Principal Technical Consultant, App Dev

AHEAD builds platforms for digital business. By weaving together advances in cloud infrastructure, automation and analytics, and software delivery, we help enterprises deliver on the promise of digital transformation.

At AHEAD, we prioritize creating a culture of belonging, where all perspectives and voices are represented, valued, respected, and heard. We create spaces to empower everyone to speak up, make change, and drive the culture at AHEAD.

We are an equal opportunity employer, and do not discriminate based on an individual's race, national origin, color, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, religion, age, disability, marital status, or any other protected characteristic under applicable law, whether actual or perceived.

***We embrace all candidates that will contribute to the diversification and enrichment of ideas and perspectives at AHEAD.***

This leadership role within the Modern Apps practice focuses on guiding clients through greenfield application development and application modernization initiatives, with a strong emphasis on technical leadership, architectural judgment, and delivery execution. The ideal candidate will bring deep expertise in modern application architectures, cloud-native technologies, and modernization strategies, while leading engagements from strategy through implementation and solution delivery.

In Modern Apps, the Principal Technical Consultant (PTC) is expected to lead teams building and modernizing web applications, mobile applications, APIs, functions (AWS Lambda/Azure Functions/GCP Functions), and related platform services. This includes using AI-assisted engineering tools such as agentic IDEs and autonomous development platforms to accelerate delivery while maintaining accountability for architecture, security, scalability, maintainability, and measurable business outcomes.

The role is highly client-facing and consulting-oriented. The PTC must be comfortable leading discovery sessions, facilitating workshops, defining modernization strategies, shaping target architectures, supporting pre-sales efforts, and presenting complex technical concepts to audiences ranging from engineers to executive leadership in addition to being a hands-on software engineer delivering code.

### Responsibilities

Technical Expertise

• Facilitate application and platform assessments, modernization strategy development, target architecture design, roadmap creation, and planning workshops.
• Lead technical teams across the full application landscape (CI/CD, testing, data migrations, architecture, application code) and review and sign off on key deliverables including assessments, architecture blueprints, migration plans, and proof-of-concept outcomes.
• Establish standards across security, DevSecOps, cloud architecture, observability, testing, and operational readiness.
• Demonstrate effective personal use of AI-assisted software delivery tools and help others use them effectively by structuring context, setting expectations, validating outputs, and ensuring engineering quality.
• Lead, mentor, and guide consultants and client team members through implementation challenges and modern engineering practices.
• Contribute to practice development through reusable assets, accelerators, methodologies, and thought leadership.

Consulting & Client Leadership

• Build and sustain trust-based relationships with client Directors, VPs, and C-level technology leaders, positioning yourself and AHEAD as the trusted advisor on modernization strategy and execution.
• Tailor communication style and storyline to the audience — from engineers to C-level — and lead discovery sessions, workshops, executive readouts, and difficult conversations with confidence, empathy, and clarity. Navigate client organizational dynamics and manage expectations on outcomes, timelines, and delivery risks.
• Apply structured, hypothesis-driven problem solving to ambiguous client situations: frame the core business issues, design the analyses needed to test them, and synthesize findings into a defensible point of view — even when information is incomplete or conflicting.
• Develop modernization strategies that ladder up to clients' business and digital transformation objectives, accounting for organizational readiness, change management, and operating-model implications alongside the technical roadmap.
• Build and defend the business case for modernization — quantifying TCO, ROI, and risk reduction — and use the client’s cost and value drivers to prioritize candidates, sequence the roadmap, and frame trade-offs.
• Decompose enterprise modernization programs into pragmatic workstreams, sequencing decisions based on business value, risk, dependencies, and organizational readiness rather than purely technical considerations.
• Continually identify new ways to serve the client, surfacing follow-on opportunities and expanding the footprint of the engagement based on observed business needs.
• Lead pre-sales and pursuit efforts for modernization opportunities: shape the opportunity with the client, structure the solution, scope and estimate the work, lead proposal development and technical demonstrations, and own the technical credibility of the pursuit through close. Contribute to commercial structuring and pricing decisions.

### Qualifiactions

Technical Expertise

• Significant experience leading large-scale application transformation, custom development, or modernization engagements for enterprise clients.
• Deep expertise in modernization strategies and patterns, including refactoring, rearchitecting, rebuilding, and related portfolio transformation approaches.
• Expert-level understanding of cloud-native architecture (microservices, APIs, event-driven patterns, serverless, containers, orchestration) with in-depth proficiency on at least one ma