Position: Senior Manager, AI and Digital Transformation (Rural Economy and Development)

Team: AI and Digital Transformation

Level and grade: L5 Senior Manager

Position type: Full time, permanent

Location: India, with regular travel to client sites

Reports to: Associate Director, AI and Digital Transformation (Rural Economy and Development)

Travel: 30 to 40 percent, to Bihar and other rural programme states

About Us

APLYD helps governments, multilateral institutions, development finance institutions and foundations use AI in public systems. Most public-sector AI stops at the pilot. Our work is getting it into everyday service delivery and keeping it running once we leave.

Athena Infonomics has done this work for years. In 2026 we set it up as its own company. We cover strategy and readiness, field data and last-mile reach, design and build, evaluation and audit, and scale and production.

440+ engagements

240+ global clients
85+ specialists
7 countries
5 continents

The Role

You are the product and programme lead on APLYD's rural digital infrastructure work.



You sit between the government counterpart and the engineering team, and you are responsible for the thing actually being adopted rather than only delivered. Your time is split across two programmes, so you are managing two counterparts and two build teams at once.

Core Job Responsibilities

Own the use case from definition to adoption. What problem is being solved, for whom, what the system has to do, and what has to be true in the department for anyone to use it.
Write the specifications the engineers build from, and hold the line when scope moves.
Run the counterpart relationship day to day: the working group, the review meetings, the escalations, and the decisions that need a name against them.
Track adoption rather than delivery. Who is using what, how often, where it breaks down, and what the department needs from us to fix it.
Work with the Data and Measurement lead so that every release ships

📌 Senior Manager, AI and Digital Transformation (India)
🏢 Athena Infonomics
📍 India