Digital Advisory Associate (Sept 2027 Graduate Programme)

Ankura is a team of excellence founded on innovation and growth.

The AI Advisory practice is part of the Digital business group which is one of five strategic business groups at Ankura.

Start your career helping organisations decide what to do with AI, how to build it responsibly and how to bring people with them. At Ankura's AI by Design practice, you'll connect strategic thinking with hands-on experimentation and delivery; to make AI truly transformative.

Practice Overview

AI is changing the economics of how organisations operate, build and compete. The opportunity now is to adopt it quickly enough, in the right areas, to capture that value; while building the capability to keep moving where your business wants to go, where it wants to grow, as the frontier advances. This is where Ankura - AI by Design works.

We combine strategy, governance engineering and workforce transformation with hands-on AI building and testing, alongside our curated ecosystem partners.

Ankura – AI by Design’s Graduate Programme offers driven, curious and high potential students the chance to experience deep work across AI Strategy, AI Governance Engineering and AI Workforce Transformation, learning to connect a business opportunity with a working solution, to measure and prove value. With experienced colleagues, you'll work across our key solution pillars, supporting client teams, internal transformation and commercial go to market activities. Whatever competency you sit in, you will be a builder, a strategist, an advisor and an advocate with real, meaningful client work throughout the programme.

What you'll gain

You'll build a rounded understanding of AI transformation through rotations, practical project work and learning alongside specialists. You'll gain exposure to our ecosystem partners across these disciplines, including leading technology companies and frontier AI firms. Platform experience and hands-on building will help you connect advisory thinking with delivery, while developing confidence to take on greater responsibility.

Requirements

AI by Design recognises the importance of multidisciplinary perspectives in building a responsible and intentional future for technology. Our team includes designers, ethicists, researchers, technologists and more. We therefore encourage candidates from all academic disciplines to apply, provided they meet the role requirements listed.

• On course for a 2:1 undergraduate degree (or equivalent) or above.
• Curiosity about how AI can improve organisations, and an interest in strategy, responsible technology and people.
• Comfort with ambiguity and a willingness to learn across all three disciplines.
• An analytical approach, with the ability to research unfamiliar topics, assess evidence and explain your reasoning, with a good foundation in understanding aspects of using data for decisions.
• Clear written and verbal communication, including explaining ideas to people with different levels of technical knowledge.
• A collaborative approach, openness to feedback and care when working with client information and colleagues.
• Enthusiasm for experimenting with AI tools, testing outputs critically and learning to build practical solutions – you do not have to be an AI engineer but you must have already explored building with any AI-assisted tooling (e.g. Codex, Claude Code, Cursor).
• Interest in how people experience change, alongside awareness of the risks and limitations of AI.
• Experience through coursework, personal projects, coding or low-code tools is useful, but not essential.

How to apply:

• Due to the expected volume of applications, we cannot accept incomplete applications.
• Please submit an up-to-date CV and:
• Please attach a cover letter addressing the following:-
  • In your own words, describe the type of work you think Ankura's AI Analytics professionals undertake and why it interests you.
  • Describe a project where you used AI, data analytics, or technology to solve a problem. Please outline the challenge, your approach, the tools used, and the outcome.
• Please provide a link to a portfolio, GitHub repository, website or other evidence demonstrating something you have built or developed using AI or related technologies.

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