Principal Consultant

Principal Automation Consultant

Verve is building an AI and Data consulting practice serving small and mid-sized businesses across Northern California. We help our clients use AI, automation, and data to work smarter - automating manual processes, deploying intelligent agents that handle routine work, and turning their data into decisions. We're looking for a Senior Automation Consultant to lead engagement delivery for our larger and more complex SMB clients and to help develop the broader consulting team.

About the role

As a Senior Automation Consultant, you'll work with our larger SMB clients - organizations with up to a few hundred employees, established leadership teams, and (for our nonprofit clients) active boards of directors. You'll be the senior trusted advisor in the room, helping these organizations think strategically about AI and automation, designing sophisticated multi-agent and data-integrated solutions, and delivering work that produces meaningful business outcomes. You'll also serve as a player-coach for our Automation Consultants - formally responsible for mentoring them, reviewing their work on complex engagements, and helping them grow into more sophisticated capability. This is a farmer role - leads and existing client relationships are provided to you, with the expectation that you'll deepen and expand them through credibility, strategic insight, and high-quality delivery.

What you'll do

• Lead complex engagements end-to-end, working with leadership teams and boards to design and deliver agentic AI systems, multi-agent orchestrations, and solutions that integrate with data warehouses and other production systems
• Serve as the senior AI authority for client leadership - guiding strategic decisions about where AI fits, how to govern it, and how to think about it over a multi-quarter horizon
• Produce strategic deliverables when engagements call for them: AI readiness assessments, multi-quarter automation roadmaps, business cases with ROI analysis, board-ready presentations
• Independently architect smaller multi-agent solutions; partner with Data/AI Engineers on larger or more architecturally complex builds
• Coordinate Automation Specialists, Data/AI Engineers, and PM resources to execute against engagement scope
• Mentor and develop Automation Consultants - review their engagement plans, provide guidance on complex situations, model good consulting craft, and help them grow into Senior-level capability
• Navigate larger organizational dynamics - leadership team disagreements, board governance (especially for nonprofits), competing priorities - to keep engagements moving and outcomes on track
• Stay abreast of the rapidly evolving AI landscape and bring emerging capabilities into client engagements where they create real value
• Represent the practice as a senior AI authority - through client teaching, internal knowledge sharing, and external speaking, writing, or community participation
• Grow your book of business by deepening existing relationships, converting provided leads into long-term clients, and identifying expansion opportunities within your accounts
• Partner with the Practice Manager on the most strategic engagements, particularly where C-suite or board-level work requires shared executive presence

What we're looking for

• 8+ years of total professional experience, with at least 3-5 years working directly with leadership teams or in roles requiring executive-level communication and judgment. We evaluate based on demonstrated capability, not just tenure
• Strong consulting craft - ability to scope ambiguous problems, manage stakeholder dynamics, and produce work that drives business outcomes
• Advanced, hands-on familiarity with all current major AI/LLM platforms (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Copilot, and similar), including their agentic and advanced features (Custom GPTs, Claude Projects, Cowork, Copilot Studio, Operator, and the equivalents that emerge as the space evolves)
• Authoritative working knowledge of how modern AI works - foundation models, prompt engineering, context, retrieval-augmented generation, agentic patterns, multi-agent orchestration, common failure modes - sufficient to teach clients and answer their hard questions credibly
• Demonstrated track record of building production AI solutions, including at least one multi-agent system or agentic orchestration that's running in real business use
• Demonstrated commitment to staying current with a rapidly evolving field
• Foundational understanding of data warehousing and data integration concepts - sufficient to scope engagements that depend on them, partner credibly with Engineers, and explain the architecture to client leadership
• Ability to produce strategic deliverables (AI readiness assessments, roadmaps, business cases, board-ready presentations) that hold up to scrutiny in executive settings
• Ability to mentor and develop other consultants - share knowledge, give constructive feedback, model good craft
• Comfort navigating larger organizational dynamics - leadership teams, formal governance, board-level conversations
• Hands-on experience with multiple low-code automation platforms (Zapier, Make, Power Automate, n8n, or similar)

Preferred

• Experience consulting to or working in larger professional services firms or nonprofits
• Experience with nonprofit governance and board-level dynamics
• Public speaking, writing, or content creation on AI/automation topics
• Familiarity with data warehouse platforms (Snowflake, Databricks, BigQuery) and data integration tools (Fivetran, Airbyte, dbt)
• Experience with strategy consulting frameworks or AI/digital strategy work

Compensation

Base salary: $100,000-$150,000, depending on experience, with target incentive compensation tied to engagement performance, book growth, and team mentorship outcomes.

Location

[Stockton, CA / hybrid / remote - to be specified]