Lemi AI
Founding Deployment Strategist
Turn ambiguous enterprise problems into AI systems that are useful, adopted and commercially valuable.
Why this role exists
Go inside our clients' organisations, find the problems that are actually worth solving with AI, and own those deployments from first conversation to running system. You are the person who decides what we build and why, and who the client calls when they want to know whether it is working.
Enterprises rarely arrive with a well-specified AI problem. They arrive with a vague ambition, a political landscape, and a lot of processes nobody has examined closely in years. Your job is to go in, work out where AI would actually change the economics of how they operate, say no to the tempting-but-worthless ideas, and then carry the good ones all the way through to something running in production.
You are not a salesperson who hands off to engineering, and you are not a project manager tracking someone else's plan. You own the why and the what; our Founding Engineer owns the how. The two of you are a pair, and you will spend a lot of time in the same rooms.
What you will own
Use-case diagnosis
- Embed with client teams to map how work actually happens — not how the org chart says it happens. Identify where AI would materially change cost, speed, or quality, and quantify it well enough that a CFO would accept the number.
- Prioritise ruthlessly: most AI ideas inside a large enterprise are not worth building. Your value is as much in what you talk clients out of as in what you talk them into.
- Turn a diagnosed opportunity into a scoped problem statement engineers can build against, including success criteria agreed with the client before work starts.
Deployment ownership
- Carry each engagement from first scoping conversation through pilot, production, and adoption. You are accountable for whether the thing actually gets used, not just whether it shipped.
- Align stakeholders from operations staff to C-suite — large enterprises kill good projects through inertia and politics far more often than technical failure.
- Drive adoption: train users, redesign workflows around the tool where needed, and stay close enough after launch to know whether behaviour actually changed.
- Report honestly to both the client and the founding team on progress, risk, and value delivered.
Commercial growth
- Turn successful deployments into the next engagement, business unit, and contract.
- Help define what we sell, how we price it, and how we scope engagements so they are profitable rather than open-ended.
- Sit in on new client conversations as the person who can speak credibly about what is genuinely feasible.
What you may work on
- Diagnosing which enterprise AI opportunities are worth building — and which are not.
- Scoping problem statements and success criteria engineers can build against.
- Driving adoption after ship: training, workflow redesign, and honest reporting on whether behaviour changed.
- Turning successful deployments into the next engagement and commercial shape of what we sell.
What success looks like
After 90 days
- You have mapped at least one real client workflow deeply enough to produce a scoped, engineer-ready problem statement with agreed success criteria.
- You can say no to weak AI ideas and be heard by both client stakeholders and the founding team.
- You and the Founding Engineer are operating as a pair in the same rooms.
After one year
- At least one deployment you owned is in production and actually used — not just shipped.
- You have helped define how we scope, price, and grow engagements.
- Clients call you when they want an honest answer on whether the system is working.
How this role works with the team
The Deployment Strategist owns why and what we build for an enterprise problem. The Founding Engineer owns how an individual deployment is technically built. The Head of Engineering owns the platform, engineering standards and organisation that allow those deployments to scale.
These are not rigid boundaries. On an early team, people work across disciplines when the work requires it.
What we are looking for
- 5–10 years in a problem-diagnosis role: management consulting, enterprise solutions consulting, chief of staff at a fast-growing company, or senior operational ownership in an industry you know deeply.
- Exceptional communication with sceptical executives — fluency in both English and Vietnamese is required.
- Technically literate, not necessarily technical: understand what current AI systems can and cannot do well enough to avoid promising things that are not real.
- Commercial instinct: build a business case, defend a price, recognise a badly shaped deal before we sign it.
- Comfort with ambiguity — we are early; there is no methodology to inherit.
- Enterprise or conglomerate experience in Vietnam or the region is a strong plus.
Why join Lemi
- Our team and advisors come from McKinsey, Deloitte, Visa, the World Bank, and the Asian Development Bank, alongside engineers who have shipped at Meta, Google, Tesla, and TikTok. You'll be working with people who understand both how large institutions make decisions and what can actually be built.
- You are not joining a go-to-market function — you are creating one.
- Direct access to decision-makers, ours and theirs — no layers between you and founders.
- Ground-floor equity upside as one of the first people in the building.
- Work alongside a small founding team shipping a sovereign enterprise AI operating system.
Hiring process
Five rounds to learn how you diagnose problems, scope them, and work with clients. Communication and commercial judgment are weighted as heavily as analysis. Each stage earns the next. Total candidate time is around three and a half hours.
Screen (30 minutes)
A short conversation on motivation, logistics and fit, held in both English and Vietnamese.
Diagnosis (60 minutes)
With the hiring manager. You run the discovery conversation against a real, anonymised client situation — finding where the problem actually sits, and telling us which ideas you would kill.
Scoping with the Founding Engineer (45 minutes)
A working session turning that diagnosis into a scoped problem statement with success criteria an engineer can build against.
Stakeholders and commercials (45 minutes, in Vietnamese)
A conversation with a sceptical executive, then pricing and defending the shape of the engagement.
Founders (45 minutes)
Values and long-horizon fit: honesty, augment-not-replace, and comfort operating without an inherited methodology. Bring your questions about the business.
The process may vary slightly by role.
Apply
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