Manning Global, an Internationally renowned staffing and managed services organization specializing in providing staffing solutions for leading corporations in AI, IT & Telecoms, Engineering, Digital Media, Automotive and Renewable Energy is recruiting for Autonomous Operations Stream Lead – AI on behalf of one of their blue-chip international clients to join their organization in the Netherlands.

About the role

• Autonomous Operations (AO) Stream Lead – AI to lead the planning and delivery of AI/Agentic AI initiatives within a large-scale Telecom transformation program.
  

• The role will act as the primary interface between business stakeholders, technology teams, architects, and delivery team, ensuring that AI initiatives are translated into well-defined delivery plans and executed successfully against agreed business outcomes, timelines, and quality expectations.
  

• This is primarily a delivery and stakeholder leadership role rather than a hands-on AI engineering position. The candidate should have strong telecom domain understanding, excellent communication skills, and demonstrated experience managing complex, multi-team technology deliveries.
  

Key Responsibilities

Stakeholder & Business Management

• Act as the primary point of contact for business stakeholders for the stream.
  

• Build strong relationships with senior business, operations, technology, and program stakeholders.
  

• Understand business objectives and translate them into clear priorities and actionable delivery plans.
  

• Drive regular stakeholder reviews, ensuring clear communication of progress, dependencies, risks, decisions, and expected outcomes.
  

• Manage stakeholder expectations proactively and ensure alignment between business priorities and technology delivery.
  

• Prepare and present concise updates for senior management and governance forums.
  

Project & Delivery Management

• Own end-to-end planning, tracking, governance, and reporting for NAI initiatives within the AO program.
  

• Develop integrated delivery plans covering requirements, design, development, testing, business validation, deployment, and operational readiness.
  

• Track delivery against committed timelines and proactively drive corrective actions where required.
  

• Drive delivery from initial use-case definition through MVP/pilot to production and subsequent scaling.
  

Risk, Issue & Dependency Management

• Proactively identify delivery risks, issues, assumptions, and cross-stream dependencies.
  

• Drive issues to closure rather than limiting the role to tracking and reporting.
  

• Manage dependencies with other Telecom transformation streams and underlying platforms.
  

Experience/Qualifications: 

Essential

• 10+ years of experience in Telecom/IT, including significant experience managing complex transformation or technology delivery programs.
  

• Strong Telecom domain knowledge, preferably across Network Operations, Assurance, Fulfilment, Inventory, Service Management, or OSS/BSS.
  

• Proven experience managing senior business and technology stakeholders.
  

• Excellent verbal and written communication skills, with the ability to communicate complex delivery topics clearly to senior management.
  

• English fluent, Dutch desired
  

Strong project/program management capabilities, including:

• Delivery planning and tracking
  

• Milestone and dependency management
  

• Risk and issue management
  

• Governance and status reporting
  

• Resource and capacity coordination
  

• Executive-level reporting
  

• Ability to manage multiple teams and workstreams in a complex, multi-vendor environment.
  

• Strong ownership mindset with the ability to drive teams toward decisions, actions, and committed outcomes.
  

• Experience working in Agile/hybrid delivery environments.
  

Success Measures

Success in this role will be measured by:

• Delivery of AI initiatives against committed scope, timelines, value and quality.
  

• Business stakeholder confidence and satisfaction.
  

• Predictability and transparency of AI stream delivery.
  

• Timely identification and resolution of risks, issues, and dependencies.
  

• Successful progression of AI use cases from concept/MVP into production and scale.
  

• Demonstrable business and operational value delivered through AI-enabled Autonomous Operations.