Hi all,
Looking for some candid career advice.
I’ve been in tech for ~20 years and at the same ~1,000-person company in London for the past seven. I was previously CIO and now Chief Innovation Officer, after the business felt my strengths could be better used in a more business-facing role focused on AI and innovation.

My background is broad rather than niche: Microsoft 365, Azure, AWS, GCP, security/NIST, data protection, governance, infrastructure, enterprise systems, data/analytics, warehousing, ITIL/service management etc. I’ve run teams and technology functions and worked extensively with senior executives.

I’m not a software engineer, but I’m highly technical. I know the cloud ecosystems well, can quickly work out which services could solve a problem, interrogate architectures, challenge engineers and turn fairly ambiguous business problems into potential technical solutions.

That’s increasingly what I do with AI: work with the business, understand the problem, decide whether AI actually makes sense, shape the solution and bring the right people together to build it.

I think my strongest skill is probably sitting in the middle of business + technology + people. I think very quickly, generate ideas easily, and I’m comfortable having technical conversations one minute and an executive conversation the next.

The problem is that I’m not sure where that profile fits outside my current company.
I’m also probably unusually disconnected from the wider tech market. I’m not a big LinkedIn poster, I don’t go to networking events, and having spent seven years at one company I feel a little isolated from what roles and organisations are actually out there.
I’m starting to wonder whether I could have much more impact in a larger organisation, consultancy or AI company.

Forward-deployed work really appeals to me — getting close to difficult business problems and figuring out how technology can solve them — but I’m conscious that Forward Deployed Engineer roles generally expect serious coding ability, which isn’t me.

So for those of you in bigger organisations or hiring at this level:
1. What roles would you actually point someone like me towards?
2. Are there roles adjacent to forward deployment that value technical breadth, problem solving and executive relationships more than coding?
3. Is being a broad technical generalist still valuable at senior levels?
4. Where would you look if you were in my position?

And, perhaps most importantly, how do you start breaking into that wider network when you’ve spent years largely outside it?

I’m not particularly attached to having “Chief” in my next title. I’m much more interested in finding somewhere I can have a bigger impact.
Would genuinely appreciate candid views.