AI Opportunity Architect

About the Role

We're looking for a highly strategic, deeply curious thinker to help transform complex business challenges into high-potential AI opportunities. You will work across AXL's corporate partner engagements, taking the outputs of executive interviews, workshops, research, and discovery activities and turning them into clear opportunity areas, AI concepts, strategic recommendations, and venture directions.

This role sits at the intersection of AI strategy, innovation, business design, and opportunity discovery. You are not expected to build production systems yourself. Instead, your strength lies in making sense of ambiguity, identifying non-obvious patterns, and shaping ideas that have real commercial and strategic potential.

You should be energized by messy problem spaces, rapid learning, and the challenge of turning fragmented signals into actionable opportunity narratives.

The Mindset We Need

Systems thinker with strong synthesis ability: You naturally connect dots across disconnected signals, stakeholder perspectives, workflows, and industries. You are comfortable operating in ambiguity and can distill complexity into clarity.

Commercial and Strategic Instinct: You don't just identify interesting ideas. You identify opportunities with meaningful business value, strategic leverage, or venture potential.

AI-curious and future-oriented: You actively explore how AI changes workflows, business models, customer expectations, and operational structures. You think beyond automation toward transformation and reimagination.

Strong intellectual humility: You are comfortable working with experts across industries and asking thoughtful questions in unfamiliar domains. You know that good opportunity design starts with listening and learning.

Structured but creative: You can think expansively while still bringing rigor, prioritization, and decision-oriented framing to your work.

What You'll Do

• Analyze outputs from workshops, interviews, research, and discovery sessions across enterprise clients
• Identify recurring patterns, operational friction points, unmet needs, and strategic opportunity areas
• Design and refine Opportunity Cards (OCs) that clearly articulate:
• the problem/opportunity
• why it matters
• potential AI-enabled approaches
• value creation potential
• implementation considerations
• Collaborate with strategy, Labs, and Ventures teams to shape solution directions and venture concepts
• Translate ambiguous business problems into structured opportunity frameworks
• Evaluate opportunities across dimensions such as impact, feasibility, enterprise complexity, adoption readiness, and venture potential
• Contribute to executive-ready reports, opportunity landscapes, and strategic recommendation materials
• Track patterns across industries and engagements to identify repeatable themes and emerging AI opportunities
• Continuously expand your understanding of AI capabilities, workflows, and market trends

What We're Looking For

• 4 to 10 years experience in strategy, innovation, consulting, product strategy, venture building, business design, or related fields
• Exceptional synthesis and structured thinking skills
• Strong written communication and executive-level storytelling ability
• Ability to translate qualitative inputs into clear opportunity narratives
• Strong understanding of AI capabilities, limitations, and emerging patterns
• Comfort switching rapidly across industries and business models
• Commercial instinct and strong business judgment
• Experience working with ambiguity and incomplete information

Bonus Points For

• Experience in innovation consulting or venture studios
• Experience designing AI-enabled products or workflows
• Familiarity with enterprise operations and transformation initiatives
• Startup or entrepreneurial experience
• Experience creating strategic frameworks or executive presentations

Our Discovery Approach

We don't show up with a product to pitch. We show up with questions. Our goal in every engagement is to deeply understand the client's world before proposing anything. That means interviewing across the organization (executives set strategy, but frontline workers know where the real friction lives), mapping workflows and pain points, and identifying where technology can create leverage.

The best opportunities often aren't the ones clients ask for. They're the ones hiding in the gaps between what different stakeholders tell you. Your job is to find those gaps, name them clearly, and help us build solutions that address root causes rather than symptoms.

What Success Looks Like

First 90 days: You've contributed to multiple Catalyst engagements, produced high-quality Opportunity Cards, and demonstrated strong judgment in identifying meaningful opportunity areas.

First year: You are independently shaping opportunity landscapes, influencing strategic direction across engagements, and helping surface opportunities that lead to enterprise initiatives, new offerings, or venture exploration.