Readiness is
not a feeling,
it is a decision...

Barden is delighted to partner with a leading organisation in their search for an AI Engineer to join their team. This person will work across both business and engineering functions to design, build, and deploy production-ready AI agents that deliver measurable business value.

ABOUT THE ROLE (AI Engineering | Agentic AI | Python)

You will lead the design and delivery of production-grade AI agents on an internal Agentic AI platform, while partnering closely with business stakeholders to identify and shape high-value use cases.

Responsibilities will include:

• Translating business problems into well-defined agentic solutions through structured discovery and requirements gathering
• Engineering and iterating agent prompts and instructions (context engineering) to ensure consistent, reliable behaviour
• Building and configuring MCP-based integrations, including defining tool contracts and troubleshooting tool execution issues
• Developing MCP servers to wrap external APIs and internal systems with proper authentication, error handling, and logging
• Designing end-to-end agentic workflows, including retrieval, tool use, and analytics/AI model integration
• Managing and improving file-based knowledge bases, including ingestion, organisation, and RAG optimisation
• Creating and maintaining search indexes for document corpora where required
• Designing and executing evaluation frameworks using offline test sets, regression testing, and metrics tracking (e.g. MLflow)

ABOUT YOU

• A hybrid profile combining strong software engineering capability with business-facing communication skills and a passion for applied AI systems.
• Ability to assess AI use case feasibility, complexity, and business value (including ROI framing and prioritisation)
• Experience acting as a bridge between technical and non-technical stakeholders
• Focus on end-user experience and business outcome optimisation

AI Engineering

• 3+ years of professional software engineering experience, preferably backend-focused (Python preferred but flexible)
• 2+ years of experience building LLM-powered applications, including AI agents, RAG systems, or tool-using systems
• Strong understanding of LLM behaviour, including context windows, tokenisation, hallucinations, latency, and cost trade-offs
• Familiarity with secure authentication patterns including OAuth 2.0 / OIDC and identity platforms such as Azure Entra ID
• Strong software engineering fundamentals including Git, testing, code reviews, logging, and monitoring
• Excellent communication skills and ability to work in an Agile, cross-functional team environment

OTHER DETAILS

• Opportunity to work on cutting-edge Agentic AI systems in a highly applied, production-focused environment
• Strong focus on real-world value delivery, evaluation, and continuous improvement of AI agents

If this role aligns well with your experience, please apply here or contact rachel.mcguckian@Barden.ie for more information.

Senior QA Automation Engineer | Cork City (Hybrid)

I’m working with an exciting client in Cork City that is heavily investing in AI and looking to hire a Senior QA Automation Engineer to join their growing team.

This is a fantastic opportunity for someone with 5+ years’ experience in test automation who wants to make a real impact in a collaborative, fast-moving environment.

Key responsibilities/experience required:

• Design, build, and maintain automated test suites for core functionality and regression testing using Python and Playwright.
• Develop and maintain BDD test coverage using Behave (Gherkin) where appropriate.
• Leverage Claude Code and Cursor to accelerate test development, debugging, and test maintenance.
• Integrate automated testing into Azure DevOps CI/CD pipelines to ensure fast, reliable feedback loops.

What’s on offer?

• Hybrid working: 3 days per week in the Cork city centre office
• Innovative company with a strong focus on AI
• Excellent culture and supportive team environment
• Opportunity to grow with the business and influence quality practices as the company scales

If you’re a Senior QA Automation Engineer with experience in the technologies listed above, please apply using the link below.

ROLE:                 Senior Manager, Finance Transformation

LOCATION:        Dublin South | Hybrid

CONTRACT:       12-month contract

Barden are delighted to partner with a high-profile Irish PLC on the appointment of a Senior Manager Finance Transformation. An exciting opportunity to play a key leadership role within a global finance transformation function, driving large-scale change across systems, processes and reporting.

ABOUT THE ROLE:

Key responsibilities:

• Lead the end-to-end delivery of global finance transformation initiatives, ensuring solutions are effectively implemented, embedded, and adopted across the organisation to deliver measurable business value
• Act as a critical conduit between Finance, Technology and Data teams, translating business needs into scalable system and process solutions, while ensuring alignment with overall strategic objectives
• Drive finance process optimisation across end-to-end workflows, identifying opportunities to simplify, standardise and automate processes to improve efficiency, control, and data integrity
• Champion the use of automation and digital tools to reduce manual intervention, enhance reporting capabilities, and enable more timely, insight-driven decision-making
• Partner closely with technical teams to shape solution design, ensuring finance requirements are clearly defined, prioritised, and delivered in a practical and sustainable way
• Proactively identify and evaluate emerging technologies, including AI and advanced analytics, to support the evolution of a more data-led, digitally enabled finance function
• Lead and influence the prioritisation of transformation initiatives across the finance function, balancing business needs, resource constraints, and strategic impact
• Embed robust governance and control frameworks into all transformation activities, ensuring compliance with SOX and audit requirements by design
• Drive a culture of continuous improvement, encouraging innovation, ownership, and accountability across finance teams and transformation programmes
• Support and enable finance stakeholders through change, ensuring business readiness and building capability in new systems, tools, and ways of working

ABOUT THE PERSON:  

What you will ideally need:

• Qualified ACA or ACCA professional with significant post-qualification experience and a strong foundation in finance and business operations.
• Proven track record delivering finance transformation, process improvement and automation initiatives within complex environments.
• Strong programme and stakeholder management capabilities, with experience influencing and collaborating across multiple functions.
• Commercially minded problem-solver who can translate complexity into clear, actionable solutions and drive change effectively.
• Experience working with enterprise finance systems, reporting tools and data-driven transformation programmes; knowledge of SOX and controls environments is highly desirable.

A large, multi-site UK & Ireland services organisation is creating a brand new, business facing leadership role to fix fragmented reporting and build a centralised reporting and insights capability from scratch. They’re mid-way through a major cloud data platform (Microsoft Fabric) rollout and want this hire shaping its reporting and governance structure from here on.

About the Role:

• Own enterprise reporting strategy and standards across the business (excluding finance).
• Move reporting from fragmented and reactive to standardised, trusted, and insight-led – with a path toward predictive/AI-driven insights.
• Define common KPIs, data definitions, and governance; tackle current data access/security gaps.
• Be the single point of accountability for reporting demand and prioritisation.
• Build and lead a reporting/analytics team (currently none exists).
• Present insights directly to senior leadership and exec forums.

About the Person:

• Track record operating at Head of / senior leadership level in reporting, BI, analytics, or performance management.
• Demonstrated success owning enterprise-wide reporting strategy and driving standardisation across a large, complex organisation.
• Credible and influential at C-suite and board level, with a track record of shaping how a business makes decisions.
• Bonus: multi-site/regulated experience, Power BI/Fabric/Databricks exposure, data lake/platform transformation leadership.
• An outsider’s perspective is welcome – they want someone to challenge how things are done.

ROLE: Senior Project Manager

LOCATION: Dublin, Hybrid

Our Client is currently building out their PMO function and as part of this expansion they are looking to hire a Senior Project Manager. The Senior Project Manager will be responsible for leading and coordinating a portfolio of transformation projects across the wider business. This role requires a leader capable of strategic oversight while embedding structure, pace, discipline & rigour across multiple programmes and workstreams.

This position is offered as an initial 6–9 month fixed‑term contract, with a view to permanency.

Key Responsibilities:

• Provide leadership, structure & project governance across multiple transformation programmes.
• Oversee delivery of a large‑scale operations‑focused projects, ensuring milestones, dependencies and budgets are tightly managed.
• Establish and embed programme governance, including RAID management, delivery controls and reporting frameworks.
• Develop, maintain and present high‑quality executive‑level decks for senior stakeholders.
• The role will engage a broad network of stakeholders, including external advisory partners, and is responsible for ensuring all parties deliver in line with programme objectives, timelines, and regulatory requirements.
• Engage with senior leaders across operations, HR, legal, technology and finance to ensure alignment and accountability.
• Support the design and evolution of a new PMO and associated operating model.
• Identify, assess and mitigate programme risks and issues, escalating as appropriate.
• Ensure disciplined planning, clear prioritisation and effective resource allocation across programmes.
• Provide clarity, structure and delivery assurance in a maturing transformation environment.

ABOUT THE PERSON:

They will be a strategic Senior Project Manager capable of working across multiple complex environments, operating confidently with C‑Suite stakeholders while retaining the ability to dive into detail when required.

Required Skills and Competencies:

• Proven experience delivering large‑scale operational or infrastructure‑led programmes with significant budgets.
• Strong governance, planning, reporting and programme control capabilities.
• Excellent communication skills, particularly in preparing executive‑level presentations.
• Demonstrated ability to influence, challenge and align senior stakeholders.
• Highly organised, structured and resilient, with strong problem‑solving skills.
• Comfortable working in a highly governed, high‑visibility environment.
• Ability to work independently and manage multiple programmes simultaneously.
• Must be available for hybrid working 3 days on site.

Experience and Qualifications:

• Min of +10 to 15 years’ programme management or transformation leadership experience.
• Track record delivering complex, multi‑workstream programmes.
• Experience operating in regulated, high‑governance or large operational environments is an advantage.
• Strong familiarity with PMO standards, methodologies and delivery frameworks.
• Experience working with executive committees and senior governance groups.

Project Manager (Testing) / Scrum Master | Cork (Hybrid) | 12-Month FTC |

We are working exclusively with a global MedTech business on one of the more compelling transformation projects in Cork right now.

A major division is being spun out into a standalone company. A core data and analytics platform needs to be rebuilt from the ground up within 12 months. The team is small, the timeline is tight, and the project is already underway. They need someone who can walk in and take ownership of the testing workstream from day one.

About the Role

This is a hands-on role that will suit an experienced Project Manager who has worked closely with testing, or someone who started their career in testing and has since moved into broader delivery or PM work.

You will own the end-to-end testing process. That means writing test scripts, coordinating SIT, BST and UAT cycles, managing defects in Jira and keeping a non-technical finance stakeholder group on track through UAT. You will also be expected to bring the kind of structure and governance discipline that keeps a fast-moving project honest, feeding into an overall Jira board that is subject to financial audit.

Think of it as equal parts testing coordinator and delivery conscience for a project that cannot afford to slip.

About the Person

Hands-on Jira experience is essential. Not just familiarity, but the ability to administer a board, manage workflows and feed into a project-level view with confidence.

Beyond that: agile methodology, user story documentation, acceptance criteria, defect management. An understanding of how finance teams and financial auditors operate will stand to you here. The team is predominantly finance-background, and you will be the one translating between their world and the technical one.

Pharma experience is not required. The ability to work independently, without prompting, absolutely is.

Strict 12-month fixed term contract. No extensions, no permanent role to follow. This suits someone who knows their way around a project-based contract and is energised rather than unsettled by a defined piece of work with a clear finish line.

This role is primarily remote, with a minimum of three days per month on-site in Cork.

Interested?

Reach out to the Barden Projects, Transformation and Change team for a confidential conversation.

Barden are delighted to partner with one of Ireland’s most recognisable and fast-moving consumer businesses in their search for a Senior IT Project Manager to join their Group IT team on a fixed-term basis.

This is a large, operationally complex business with a sizeable presence across Ireland and internationally. They operate in a fast-paced, multi-site environment and their IT function is central to how the business grows, evolves and delivers for its customers. The portfolio is varied, the pace is real and the stakeholders are senior. If you like variety and want to work somewhere where IT genuinely matters to the business, this is worth a look.

About the Role

This is an end-to-end IT project management role with a clear business-facing focus. You will own the delivery of complex, business-critical projects from initiation through to handover into BAU, working closely with operational, commercial and functional teams across the organisation alongside the wider IT function.

Projects will span new site openings, brand additions, business solutions and operational systems. The common thread is complexity, business impact and the need for someone who takes ownership rather than just manages tasks. You will manage multiple workstreams, hold vendors accountable, navigate competing priorities and keep senior stakeholders informed and confident throughout.

This is not a role for someone who needs close direction. It suits a polished, experienced PM who knows how to earn trust quickly and deliver in a busy environment.

About the Person

• 7+ years delivering complex IT projects end to end, with clear ownership from start to finish
• Proven ability to work across business and IT stakeholder groups at senior level
• Experience in multi-site, operational environments, retail, logistics, hospitality or similar
• Strong governance and planning disciplines without the bureaucracy
• Proactive risk management and calm, decisive issue resolution
• Formal PM qualification (Prince2, PMI, Agile or equivalent) is an advantage
• Fixed-term contract. Hybrid working with two to three days on-site per week. Competitive remuneration package including a completion bonus.

If this sounds like the right move, get in touch or apply below.

ROLE: Project Manager

LOCATION: Dublin (Hybrid – 3 days on site)

ABOUT THE ROLE:

Barden is partnering with a highly innovative, entrepreneurial Irish business to appoint a Project Manager to support the delivery of a growing portfolio of strategic initiatives. This is a high-impact role combining hands-on project delivery with broader oversight across a portfolio of initiatives. You’ll play a key part in bringing structure, governance, and delivery rigour to an environment that is scaling rapidly. This person will work closely with senior leadership and offers the opportunity to shape how projects are delivered across the organisation.

Key Responsibilities:

• Lead a mix of high-profile projects while also maintaining programme oversight across a wider portfolio.
• Bring structure and best practice to how projects are initiated and delivered, from business case / scoping to execution.
• Partner with SME leads across the business to guide and support effective project delivery
• Establish and embed programme governance, including RAID management, delivery controls and reporting frameworks.
• Provide clear visibility to leadership on progress, risks, and dependencies
• Help ensure new initiatives are thoroughly assessed and set up for success
• Alongside project oversight and delivery, this role facilitates steering governance and decision-making forums including owning the agenda, the materials, the actions, and the follow-through that keep senior decision-making sharp and timely.

ABOUT THE PERSON:

Required Skills and Competencies:

• +7 years’ experience delivering complex projects and programmes end-to-end, often across multiple concurrent initiatives
• Strong background in structured PMO or enterprise environments, bringing best-practice governance and delivery discipline
• Comfortable engaging senior stakeholders, with experience supporting and facilitating executive decision-making forums
• Proven ability to improve and shape project governance frameworks in evolving environments
• Strong portfolio management capability, including risks, dependencies, change control, and benefits tracking
• Confident operating at C-suite level, influencing and guiding senior stakeholders
• Motivated by the opportunity to build and enhance project delivery capability within a growing organisation
• Experience operating in regulated, high‑governance or large operational environments is an advantage.
• PM certified or equivalent

Project Manager | Dublin | Hybrid

Take ownership of your own workstreams and step into a genuine project management role within a high-profile transformation programme. Working closely with the Programme Lead, you’ll move beyond coordination and into delivery, managing schedules, driving actions and keeping stakeholders aligned across a complex, fast-moving environment.

About the Role

• Lead and manage discrete project workstreams end-to-end
• Own project planning, scheduling and delivery tracking across multiple priorities
• Prepare and present progress updates and reporting packs for senior stakeholders
• Maintain governance frameworks, including RAID logs, actions and decision logs
• Build strong relationships across the business to drive accountability and momentum

About the Person

You’re organised, proactive and ready to take the next step in your PM career. You’re comfortable owning your work, engaging with senior stakeholders and bringing structure to ambiguity. You want a role where you can make a real impact, not just support from the sidelines.

• 3-7 years’ experience in a project management, PMO or project coordination role
• Exposure to project delivery methodologies (Agile, Waterfall or hybrid)
• Strong communication skills, written, visual and verbal
• Proficient in PowerPoint and Excel, with an eye for clear, well-structured reporting
• Eager to develop and grow within a programme environment