Director, PEPI - Technology Services CIO Domain

Director, Technology Services Ai Team [Cio Domain]

Alvarez & Marsal (A&M) is a global consulting firm with over 10,000 entrepreneurial, action and results-oriented professionals in over 40 countries. We take a hands-on approach to solving our clients' problems and assisting them in reaching their potential. Our culture celebrates independent thinkers and doers who positively impact our clients and shape our industry. The collaborative environment and engaging workguided by A&M's core values of integrity, quality, objectivity, fun, personal reward, and inclusive diversityare why our people love working at A&M.

A&M's private equity performance improvement services (PEPI) practice focuses on serving upper middle market and large cap private equity firms who have engaged A&M to help improve operating results at their portfolio companies ($50M$1B+ revenue range).

Our PEPI services include:

• IT / product / engineering [technology services]
• CDD/strategy
• interim management
• merger integration & carve-outs
• rapid results
• supply chain
• CFO services

technology services CIO domain

The technology services team works directly with private equity firms and their portfolio companies to drive measurable value through applied AI. Within the CIO domain, our engagements target the enterprise IT organizationinfrastructure, systems of record, cybersecurity, and IT operationshelping portfolio companies embed AI to reduce cost, strengthen resilience, and accelerate IT-enabled business outcomes. Specific focus areas include:

• AI-enabled IT operating model design and enterprise architecture modernization
• AIOps and intelligent IT operations: predictive incident management, automated remediation, and self-healing infrastructure
• AI governance frameworks: AI-powered capabilities, model standards and lifecycle oversight, and AI capabilities risk management
• data governance: metadata and data classification, lineage and quality standards, access controls, retention and regulatory compliance oversight
• cloud infrastructure readiness for AI workload deployment (Azure, AWS, GCP)
• cybersecurity and AI risk: embedding AI-era controls across identity, access management, threat detection, and security operations
• AI-embedded enterprise systems: experience leveraging AI-native capabilities within core systems of record (SAP, Oracle, Workday, ServiceNow), including embedded copilots, intelligent automation, predictive workflows, and vendor AI roadmap evaluation
• data platform & BI transformation: track record leading large-scale data platform modernization including cloud and modern data platform architecture spanning hyperscalers and data-lake environments, enterprise data governance, and business intelligence enablement to support AI-ready, insight-driven decision-making at scale
• establishment of FinOps for cloud and AI/ML operation capabilities and processes. IT cost optimization through intelligent automation of service desk, IT operations, and infrastructure management
• end-to-end transformation execution, governance, and value tracking tied to IT financial targets

We align AI initiatives with investment theses, financial targets, and operational realities to ensure durable impact.

role overview

As a director in the PEPI technology services AI team [CIO domain], you will independently lead AI-driven value creation engagements across the private equity lifecycle, with a specific focus on the CIO organization of PE-backed portfolio companies. You own scope, workplan, client relationships, and financial outcomes end-to-end. You are the senior accountable leader on the engagement.

This role requires a practitioner who has operated inside or directly alongside CIO organizationssomeone who has personally led IT transformations, managed vendors, governed AI deployments, or run enterprise technology programsand who can translate that hands-on operating experience into rapid, credible impact within the compressed timelines of a PE holding period.

how you will contribute

engagement leadership & client ownership

• Establish and champion the full engagement lifecycle: develop and roll-out playbooks for scoping, workplanning, team management, executive communications, and financial delivery against defined and productized AI targets
• Serve as primary point of contact for portfolio company CIOs, IT leadership teams, and PE deal partnersbuilding trusted advisor relationships that extend across the holding period
• Lead cross-functional engagement teams spanning enterprise architecture, infrastructure, security, data, and IT operations
• Drive executive-level workshops and steering committee presentations; translate complex IT findings into clear financial and operational narratives for PE audiences

AI strategy, diligence & value creation

• Identify and prioritize AI use cases within the CIO domain mapped directly to EBITDA improvement, IT cost reduction, and risk mitigation
• Lead AI-focused diligence workstreams: assess IT infrastructure maturity, data estate readiness, AI governance capabilities, cybersecurity posture, and ERP landscape to size value potential
• Develop AI-enabled IT operating models and transformation roadmaps with specific financial targets, milestones, and accountability structures
• Assess platform-native AI capabilities within ERP and ITSM systems and design adoption roadmaps within PE holding period constraints

transformation execution & governance

• Establish program governance, KPI frameworks, and value tracking tied to IT metrics: MTTR, SLA compliance, automation rate, incident deflection rate, and IT cost per user
• Manage vendor relationships, managed service providers, and implementation partners across timelines, budgets, and execution risks
• Redesign core IT processes to embed AI into operations: AIOps-driven incident triage, AI-assisted change management, automated compliance monitoring, and self-service IT portals
• Align IT organizational structures and talent models to support AI-augmented operations

practice contribution

• Support business development: contribute to proposals, respond to PE firm RFPs, and participate in client pitches
• Mentor senior associates and analysts; contribute to A&M's technology services methodology, tools, and accelerators for CIO domain engagements

required skills & technology fluency

Directors are expected to have demonstrated experience of successfully navigating, rolling out and governing implementations using the technologies below, not merely advised on them. Candidates should be able to speak to specific programs they have run, financial outcomes they delivered, and technical decisions they owned.

enterprise-wide and organizational IT AI strategy & governance

• Design and operationalize enterprise Data and AI governance frameworks: AI powered capabilities and model risk policies, AI acceptable use standards, data lineage and usage controls, and model lifecycle management from deployment through decommission
• Define and implement AI Center of Excellence (CoE) structures within IT organizations: staffing models, operating procedures, intake processes, and build-vs-buy evaluation frameworks
• Conduct AI readiness assessments across IT domainsdata quality, infrastructure elasticity, security posture, and organizational change capacityand translate findings into investment-grade business cases
• Establish KPIs and value tracking mechanisms for AI initiatives tied directly to EBITDA levers: IT cost per user, automation rate, mean time to resolve (MTTR), incident deflection rate, and SLA compliance
• Navigate AI regulatory and compliance risk in enterprise IT contexts: GDPR/CCPA implications for AI data use, SOC 2 audit requirements for AI systems, and NIST AI RMF alignment

AIOps & intelligent IT operations

• Deploy and tune AIOps platformsDynatrace, Datadog, Splunk ITSI, New Relic, IBM AIOps Insights, LogicMonitorincluding alert correlation rules, anomaly detection thresholds, and automated remediation playbooks
• Architect self-healing infrastructure pipelines: event-driven orchestration using ServiceNow ITOM, PagerDuty, xMatters, or equivalentfrom anomaly detection through root cause analysis to auto-remediation
• Configure and govern CMDB in ServiceNow or BMC Helix: CI relationships, dependency mapping, and service maps that underpin AIOps accuracy
• Implement AI-enhanced service desk capabilities: conversational AI agents (ServiceNow Now Assist, Microsoft Copilot Studio), intelligent ticket classification and routing, and self-service deflection measurement
• Deploy log intelligence and observability stacks: Splunk SPL for ML-based alerting, Elastic/ELK with anomaly detection, OpenTelemetry instrumentation standards, and distributed tracing across hybrid environments
• Define and track IT operations metrics: MTTR, MTTD, change success rate, incident volume trends, and cost per ticketwith AI uplift quantified against baseline

cloud infrastructure & AI workload readiness

• Architect cloud environments for AI workload deployment: GPU/TPU compute provisioning on