Head of AI Engineering

About the job

Head of AI Engineering

• Full-time
• Contract Type: Long term contract

Company Description

Talan is an international consulting and technology expertise group that supports and accelerates the digital transformation of its clients through technology, data and innovation levers.

For more than 20 years, Talan has been advising and supporting companies and public institutions in defining and implementing their transformation and innovation projects in Switzerland and internationally.

Present on 5 continents in 21 countries, the Group, certified Great Place To Work, has more than 7000 employees.

Equipped with a Research and Innovation Centre, Talan places innovation at the heart of its development and operates in areas of technological change such as Artificial Intelligence, Data Intelligence, Blockchain, to serve the growth of large groups and mid-sized companies in a committed and responsible approach.

By placing "Positive Innovation" at the heart of its strategy, Talan is convinced that it is by serving humans that technology amplifies its impact on society as a whole.

TalanSuisse

Job Description

🌟 Vision

The market goes beyond conversational assistants to enter the era of Cognitive Industrialisation. At Talan Suisse, our conviction is radical: code takes a back seat, context (data, business logic, architecture) and methods become key.

We are currently looking for a versatile and builder leader, capable of architecting complex multi-agent systems, guiding the AI transformation of an IT department and training our engineers in context engineering.

🎯 Mission

Your role will revolve around three fundamental axes, while ensuring a strong anchoring in operational delivery.

1. Client Delivery & Technical Excellence (50%)

• Technically lead Modernisation & Greenfield projects: You lead Legacy Modernization projects enhanced by AI and native AI greenfield software developments as technical director.
• Design and deploy Agentic Software Engineering frameworks: You design and deploy augmented development environments, heavily relying on agentic engineering CLI solutions (Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Github CLI, OpenCode etc.): proprietary skill libraries, memory management, use of the Model Context Protocol, multi-agent workflows. You extend these practices beyond code to DevOps and Product management.
• Industrialise under sovereign constraints: You integrate these agents adopting a "Security-First" approach. You comply with Swiss standards (LPD, FINMA) favouring sovereign or on-premise LLMs when necessary to guarantee the protection of our clients' intellectual property. You incorporate FinOps issues into your decisions.
• Advise IT departments: You advise CIOs & IT managers to catalyse their AI initiatives. You design iterative roadmaps to demonstrate measurable ROI.
• Ensure active technological watch on AI and agentic evolutions to anticipate opportunities, adapt practices and maintain a high level of expertise within teams.

2. Go-to-Market (30%)

• Deploy offers: You bring our agile offers to the market. You personally execute short client missions: AI craft coach to upskill client teams on site, strategic flash consulting, and technical audits to demonstrate immediate value.
• Capitalize on the ecosystem: You rely on the local innovation ecosystem (Trust Valley, EPFL) to reassure on digital sovereignty issues and catalyse initiatives.

3. Talan Enablers (20%)

• Create a training belt: Your mission is not only to train but to train our ecosystem. You empower our experts (Dev, BA, PO, Architects) on practices & build an AI core team to create a real training belt, thus accelerating the deployment of our offers.
• Create synergies within the Talan Group: You act as a strategic bridge with our international expertise. You promote cross-selling, offer convergence and cross-training with other countries in the group to multiply our impact.
• Ensure excellence and adherence: You document practices. Equipped with strong Change Management skills, you know how to manage the legitimate anxiety of teams facing automation.

📈 Objectives 3 to 6 months

Within the first 3 to 6 months, we expect you to have:

• Deployed and secured a significant first mandate, for example Legacy Modernization or Greenfield Agentic Dev with a key client.
• Packaged and completed the first sales of our "Agentic Flash" offers.
• Developed our internal accelerators: Evolved our fundamental building blocks, such as an internal Token Factory & our training programmes & offers, to guarantee industrialisation & scalability of our services.

Qualifications

Essentials:

• Field expertise (5+ years): From Software Engineering, you have held roles as Tech Lead, Architect or CTO. You intimately know production (DevSecOps, Cloud, API) and technical debt management.
• Agentic Software Engineering: Mastery of the latest agentic AI development practices. You have deep expertise in creating and deploying agentic Software Engineering frameworks based on CLI solutions (such as Claude Code, OpenCode), including structuring system instructions (via agents.md), implementing customised skills, orchestrating workflows and managing context memory.
• AI solution architecture: Mastery of ReAct-type architectures, multi-agent orchestration (LangGraph, CrewAI, AutoGen), implementation of the Model Context Protocol (MCP) for integration with complex IS (ERP, databases), and design of advanced information retrieval systems (RAG structured by knowledge graphs).
• Systemic Thinking, Watch & Leadership: You possess a rare capacity for systemic thinking. You ensure cutting-edge technological watch to anticipate rapid ecosystem changes. Pedagogical and resilient, you excel in managing human change.
• Languages: Proficiency in written and spoken French and English.

What will make the difference (Bonus):

• AI FinOps: You have demonstrated expertise in financial optimisation of artificial intelligence pipelines (granular token consumption management, model arbitration, infrastructure sizing).
• Sustainability & Ethics: Awareness of Green IT principles, governance and algorithmic fairness.
• Industrialisation & Governance: Expertise in Context Engineering and deployment of Token Factories to scale LLM usage, while ensuring strict governance (security, auditability, FinOps) adapted to the requirements of regulated Swiss environments.

Additional Information

• Playground: The rare opportunity to build a technological offer and deeply impact the company & our clients.
• Trust & Impact: Zero micro-management, and a Thought Leader position in the French-speaking Swiss region.
• Remuneration: Package aligned with value creation.
• Talan Ecosystem: Major presence in French-speaking Switzerland and international group.
• Teams: Strong multidisciplinary teams on which you can rely, which you will need to support and guide in business transformation.
• Focus: A field expert and business impact evangelist role without managerial or team management components.