Optima Partners
Technical Growth Director
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About us
Want to shape the future of AI led transformation? So do we.
At Optima Partners, we connect business context, advanced analytics and engineering rigour to help organisations solve their most complex challenges and deliver measurable outcomes at speed.
Founded in 2013 and headquartered in Edinburgh, Optima is an AI and data consultancy specialising in transformation across Financial Services & Insurance, Energy, Telecoms and Life Sciences. Backed by significant recent investment from Growth Capital Partners (GCP), we are entering an exciting new phase of growth. This funding accelerates our expansion, strengthens our service and innovation propositions, and enables further investment in our people, technology and client delivery capabilities.
As a result, we are looking to appoint a Technical Growth Director who can bring deep engineering credibility to client conversations, stand alongside our sector partners in front of CTOs and Chief Data Officers, and help turn technical confidence into signed, outcome-based work.
The role
This role is for a credible engineering leader who has built and run the kinds of platforms our clients are trying to create. You will be able to hold detailed architecture and delivery conversations with senior technical stakeholders, while helping sector partners move opportunities from interesting capability to funded engagement.
This is not a role that owns client relationships from a standing start, and it is not a classic pre-sales or account management role. Sector partners build the relationships and pipeline; your job is to provide the technical credibility that helps them win and close qualified opportunities.
As a Technical Growth Director, you will support sector partners and delivery leads across two regulated, technically demanding sectors, energy and financial services. You will join client conversations at the point where technical authority can move a deal forward, shape realistic solutions, and support opportunities through to signed engagements.
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You will work closely with sector partners, delivery leads and outstanding technical talent across Optima, bringing deep expertise in cloud-native platforms, data engineering, ML/AI and regulated-industry delivery. Operating confidently with CTOs, Chief Data Officers, Heads of Data and Heads of Engineering, you will help translate technical capability into investment cases, commercial propositions and outcome-based programmes of work.
Your role will include:
- Supporting sector partners in converting and closing qualified opportunities and pipeline
- Leading technical conversations with CTOs, Chief Data Officers, Heads of Data, Heads of Engineering and equivalent stakeholders
- Building trust through depth of engineering, architecture and delivery experience
- Translating complex technical capability — including cloud-native platforms, data science, ML/AI and event-driven architectures — into investment cases and outcome-based propositions
- Owning technical input into proposals, scoping and commercial framing
- Positioning Optima as an outcomes-focused delivery partner rather than a time-and-materials augmentation provider
- Bringing deep, current expertise in cloud-native and serverless data platforms, including AWS, Databricks, Snowflake and/or BigQuery
- Applying regulated-industry delivery experience across data governance, platform resilience, audit and compliance constraints
- Representing Optima at industry events and through thought leadership that reinforces technical credibility in energy and financial services
- Mentoring technical teams who are interested in growing with Optima Partners
About you
You are an experienced engineering or technical practice leader with strong credibility across software engineering, data engineering, cloud-native platforms and modern AI-enabled delivery. You are hands-on enough to architect credibly under questioning, while also able to frame complex technical decisions in commercial and outcome-led terms.
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As a natural collaborator, you work effectively alongside sector partners, delivery leads and technical teams. You are comfortable operating at both ends of the conversation: detailed technical design with engineering teams and outcome-led narrative with commercial sponsors. You build trust with senior client technology leaders through depth, clarity and practical delivery judgment.
Essential
- Extensive experience in software and/or data engineering, with significant time in engineering leadership or practice leadership roles such as Engineering Manager, Principal Consultant, Head of Engineering or CTO
- Track record of building and scaling cloud-native, serverless platforms in regulated industries
- Ability to discuss architecture decisions in detail and assess technical trade-offs credibly
- Working knowledge across major cloud and data platforms including AWS, Databricks, Snowflake and Big Query
- Deep data engineering and platform credibility, with a working understanding of data science, generative AI and agentic AI
- Exposure to NBA/personalisation engines, churn or customer treatment platforms, or agentic AI use cases
- Direct experience in UK energy, such as smart metering, MHHS, HEMS, DERMS, demand-side flexibility or energy trading, and/or financial services data, risk, regulatory reporting or trading platforms
- Demonstrable experience converting technical credibility into commercial outcomes, such as growing an account, leading a competitive pursuit or owning a technical service line P&L
- Strong stakeholder management and the ability to hold a credible, technically grounded position with senior client technology leaders
What we offer
- Competitive base salary
- Access to company discretionary bonus in addition to client growth incentive plan
- Up to 37 days holiday
- Private medical insurance
- Group life and income protection
- Salary sacrifice Pension Scheme
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