specs. You see what needs to happen and you make it happen; client deliverable, product improvement, or commercial conversation nobody else is having.

• AI-native, not AI-curious. You use modern tools to move faster, know where they add genuine leverage, and care about what actually makes it into a deliverable a client will trust.

• High bar, low ego. You hold yourself to a standard higher than what is asked. You seek feedback, close loops, and when someone has a better idea you say so.

Who you are

• 3–8 years at MBB or equivalent; at Consultant to Senior Manager level, with meaningful PE diligence experience in commercial DD, vendor DD, or technology DD.

• Software and tech services sector experience is a strong plus. Direct exposure to AI in a PE context; AI portfolio work, technology DD, or AI strategy for funds or portcos; is the sweet spot.

• You have exceptional analytical horsepower; even by the standards of top consulting. You are genuinely interested in AI, ideally with evidence of it: professional usage, side projects, etc.

• You are motivated by the startup opportunity, not just the role. You are comfortable with ambiguity, fluid priorities, and working without a playbook. You are low ego, eager to learn, and team-oriented; someone who makes the people around them better.

• We do not care about pedigree for its own sake. We care about what you have actually done and how fast you learn.

Why this job, why now

Most people who are right for this role are good at their current job. On track. The path ahead is clear. This is not that path.

This is the moment before the category exists; when the decisions you make about how AI-native diligence should work will be the ones the industry copies in five years.

You will be in client meetings, product debates, and commercial conversations that would take a decade to reach at a larger firm. The founding team ran the engagements at McKinsey, BCG, DeepMind, and Hg. We are not building a product about diligence. We are rebuilding it from the inside.

If you want to do the best work of your career and have it actually matter; this is the role.

What we offer

• Competitive salary and meaningful equity from day one

• More context, responsibility, and impact than people with far more senior titles at larger firms

• Direct daily access to founders who have built and backed category-defining companies

• The chance to define what AI-native diligence looks like; from inside the engagements, not a deck about it

   

If this is the problem you want to work on, we want to hear from you.