Technology Leader at The Planet Group in Chicago, IL

Job Description:

The Role:

Launch is actively seeking a passionate and highly skilled Technology Leader with deep experience in data architecture, cloud engineering, and AI/ML enablement. This individual should have a strong background in spearheading technology initiatives in a consulting capacity. In this pivotal role, you will help shape technology roadmaps, lead strategic engagements, and architect cloud-native solutions focused on data platforms, analytics, and AI. You’ll also play a hands-on role in technical pre-sales, solution development, and delivery risk management while mentoring delivery teams and guiding client engagements. This is a highly visible leadership role requiring a unique mix of technical depth, business acumen, and client relationship-building.

Responsibilities:

• Lead client conversations focused on data-driven solutions, AI enablement, and cloud platform design
• Guide discovery, architecture, and development of world-class data and AI solutions across a broad range of technologies and design patterns
• Collaborate with business and technical stakeholders to translate business needs into scalable, secure technical solutions
• Develop data strategy roadmaps, proposals, and statements of work aligned to client business goals
• Design architectures leveraging cloud-native data platforms, data pipelines, MLOps practices, and AI services
• Partner with other technology leaders to shape complex, cross-functional transformation programs
• Provide program-level architecture oversight and technical quality assurance across client delivery teams
• Support internal knowledge sharing and contribute to the development of reusable frameworks and IP
• Mentor engineers and architects, fostering a culture of technical excellence, innovation, and delivery quality
• Communicate complex concepts to both technical and non-technical audiences, including executive leadership
• Author or review technical documentation, architecture artifacts, and reusable design assets
• Stay current with industry trends in data, AI, and cloud computing, and contribute to Launch thought leadership

Required Qualifications:

• 12+ years of relevant work experience in technology consulting, architecture, or engineering roles
• Proven experience designing and leading data platform, analytics, or AI/ML solutions in the cloud
• Strong delivery experience in at Azure public cloud platform
• Experience in regulated industries; financial services strongly preferred
• Strong understanding of cloud data architecture, including data lakes, lakehouses, streaming, and batch pipelines
• Proficiency in data security, compliance frameworks, and governance best practices
• Demonstrated success developing technical roadmaps and solution architectures aligned to business objectives
• Ability to scope and estimate projects, define resourcing plans, and guide execution from strategy to delivery
• Excellent communication skills; able to engage C-level stakeholders and technical teams alike
• Comfortable leading conversations across disciplines—engineering, product, data science, and business

Preferred Qualifications:

• Prior consulting experience with financial services clients (banking, insurance, capital markets)
• Familiarity with data privacy laws and regulatory frameworks like SOX, GLBA, PCI, or GDPR
• Experience designing event-driven architectures (e.g., Kafka, Event Hubs) and real-time data pipelines
• Familiarity with AI/ML model lifecycle management, feature stores, and MLOps platforms
• Hands-on experience with infrastructure-as-code (IaC) and CI/CD in data and AI environments
• Familiarity with GenAI tools, foundation models, and integration of LLMs into business use cases
• Strong communication experience, including technical evangelism, thought leadership, or speaking at meetups/conferences
• Kubernetes and container orchestration experience
• Background in secure solution design, observability, and platform monitoring

Education & Certifications:

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Data Science, Engineering, or related field
• Cloud certifications (Azure) preferred, especially those related to data architecture or AI engineering

Compensation & Benefits:

As an employee at Launch, you will grow your skills and experience through a variety of exciting project work (across industries and technologies) with some of the top companies in the world! Our employees receive full benefits—medical, dental, vision, short-term disability, long-term disability, life insurance, and matched 401k. We also have an uncapped, take-what-you-need PTO policy. The anticipated wage range for this role is $200,000-$230,000. Education and experience will be highly considered, and we are happy to discuss your wage expectations in more detail throughout our internal interview process.

Employee Type: Regular