Director of Consulting & Delivery Leadership – ABS
Department:
Operations
Employment Type:
Full Time
Location:
Dublin
Description
As the ABS Consulting 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.
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.
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 models
Specific experience with Microsoft Dynamics, Power Platform, or Azure is not required.
Personal Characteristics
Nature 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.
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