Job Description

The Role

This is not a conventional infrastructure leadership position.

The Head of AI Platforms will build and lead the foundational platform layer that makes IHG’s AI ambitions possible at enterprise scale. While the AI Solutions Delivery and Product Management teams define what gets built and how it gets delivered, this role defines what everything runs on — and ensures that foundation is secure, observable, cost-efficient, and built to scale across IHG’s entire technology organization.

You will lead a focused team of engineers responsible for the platforms, shared capabilities, and governance frameworks that underpin every AI initiative IHG undertakes. Your work is not downstream of the AI roadmap — it is the infrastructure that makes the roadmap real. Without a world-class AI platform, even the best models and the best product ideas stall at the edge of production.

As a peer to the Head of Strategic AI Solutions Delivery and the Head of AI Product Management, you will sit at the center of IHG’s AI leadership triad — representing the platform perspective in every major architectural, investment, and delivery decision the organization makes.

Your Operating Model — Platform as a Strategic Asset

Enterprise-Grade, AI-Native

You will design and operate a platform organization that serves not just the AI team, but the full IHG enterprise. Every capability you build — from identity and access management to agent governance to LLM cost controls — will be designed to scale horizontally across business domains, geographies, and delivery teams. You are building a platform for the company, not a team-specific utility.

Small Team, Outsized Leverage

Your team is intentionally lean — a concentrated group of platform engineers who build capabilities that multiply the effectiveness of every engineer, every AI agent, and every product squad that depends on them. The measure of your team’s success is not headcount — it is how many delivery teams can move faster because of the foundation you’ve built.

Platform as an Enabling Partnership

You will operate as a proactive partner to the Solutions Delivery and Product Management organizations — not as a gatekeeper or a shared services queue. You will anticipate their platform needs before they become blockers, establish clear self-service patterns wherever possible, and build the governance guardrails that let delivery teams move fast without accumulating risk.

What You’ll Drive

• Own and execute the AI Platform strategy — defining the multi-year roadmap for IHG’s AI infrastructure, shared capabilities, and governance frameworks. Ensure the platform roadmap is aligned to enterprise technology strategy and actively anticipates the needs of AI delivery teams across the organization.

• Lead Platform Strategy and Architecture — establishing the architectural principles, patterns, and standards that govern how AI systems are built, deployed, and operated across IHG. Own the reference architecture for AI platform components and drive adoption across delivery teams.

• Build and operate Cross-Cutting Capability enablement — including Identity and Access Management (IAM) for AI systems and agents, enterprise observability and monitoring frameworks, AI agent and integration governance, and shared data access and security controls. These capabilities are the connective tissue of IHG’s AI ecosystem.

• Own AI FinOps and cloud cost governance — accountable for the optimization and governance of IHG’s AI cloud and LLM infrastructure spend. Build the cost visibility, showback/chargeback frameworks, and optimization practices that ensure AI investment translates to measurable business value — not unchecked infrastructure growth.

• Establish and enforce AI security and compliance standards — partnering with IHG’s Information Security and Legal functions to define and implement the data privacy, model governance, and regulatory compliance frameworks that all AI systems must operate within. Ensure that security is designed in, not bolted on.

• Drive platform developer experience — building the self-service tooling, documentation, and internal developer platform (IDP) capabilities that enable AI delivery teams to provision, deploy, and operate AI systems with speed and confidence. Reduce friction in the path from prototype to production.

• Lead and grow a focused team of platform engineers — recruiting, developing, and retaining a high-caliber team of engineers who are motivated by leverage and impact. Build a culture of platform excellence, engineering rigor, and proactive partnership with delivery teams.

• Manage strategic vendor and technology partner relationships — including GCP and other key AI infrastructure providers. Negotiate and manage platform contracts, evaluate emerging platform capabilities, and ensure IHG is extracting maximum value from its technology partnerships.

• Operate as a senior member of the AI leadership team — contributing to the broader AI strategy alongside the Head of Strategic AI Solutions Delivery and the Head of AI Product Management. Represent the platform perspective in enterprise architecture forums, investment decisions, and executive technology discussions.

What We’re Looking For

Foundation Bachelor’s or Master’s in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or a related field — or equivalent experience that demonstrates the same depth of technical and architectural thinking.

Senior Platform Leadership Experience 12+ years of progressive technology experience, including 5+ years in platform, infrastructure, or shared services leadership roles. You have built platform teams and platform capabilities — not just managed operations. You understand the difference between a utility and a strategic asset, and you know how to build the latter.

AI and ML Infrastructure Depth — Proven, Not Theoretical Hands-on depth in AI/ML platform architecture: model serving infrastructure, vector databases, LLM gateway patterns, embedding pipelines, and the operational requirements of running AI systems in production at scale. You have shipped AI platforms, not just designed them.

Cross-Cutting Capability Engineering Demonstrated expertise across the shared capability domains this role owns: IAM design for AI workloads and agentic systems, enterprise observability (logging, tracing, metrics, alerting), API and integration governance, and security-by-design patterns for AI systems. You do not need a specialist for each of these — you need deep enough fluency to lead a team that can.

FinOps and Cloud Cost Governance Practical experience building and operating FinOps practices for cloud-intensive technology organizations. Familiarity with LLM token economics, GPU/TPU cost management, and the levers available to optimize AI infrastructure spend without compromising performance or reliability.

Google Cloud Platform Fluency (Preferred) Strong working knowledge of GCP’s data and AI services — including Vertex AI, BigQuery, Dataflow, Cloud Composer, GKE, and the Google Gemini ecosystem. GCP certification or equivalent demonstrated experience is a plus. Multi-cloud exposure (AWS, Azure) is welcome, but GCP depth is the primary preference.

Platform-as-Product Mindset You think about your platform’s internal customers the same way a product manager thinks about end users. You build for developer experience, self-service adoption, and measured platform outcomes — not just technical capability.

Engineering Leadership and Team Development Track record of building and retaining high-performing platform engineering teams. Experience leading small, high-leverage teams where each engineer’s impact is magnified by the platform they build. You invest in your people’s craft as seriously as you invest in the platform’s architecture.

Strategic and Commercial Acumen You can connect platform investment decisions to business outcomes. You speak fluently in both architectural trade-offs and financial ROI — and you know how to build the business case for long-term platform investment in an organization that is also focused on near-term delivery velocity.

Security and Compliance Awareness Solid grounding in data privacy, AI model governance, and regulatory compliance frameworks relevant to a global hospitality organization — including PCI-DSS, GDPR, and emerging AI governance standards. You are not a CISO, but you are a trusted partner to one.

Why This Role Is Different

Platform leadership in most enterprises is reactive — keeping the lights on, managing tickets, and responding to the requests of delivery teams. This role is built for something entirely different.

IHG is making a foundational bet on AI — and this role is responsible for making sure that bet has the infrastructure, governance, and operational foundation to pay off at enterprise scale. You will not be maintaining a legacy platform. You will be building the AI platform that IHG’s entire technology organization runs on.

As one of three peers at the leadership apex of IHG’s AI organization — alongside the Head of Strategic AI Solutions Delivery and the Head of AI Product Management — your mandate is clear: build the foundation that makes everything else possible. Platform without product is plumbing. Platform without delivery is theory. But delivery and product without a world-class platform are just ideas waiting for infrastructure.

If you’ve been building toward a role where platform engineering is treated as a strategic capability rather than a cost center — where FinOps, observability, and agent governance are first-class concerns, not afterthoughts — this is the role you’ve been waiting for.

Location & Compensation

Atlanta, GA preferred. Our hybrid work structure is an expectation of three (3) days a week in office. This expectation may be adjusted to evolve with the changing needs of the business.

The salary range for this role is $211,000 to $304,000. This role is also eligible for bonus pay (as applicable). We offer a comprehensive package of benefits including paid time off, medical/dental/vision insurance, 401K, and other benefits to employees.

#LI-PF1

At IHG, we’ve made a promise. As one of the world’s leading hotel groups, we’re here to deliver True Hospitality for Good. Making our guests and colleagues feel welcome, cared for, recognised and respected – wherever they are in the world. Want to be part of the journey?