Job Description

Director of Consulting & Delivery Leadership – ABS

Department: Operations

Employment Type: Full Time

Location: Dublin

As the ABS Consulting and Managed Services organisation continues to scale in size, complexity, and strategic importance (approaching ~200 professionals), Codec is appointing a Director of Consulting & Delivery Leadership to take senior accountability for people leadership, consulting standards, delivery leadership maturity, and customer confidence across the practice. This role is intentionally designed to complement a Master Practitioner model within ABS. Deep technical innovation, architectural excellence, and AI solution design are concentrated in specialist practitioner roles. This role exists to ensure that those innovations are systematically embedded across the organisation, not dependent on individual heroes. The Director is expected to be a highly visible, extroverted leader, actively engaging with employees and customers, setting clear expectations, intervening where standards are not met, and materially raising leadership and delivery capability across ABS. The role owns consulting and people leadership outcomes across ABS but does not own delivery assurance, commercial control, or project governance, which sit with the Chief Delivery Officer (CDO).

Key Responsibilities

Core Accountability The Director of Consulting & Delivery Leadership holds accountability for:

• People leadership standards across ABS Consulting and Managed Services
• Consulting performance expectations and professional behaviours
• Career frameworks, progression paths, and leadership development
• Talent deployment standards, particularly on major or strategic programmes
• Organisation‑wide adoption of modern delivery practices, including AI‑enabled ways of working
• Visible leadership engagement with employees and customers

This role is expected to challenge, intervene, and course‑ correct where standards are not being met.
Key Responsibilities Consulting & People Leadership at Scale

• Lead and set the benchmark for consulting professionalism, behaviour, and leadership maturity across ABS
• Establish clear performance expectations and ensure they are consistently applied
• Create a safe but disciplined environment where under‑performance and capability gaps are surfaced early and addressed
• Own consulting and delivery career pathways, progression criteria, and leadership capability models
• Actively develop Programme Managers, Delivery Leads, and senior consultants into stronger leaders
• Ensure teams operate with clarity of role and responsibility and remain within defined professional boundaries

Customer Leadership & Strategic Engagement

• Act as a senior, credible, and visible client‑facing leader across strategic accounts and complex engagements
• Build customer confidence through leadership presence, consistency, and clear decision‑making
• Act as a senior escalation point for complex or sensitive delivery situations, working in partnership with the CDO
• Support programme boards, governance forums, and delivery recovery situations where leadership intervention is required

Delivery Leadership Impact

• Contribute to improved delivery outcomes through leadership quality, staffing judgement, and early intervention, not through ownership of delivery governance or PMO controls
• Work closely with the CDO to identify leadership‑related delivery risk and act decisively to address it
• Ensure senior delivery roles are filled by the most appropriate and capable leaders for the complexity of the work

Embedding AI‑ Enabled Delivery at Organisational Scale

• Actively support the organisation‑wide rollout of AI‑enabled delivery practices developed by Master Practitioners
• Ensure AI‑enabled delivery becomes the default way of working across ABS teams, not optional enhancements or specialist techniques
• Translate innovative delivery approaches into practical, repeatable standards for teams
• Reinforce expectations that AI improves delivery quality, productivity, and consistency across the organisation
• Expected to use delivery telemetry and tooling outputs (e.g. Azure DevOps) as input into coaching, capability development, and performance management, ensuring AI adoption translates into measurable improvement.

Practice Leadership & Continuous Improvement

• Maintain senior oversight of strategic and high‑risk engagements from a people, leadership, and standards perspective
• Identify recurring organisational friction points, leadership gaps, or capability weaknesses
• Drive continuous improvement initiatives that strengthen consulting maturity, delivery quality, and organisational resilience
• Contribute to leadership planning, organisational design, and scale‑readiness initiatives

Key Relationships Internal

• CEO / Practice Director (ABS)
• Chief Delivery Officer (CDO) / Head of PMO
• Master Practitioners (Architecture, AI, and Technical Excellence)
• Head of Operations
• Programme Managers and Delivery Leads
• Sales and Account Leadership

External

• Executive customer stakeholders
• Programme and governance boards
• Public thought‑leadership audiences via regular leadership contributions on Codec’s LinkedIn and social channels

Skills, Knowledge and Expertise

Experience & Background The ideal candidate will bring:

• Senior leadership experience within a professional services or consulting organisation operating at meaningful scale
• Proven experience leading large, multi‑disciplinary delivery teams
• A track record of owning people performance, leadership development, and career frameworks
• Strong executive‑level customer presence and stakeholder credibility
• Experience operating in complex delivery environments with high customer expectations
• Commercial understanding of fixed‑price and managed‑services delivery models

Specific experience with Microsoft Dynamics, Power Platform, or Azure is not required Personal Characteristics This role requires someone who is:

• Naturally extroverted, visible, and energised by engaging with people
• Comfortable spending significant time with teams and customers
• Confident challenging poor practice and enforcing standards
• Calm, credible, and decisive under pressure
• Pragmatic, resilient, and improvement‑oriented
• Emotionally intelligent, with strong leadership presence
• Comfortable operating in ambiguity and organisational change

Success in This Role Looks Like

• Consulting and delivery teams feel clearly led, supported, and held to account
• Performance issues are addressed early and constructively
• Clear career paths and leadership standards operate across ABS
• Strategic programmes are staffed with appropriate, high‑quality leadership
• AI‑enabled delivery practices are consistently adopted across teams
• Customer confidence improves through visible senior leadership
• ABS scales with stronger professionalism, consistency, and resilience

Role Boundaries The Director of Consulting & Delivery Leadership does not own PMO governance, delivery assurance frameworks, commercial pricing, or contract control. The role operates in close partnership with the CDO, with joint intervention when people and delivery issues intersect, and clear escalation paths where required.