AI Domain Lead

About Tonic

Tonic is a specialist, expertise-led capital markets consultancy. We partner with global financial institutions, including Tier 1 banks, smaller banks, custodians, market infrastructure providers and buy-side firms, to solve complex, high-value problems across the front-to-back trade lifecycle.

We have supported more than 20 institutional clients across four continents, delivering over 100 engagements covering collateral, financing, post-trade, treasury, risk, trading, legal, digital assets and regulatory change. Our work spans the full spectrum from strategic advisory through to hands-on transformation and implementation.

What makes Tonic different is genuine, cross-domain capital markets expertise. Our leadership team and consultants have built their careers inside banks, custodians and buy-side firms, holding senior operations, change and transformation roles across the products and regulations that matter to our clients. We bring that experience directly into every engagement, which is why our clients treat us as long-term partners.

We are now entering a significant phase of growth, with AI as a central pillar of how we scale both our client proposition and our own operating model. This role is one of the most important hires we will make on that growth journey.

The Role

We are hiring an Associate Director to lead the development of Tonic's AI practice. The role has two equally important mandates.

The first is external: to build, sell and deliver AI-led engagements with our capital markets clients, shaping propositions that combine our domain expertise with practical AI and agentic solutions.

The second is internal: to make Tonic itself an AI-enabled business, embedding AI into how we deliver client work, run our sales and mobilisation processes, and capture and scale our domain knowledge.

You will work closely with our CEO, Head of Client Management and Domain Heads, and you will have the scope to shape the practice, the proposition and the team as we grow.

Key Responsibilities

External: Client Proposition and Delivery

• Develop Tonic's AI proposition across our core domains, including collateral, post-trade, treasury, risk, trading, regulatory change and digital assets.

• Identify, qualify and win AI-led engagements across sell-side, buy-side, custodian and market infrastructure clients, working initially through existing relationships and extending into new buying centres.

• Lead client engagements end-to-end, from scoping and commercials through to delivery, with a focus on measurable business outcomes.

• Translate capital markets use cases into practical AI and agentic solutions, including areas such as compliance automation, trade lifecycle exception management, collateral optimisation, document intelligence across ISDAs and CSAs, real-time risk monitoring, KYC and AML, client onboarding, and trading and treasury workflow automation.

• Advise senior stakeholders on AI strategy, target operating models, build-versus-buy decisions, model risk, and the practical realities of deploying AI within regulated capital markets environments.

• Contribute to Tonic's external profile through thought leadership, podcasts, insights, industry events and client workshops.

Internal: AI Enablement of Tonic

• Identify the workflows across Tonic where AI can meaningfully accelerate delivery, improve quality and free our experts to focus on higher-value work. Scope includes client deliverables, research, proposals, sales, mobilisation, knowledge management and training content.

• Design, build and roll out AI tooling that our consultants will adopt and use day-to-day, with adoption and productivity impact as the primary success measures.

• Partner with Operations to embed AI into sales and mobilisation, reducing the time from first client conversation to first deliverable.

• Establish pragmatic internal standards covering data handling, confidentiality, model risk and client IP.

• Run internal enablement or partner with Ai training providers so that Tonic consultants across all domains build practical AI fluency relevant to their work.

Experience and Skills

Essential

• A strong capital markets background, with exposure to one or more of our core domains: collateral, post-trade, treasury, risk, trading or regulatory change.

• Demonstrable experience designing, delivering and scaling AI and Generative AI solutions within financial services, including LLM-powered and agentic systems (orchestration, RAG, tool use, multi-agent patterns).

• A commercial track record in consulting or an equivalent client-facing environment, covering scoping, pricing, winning and delivering engagements, and generating follow-on work.

• Credibility with C-suite and Managing Director level stakeholders, with the ability to translate technical depth into commercial outcomes.

• A working understanding of the regulatory context around AI in financial services, including the EU AI Act, DORA, model risk management and data governance.

• Practical familiarity with major cloud and AI stacks (Azure, AWS, GCP, Databricks) and modern agentic frameworks.

• A genuine interest in the internal mandate and in shaping how a consultancy itself operates, not only in advising clients.

Personal Style

• Ambitious, with high standards and a strong focus on continual improvement.

• Low ego, high accountability.

• Data-driven and disciplined, with the judgement to know when to go deep and when to step back.

• Comfortable being hands-on when the work requires it, and strategic when the situation calls for it.

What We Offer

• A leadership role in one of the most specialist consultancies in capital markets, with AI as a central pillar of our growth strategy.

• Real scope to build the proposition, the team, the tooling and the client portfolio.

• Direct access to the CEO, Domain Heads and senior client relationships from the outset.

• A clear path for progression as the AI practice grows.

• A team that values expertise, trust and continual improvement.