Life at WeBuild-AI: meet Josh Cozens, who shares his career journey from Chemical Engineering to AI Consultant

People & Culture

23 Jan

What’s your role here at WeBuild-AI?

I’m a Lead Consultant in the Product & Transformation team. My current role is leading an engagement setting up an AI platform for a large utilities client, for both their UK and US businesses - we’re setting up 3 AI-enabled use cases to improve their bid excellence. I typically get involved in the full end-to-end delivery of AI solutions, from helping customers focus on the right solution to build, to working with the engineering teams to build the solution the right way.

What does a typical day look like for you?

I am blessed with a young family, so my mornings typically start early with my son ready to take on the world and my dog wanting to be walked. Here’s a snap of a typical sunrise/sunset walk. These walks help me think about the day ahead and not to sound corny, help me frame a positive mindset for myself.

Starting the work day, what I love about this role is how varied it is and the multiple hats I wear: Engagement Lead, managing workstreams, Product Manager for designing and guiding the use cases, Business Analyst hat to conduct discovery and AI Strategy and Operations for model building.

At WeBuild-AI, we do this in an AI-native manner, which I feel makes me 3-4 times more effective than I was 2 years ago. I can now ‘vibe code’ a very accurate and technically sensible prototype to discuss with both the client and, if it meets their requirements, with the talented engineering team where we then turn the idea into grounded, trusted reality.

My typical days tend to look like this: an hour or 2 creating user stories, setting up meetings, organising the JIRA or replying to messages before we meet as a team of 5 to discuss what’s on our plate and what support we need. We then either split into detailed collab sessions or get into deep work. This engagement has multiple streams, with executives sponsoring the work and outcomes and deadlines they’d like, which guide our plan. The client is primarily US-based and so 2pm onwards are client calls - this is where we share and discuss status updates, managing risks, validating requirements and designs, planning stakeholder sessions, creating content for executive meetings, reviewing documents. Then when I have time to deliver, I create mockups and prototypes, build and test Agentic workflows, create product specifications, testing scripts and demo context to align the client.

The day wraps up with a quick plan for the next day and usually classic household chores, maybe an episode of Only Connect (yes, my wife and I pause it on ‘the wall’ 🙈) and maybe some Substack reading or YouTube for AI content - I love this stuff!

When the summer comes along and the nights have more light, you may also find me sneaking in 9 holes post bedtime routine at Blackmoor Golf Club, with my caddie-cockapoo.

What’s your career journey been like so far?

With a Masters in Chemical Engineering from Cambridge Uni and my first year after graduation working at Holy Trinity Cambridge on the student Ministry team, I haven’t taken the ‘Oil & Gas typical path’.

As a Myers-Briggs 95% extrovert who loves helping others, that year primarily focusing on interaction with others was very welcome, as well as helping me consider career direction without study pressure.

For me, working across multiple organisations and learning as much as I could meant that consulting was a strong option. I’ve had the privilege to work in automotive, financial services, utilities, public sector, defence, FMCG, manufacturing, non-profit, specialty chemicals and healthcare. This variety has given me great diversity of thought when creating new solutions and processes, especially when I wear product hats, and helped me with project management, after seeing plenty of risks and learning how to communicate with different people. My career has converged increasingly to be data and AI-focussed and I’m now a subject specialist that can cover multiple horizontals.

I upskilled in Data Science and Python/R coding in 2017/18 and have worked in roles covering Data & AI strategy creation through identifying and delivering high value, tangible solutions. I’ve always wanted the full end-to-end exposure and have worked with companies to provide me that opportunity - you can’t advise on strategy if you haven’t implemented and if you don’t know the strategy, you don’t fully understand why you’re implementing it. Now, with this incredible capability hurtling at us, WeBuild-AI felt like the perfect environment to grow and deliver this full end-to-end ethos, whilst sitting at the ‘jagged edge’ of the AI frontier, to get hands-on learning.

What do you enjoy the most about your job here?

I’m very lucky to be able to say that there are so many great things about my job.The stand out (and this isn’t the first blog you’d read for this answer), but it is unequivocally the people - a brilliant mix of camaraderie, banter, intellectual conversation and a willingness to get stuck in and help. You’re not by yourself for anything, it’s truly WeBuild-AI, not I or JoshBuilds-AI. This for me is a culture-making team that takes the work seriously, but not themselves, which makes the workday a real joy. When you couple that with a topic you’re interested in, it makes you excited to start the workday.

Quick fire

Dark mode or light mode?

Dark.

How many languages do you speak (and which ones)?

One fluently (English), Welsh and French as a ‘traveller’, One untranslatable place name in Welsh: Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch.

Coffee or tea?

Coffee.

Go-to playlist or genre for deep focus work?

Anything 190 BPM and lyricless

What’s our company culture in 3 emojis?

🚀🤯🫂

Most British thing you’ve done this week?

Spoken out loud in a passive aggressive manner after the train guard announced an indefinite train delay.

Are you a nerd (and if so, what topics are you nerdiest in)?

1000% nerd and any topic I get into. Obviously working at an AI startup means AI, but currently I go down nerdy rabbit holes with golf, dog training, parenting and chess.

What’s one thing people in work are surprised to learn about you personally?

I used to work in a church in the Uni student team and I’ve catered for 100+ people with all kinds of dietary requirements, even trying my hand at gluten-free vegan scones. Yes, you read that right. No, you don’t want to try them.

People & Culture