Interim Technology & AI Leader (AVP-level) Greater Atlanta, GA Area

In this role you will step in as the client's senior technology leader, supporting business teams across operations, marketing, analytics, and customer engagement. We need a modern, hands-on technology leader who gets their hands dirty: someone who can set the architecture and data and AI direction, make the right platform calls, and personally help drive delivery, not just talk about technology.

This is not a build-from-scratch role, and it is not a slash-and-burn role. You will be the senior technology leader for the client organization for the length of the engagement, backed by a Fortellar team. Your focus is technical direction and delivery: a clear target architecture, one roadmap, a working CRM and data foundation, and practical AI in use. You will leave behind a stable platform and plan that the next permanent leader can build on. This is not primarily a people-management role.

This role will work onsite a minimum of 4 days per week in and around the Druid Hills area of Atlanta, GA.

What you will oversee

You will set technical direction and drive delivery across these areas, working through the client's existing managers:

Architecture and integration: the target architecture for the organization's systems, integration patterns, and data flows between the enterprise CRM (e.g. Salesforce) and other platforms. This includes building on the integration patterns that already work.

Applications and systems: CRM (e.g. Salesforce) administration and development, marketing technology, and the application portfolio.

Service delivery: help desk intake, application support, desktop support, and systems administration.

Data and analytics: data management, reporting, analytics, data engineering, and integrations. This includes the organization's data architecture and how it aligns with the enterprise data platform strategy of enterprise/central IT partners.

Product management: business relationship management and how the business requests, ranks, and sees technology work.

Delivery: project and release management, service levels, and the intake-to-delivery flow. Change management and training are supported, not led.

AI and innovation: hands-on design and delivery of practical, responsible AI and automation use cases, such as summarizing customer activity, surfacing insights, recommending next actions, and drafting outreach, aligned with the client's standards.

Infrastructure and cybersecurity, in partnership with enterprise/central IT partners: representing the organization's needs and holding a clear, written split of responsibilities with them for enterprise infrastructure, cybersecurity, and the central data platform.

Key responsibilities

Set and own the organization's target architecture and technical standards. Review designs, data models, and integrations, and make clear build, buy, and configure calls.

Lead data and AI strategy hands-on. Pick a small number of high-value AI and automation use cases, prototype them, and get them into production within the client's governance guardrails. You should be able to build or pair on a working proof of concept yourself.

Own the technology roadmap, backlog, and prioritization process, in partnership with business leaders. Produce one roadmap within the first 60 days, covering the path from where the core platforms are today to where the business needs them to be.

Get the organization's data foundation stable and trusted: clean records, defined data sources, and a known path for data into the business. Align it with the enterprise data strategy of enterprise/central IT partners.

Act as the primary technology and architecture partner to enterprise/central IT partners, including their security, data and analytics, and AI teams. Agree and document the split of responsibilities.

Make sure security, access, and data protection practices on the systems you oversee meet the client's standards, working with enterprise/central IT security partners.

Manage technology vendors and implementation partners with technical rigor: hold them to architecture standards, review their deliverables, and keep a clear owner for each relationship.

Turn on service levels and a predictable delivery cadence so the business can see work move.

Work through the existing managers to give people clear technical direction and priorities. Advise on skills, workload, and gaps, and recommend a right-sized technical structure and hiring plan based on evidence. Final decisions stay with the client.

Report progress, risks, and decisions to the client executive sponsor and leadership team in plain language.

What you bring

10+ years in technology, including recent hands-on work in enterprise architecture, data engineering, or platform engineering, and 5+ years leading technical delivery across multiple teams.

A track record of stabilizing and modernizing a troubled platform, data environment, or system rollout. You can point to specific architectures, systems, or products you shaped.

Deep, current knowledge of where technology and AI are going: generative AI and LLM applications, agents and automation, retrieval and data grounding, and AI governance. You also know how to apply them to real business workflows, not just describe them.

Hands-on fluency with modern data platforms: cloud data warehouse and modern data platform patterns (Snowflake or similar), medallion-style data layers, integration and API platforms (MuleSoft or similar), and data quality and governance.

Working knowledge of CRM platforms (Salesforce strongly preferred), data integration, and reporting environments. Experience with Salesforce architecture, managed packages, and data models.

Experience running a technology roadmap and intake or governance process that business leaders trust.

Experience partnering with enterprise/central IT, security, or shared services groups without turf battles.

A practical, grounded view of AI: what it can do now, what it takes to do it safely, and how to tell real capability from hype.

Clear, direct communication. You can explain a technical problem to a business user and a business problem to an engineer.

Bachelor's degree or equivalent experience.

Nice to have

Experience in complex, multi-stakeholder organizations with a shared central IT function.

Experience with CRM data models and managed packages on Salesforce is a plus.

Some experience with change management and organizational design (role definitions, transitions).

Who thrives here

You are calm in messy situations and you get into the details. You would rather open the data model, the integration, or the prompt yourself than wait for a report. You listen first, but you do not stall. You would rather fix three things well than announce ten. You stay current on technology and AI and you bring that modern view to every decision.

This role is open only to candidates who currently live and are authorized to work in the United States. Applications must be submitted from within the U.S. Applications submitted from a location that does not match the candidate’s stated location will not be considered.