Summary
Echelon is hiring a Head of AI Transformation in Riyadh, reporting to the Managing Director. The role leads the AI transformation business, including its pipeline, customer programmes, outcomes, adoption and expansion strategy. The successful candidate will advise customer executives and boards, lead major pursuits, and build the deployment strategy and engagement organisation. Echelon seeks an experienced transformation leader with technical command of LLM systems, commercial programme experience and a record of measured adoption; Arabic and GCC experience are advantages. The package includes a base salary, allowances, performance bonus, medical cover and equity, with terms shared at offer stage.
The posting
As published on echelon.inc. Pulled from the employer's site and shown as they wrote it.
The Role: Leading AI Transformation
Reporting to the Managing Director, you own Echelon’s AI transformation business: its pipeline, its outcomes and the organisation that delivers them. With the Head of Applied AI, you run every engagement as one team; with the CRO, you shape how Echelon wins and grows its accounts.
Set the direction: Define how Echelon transforms its customers: the offer, the engagement model, the sectors where we lead, and the transformation agenda you take to customers.
Own the pipeline: Build the pipeline of AI transformation programmes with chief executives, government leaders and the CRO’s account teams, and lead the largest pursuits.
Advise at the top: Act as trusted adviser to customer chief executives and their boards: run the executive sessions, frame the business case and hold the multi-year roadmap they own.
Answer for outcomes: Own the scope and outcomes of every programme in the portfolio.
Drive adoption: Own adoption, change management and measured value after go-live, as the customer’s long-term partner in making the change hold and grow.
Grow the business: Turn first use cases into multi-year programmes. The CRO owns new customers and contracts; you own programme expansion, and you set the expansion strategy together.
Build the organisation: Hire and lead the deployment strategists and their Engagement Managers; design the operating model, the playbook, the career paths and the partners that add capacity.
Shape Echelon: Bring the field into company strategy: what to build with the Head of Applied AI, where to invest and which delivery partners to bring in.
AI and Technology First
Leadership record: You have 6+ years in transformation or deployment leadership, and have built and led a deployment, transformation or customer-facing technical organisation, as an executive in an AI company, a forward deployed business, or as a founder.
Trusted at the top: Chief executives, boards and government leaders seek your counsel on AI, and trust you to say what it will and will not do.
Technical command: Deep enough in LLM systems, agents, data and evaluation to challenge an architecture, judge what is ready for production and lead technical teams with credibility.
Commercial acumen: You have owned large programmes and their economics: business cases, deal structure, Scopes of Work, and the discipline to decline work that will not create value.
Adoption record: You have taken programmes past go-live to measured adoption, and can show the value they delivered.
Builder of teams: You attract senior talent, develop leaders, and build an organisation that keeps its standard as it scales from a founding team.
Strong Advantage
Sector depth: Deep experience in at least one sector where Echelon leads, such as government, energy, financial services or healthcare.
Regional experience: Programmes delivered in Saudi Arabia or the GCC, ideally with government entities or regulated industries.
Deployment background: Time as a deployment strategist or engagement lead at a forward deployed AI company.
Arabic: Professional fluency in Arabic.
Our Values
Customer first: You measure your work by customer outcomes, and prioritise accordingly.
Ownership mentality: You own outcomes end to end. When something breaks or stalls, you treat it as yours to fix.
Clear communicator: You explain complex systems simply, to operators and executives alike, and make the value of your work visible.
Comfortable with ambiguity: You make progress with incomplete information, partial data and unfamiliar environments, and you enjoy solving problems where there is no structure yet.
Long-term builder: You invest in Echelon’s long-term success, bringing field insight back into our strategy and operations.
Builds others: You measure yourself by the people you develop and the capability you build with customers.
The Seat
Location: Riyadh
Reports to: The Managing Director
Travel: Regular time on customer sites across the region and with partners abroad.
Package: A base salary with housing, transport and education allowances, performance bonus, medical cover, and equity through the employee equity programme. Terms are shared at offer stage.
How We Work
You start from the problem, not the tool. You meet an unclear brief or a broken environment with energy and a plan.
Curiosity: You learn how the work really happens on site and keep learning as the stack moves.
Speed: You move from brief to a first working result quickly and do not wait for perfect conditions.
Rigour: You test claims against the data, check what is delivered and can explain every choice.
Confidence & humility: You challenge and accept challenge, and change your view on evidence, without ego.
Autonomy: You decide with incomplete information and own it; from an outcome, you organise the work yourself.
Resourcefulness: Missing access, partial data, an unfamiliar organisation: you find a way with what is available.
Situational leadership: You lead when the moment calls for it, and follow when someone else has the better call.
A force multiplier: Your playbooks, reviews and coaching make the whole bench faster.
AI-native depth: AI tools are part of how you research, write and decide, and you have led the delivery of something real built on an LLM.
Where you are: A senior leader who has run transformation programmes and can still read an architecture and challenge an estimate.