Aymen Haj Salem
Verified Expert in Engineering
AI Expert and Developer
Paris, France
Toptal member since September 9, 2026
Aymen is an enterprise AI strategy and transformation advisor with 21+ years of experience across technology, data, cloud, and large-scale delivery. He assists organizations in turning opportunities in generative AI (GenAI), RAG, and agentic AI into secure, scalable solutions with measurable business impact. Aymen combines executive advisory, hands-on AI architecture, governance, and team upskilling.
Portfolio
Experience
- Complex Reasoning - 20 years
- Business - 20 years
- Technical Project Management - 18 years
- Leadership - 17 years
- Agile Program Management - 13 years
- Artificial Intelligence (AI) - 5 years
- AI - 5 years
- Retrieval-augmented Generation (RAG) - 3 years
Preferred Environment
Azure, GCP, Python, OpenAI, Anthropic, Mistral AI, Qwen, GraphRAG, LangChain, Amazon Web Services (AWS)
The most amazing...
...thing I've done is turn AI ambition into production by prioritizing high-value use cases and building scalable, responsible AI products people use.
Work Experience
Enterprise AI Strategy & Transformation Advisor
Orange
- Led a 10-person AI, data, and product team and delivered 6 GenAI use cases into production using large language models (LLM), RAG, and agentic AI.
- Designed LLM, RAG, GraphRAG, and multi-agent architectures with MLOps-LLMOps pipelines, including a GraphRAG solution over the document corpus of a critical financial-sector client.
- Rolled out solutions to 100+ business users with 30-40% efficiency gains on targeted processes.
- Advised executives and large accounts in telecommunications, pharmaceuticals, transport, and financial services on GenAI roadmaps and scaling beyond POCs.
- Aligned responsible AI governance with the EU AI Act, ISO 42001, and GDPR, including risk assessment and evaluation gates before scale-up.
- Served as GenAI's single point of contact (PoC) for the Paris region and trained 100+ people among sales teams, experts, and consultants.
Data and AI Program Manager
Orange
- Managed a corporate-level data and AI program for HR across 25 countries and 150,000 employees.
- Built the data and AI strategy and KPI framework supporting recruitment, employer brand, and talent retention decisions.
- Set up ethical data governance focused on privacy and integrity, aligning data initiatives with executive stakeholders.
Senior Manager, IT Strategy Consulting
Magellan Consulting
- Delivered the three-to-five-year IT strategic master plan for Bouygues Construction with €10 billion in revenue, covering cloud, zero trust, hyperautomation, observability, AI and data, and digital workplace.
- Led a team of 5 experts, ran C-level steering committees, and executive workshops.
- Established the enterprise AI transformation roadmap, aligning generative cloud, security, data, governance, and automation initiatives with executive priorities and measurable business outcomes.
Sales Program Manager
Orange Business Services
- Restructured the indirect business model across 18 MEA countries, redesigning the solution portfolio, go-to-market (GTM) strategy, channel selection, pricing, and contractual frameworks.
- Developed regional GTM plans for 5 cloud, security, data, and IoT solution areas, aligning partner coverage, commercial priorities, and country-market requirements.
- Expanded and enabled a network of 30+ channel partners through segmentation, onboarding, sales training, and joint business planning in Arabic, French, and English.
- Steered monthly performance reviews across 30+ partners, tracking a $100+ million pipeline alongside orders, revenue, and margin KPIs to coordinate regional recovery actions.
Project Director and Account Service Manager
Orange Business Services
- Managed end-to-end program move to cloud delivery for Geoxia, a construction company, translating contractual commitments into coordinated delivery plans, governance routines, risk management, and executive reporting.
- Provided service governance for 5 strategic accounts, including Mercedes-Benz, 3M, and Bayer, ensuring alignment between contract terms, SLAs, delivery performance, and client expectations.
- Led recurring service reviews and stakeholder governance forums, monitored delivery KPIs, managed escalations, and coordinated corrective actions with internal delivery teams.
- Strengthened customer satisfaction across strategic accounts by maintaining proactive communication, resolving delivery risks, and ensuring reliable service from contract launch through ongoing operations.
IT Team Manager, Cloud Programs
Orange Business Services
- Coordinated a public-cloud deployment program with teams in several countries, supporting planning, delivery, follow-up, and communication across workstreams.
- Managed a nine-person validation and integration team, organizing priorities, tracking progress, and supporting day-to-day delivery.
- Facilitated regular project reviews to follow milestones, dependencies, risks, and open issues, escalating blockers when needed.
- Worked with engineering, operations, and country teams to coordinate validation, integration, release preparation, and operational handover.
Project Manager, Private Cloud
Orange Business Services
- Coordinated an 11-person cross-functional team supporting LVMH USA's private-cloud implementation, including provider evaluation, service-offering definition, and delivery follow-up.
- Supported the assessment and selection of the private-cloud provider, consolidating technical, operational, commercial, and service-management requirements.
- Contributed to defining the private-cloud service offering, including scope, service levels, responsibilities, operating processes, and delivery assumptions.
- Facilitated coordination between LVMH USA stakeholders, internal technical teams, and prospective providers to follow decisions, risks, dependencies, and implementation actions.
Software Engineer | Technical Project Manager
Ericsson
- Contributed to the software architecture of telecom messaging platforms, translating operator requirements into technical designs, interfaces, and implementation priorities.
- Coordinated technical project activities across development, integration, and test teams, tracking delivery milestones, dependencies, risks, and issue resolution.
- Supported messaging-platform integration and validation activities, working with engineering teams to troubleshoot technical issues and prepare releases for operator environments.
- Provided technical pre-sales support for US telecommunications operators, including Comcast, by gathering requirements, preparing solution proposals, and presenting platform capabilities.
- Collaborated with sales, product, and engineering teams to clarify customer needs, assess solution feasibility, and support a smooth handover from pre-sales to implementation.
Software Engineer and Architect
Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise
- Contributed to the Java architecture and development of a network-node management solution, collaborating with a distributed engineering team across New York and Tunisia.
- Designed and developed Java components for a network-node management solution, coordinating technical work with teams based in New York and Tunis.
- Supported the Java architecture of a distributed network-management solution, contributing to technical design, implementation, and collaboration across New York and Tunis.
Experience
AI Sourcing Copilot | RFP-to-shortlist Automation
I designed the agentic workflow, RAG, and retrieval strategy, enterprise integrations, security and access-control approach, and the evaluation framework. The solution also generates candidate analysis, a PowerPoint summary, and a contextual email draft, while keeping human approval in the loop. I implemented monitoring and observability and introduced RAGAS-based evaluation based on faithfulness, answer relevancy metrics, and context precision. I also defined the path from POC to an industrialized enterprise product, including golden datasets, regression testing, quality thresholds, governance, scalability, and cost controls.
Enterprise GraphRAG Knowledge Assistant
I worked on the retrieval and generation architecture, including semantic search, graph-based context enrichment, and LLM orchestration.
The solution was designed to support both simple and complex questions by combining structured relationships with unstructured document content, while keeping retrieval grounded in enterprise sources. I also evaluated retrieval quality, relevance, and answer grounding, and considered production requirements such as access control, observability, scalability, and the trade-off between a conventional RAG architecture and GraphRAG.
Agentic AI Strategy & Operating Model for Transportation Operations
Defined a phased AI roadmap and target operating model covering business ownership, AI product teams, data and system integration, agent/tool access, human approval points, evaluation KPIs, governance, and LLMOps. The workshops aligned Operations, IT, Data, Customer Service, Security, and Risk teams around a controlled path from prioritized use cases to pilots and production scale.
Education
Master's Degree in Business Administration (MBA)
IAE Paris Sorbonne Business School - Paris, France
Master's Degree in Computer Science
National School of Computer Science - Tunis, Tunisia
Certifications
Google GenAI Leader
Microsoft Azure AI Fundamentals
Microsoft
AI Training Expert
Orange AI & Data School
Build Dashboards in Power BI
Coursera
AI Strategy & Governance
Wharton Online
AI & Data for Business
HEC Paris
Azure Fundamentals
Microsoft
Project Management Professional (PMP)
PMI
PRINCE2 Practitioner
AXELOS Global Best Practice
Skills
Libraries/APIs
OpenAI API, Claude API, PyTorch, React, Node.js
Tools
GraphRAG, Claude, ChatGPT, Codex, Microsoft Power BI, BMC Atrium Orchestrator, BMC Remedy, DeepSeek, Azure ML Studio, Azure OpenAI Service
Languages
Python, SQL, JavaScript, Java, C#, TypeScript
Frameworks
Agentic Frameworks, LangGraph, Streamlit, LlamaIndex
Paradigms
Model Context Protocol (MCP), Business Intelligence (BI), Change Management, Requirements Analysis, Testing
Platforms
Google Cloud Platform (GCP), LangSmith, Azure, AWS IoT, Docker, Kubernetes, Web, HP Cloud Service Automation (CSA), Vertex AI, SharePoint, Microsoft, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Langfuse, CrewAI
Storage
PostgreSQL, Data Pipelines, Neo4j, Databases
Other
Large Language Models (LLMs), Retrieval-augmented Generation (RAG), Leadership, Business, Innovation, Strategy, Software, AI Engineering, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Architecture, Complex Reasoning, AI Agents, Agentic AI, Agentic AI Systems, Multi-agent Orchestration, Software Engineering, Workshop Facilitation, Agentic RAG Systems, Dashboards, Communication, Prompt Engineering, Attention to Detail, Written Communication, Team Leadership, Team Management, Interviewing, Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI), Data Analysis, Solution Architecture, RAG Pipelines, RAG Systems, Prompt Optimization, Technical Leadership, RAG Architecture, Minimum Viable Product (MVP), API Integration, LLM Agents, LangChain, Observability, CI/CD Pipelines, AI Systems, Multi-agent Systems, Machine Learning, Training Workshops, Training, Financial Services, Screeners, Code Review, Vertex, ChatGPT API, APIs, Debugging, LLM Integration, Vector Databases, Orchestration, Model Evaluation, AI Voice Agents, Transcription, Speech-to-Text (STT), Conversational AI, Web Applications, Web Development, Data Visualization, Optical Character Recognition (OCR), User Experience (UX), User Interface (UI), Mobile Apps, OpenAI Agents SDK, Machine Learning Operations (MLOps), Large Language Model Operations (LLMOps), FastAPI, Hugging Face, OpenAI, Mistral AI, Anthropic, Pgvector, GCP, Data, AI, Cloud, Zero Trust, Finance, Product Management, B2C Marketing, Marketing Mix, B2B Marketing, Sales, Agile Program Management, Agile Transformation, Process Transformation, Decision Intelligence, UX Engineering, Neural Networks, Development, Algorithms, Distributed Systems, Programming, Hardware, Human Resources (HR), Human-centered AI, HR Analytics, Analytics, Stakeholder Alignment, Stakeholder Management, Stakeholder Communication, Stakeholder Interviews, Stakeholder Analysis, Stakeholder Engagement, IT Strategy, Security, Internet of Things (IoT), Networks, Connectivity, Integration, Storage, HP Cloud, Telecommunication Engineering, Software Architecture, Technical Project Management, System Integration, Release Management, Information Technology, Professional Services, Recruiting, Google, Enterprise Software, Knowledge Management, AIOps, IT Project Management, Public Sector, Projects, AI Project Management, Data Management, Business Model Canvas, Business Analysis, Governance, AI Governance, Data Governance, Gemini, Qwen, Presales, Consulting, AI Consulting, IT Consulting, AI Architecture, Responsible AI, Evaluation, Fleet Management, Mobility, Logistics, Transportation & Logistics, Discovery Workshops, Employee Experience, Employee Upskilling, Agentic Workflow Design, Agentic Coding, Monitoring, Exploratory Data Analysis, AI Product Strategy, IT Audits, Delivery, Agile Delivery, Program Management, Human Resource Management Systems (HRMS), Data Analytics, Excel Dashboards, Data-driven Dashboards, Web Dashboards, Workshops, Facilitation, Negotiation, Client Communication, Audits, Software Consulting, Business Consulting, AI Automation, Business to Business (B2B), B2B Sales, Tech Sales, Middle East, Africa, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Partnerships, B2B Partnerships, Partner Management, Contract, Operations, Cross-functional Team Leadership, Data Science, Amazon Bedrock AgentCore, Deep Learning, Statistics, Sentiment Analysis, Microsoft Azure, Data Engineering, Dashboard Development, Data Modeling, BI Reporting
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