There’s no fixed route here.
Your role is a starting point. From there, you can deepen your expertise, broaden your perspective, explore a different direction or take on more responsibility.
What counts is that you keep learning, contribute to work that matters and make each other stronger along the way.
What working at AE looks like in practice.
Growth, Impact and People run through your entire career at AE. What they look like changes with your experience, but the principles stay the same.
Growth at AE does not automatically mean promotion. There is no single career route everyone has to follow. You can deepen what you already know, broaden your expertise, explore another domain or take on more responsibility.
What we do expect is that you keep learning and take ownership of your development.
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You own your development. We help you navigate it.
Your development is yours. That doesn't mean you have to figure it out alone.
Your Short Term Coach stays closer to your daily work and project context, creating space for regular feedback and support.
Your Long Term Coach looks beyond the project you are working on today. Together, you can reflect on your ambitions, strengths, wellbeing, network and the direction you want to explore.
Nobody hands you a five-year career plan. That is the point. We help you see the possibilities. You decide which ones are worth exploring.
Learning happens in more places than a classroom.
Internal training days, evening knowledge sessions, online courses, certifications and external conferences all have their place. But a lot of development happens while doing the work.
A new client problem can push you to learn something you did not expect. A colleague can show you a better approach.
Taking on a new responsibility can teach you more than another training session. And sharing what you know matters too. Explaining something to someone else often sharpens your own thinking.
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Sometimes growth means changing context.
A long client relationship can be valuable. You build trust, understand the organisation more deeply and can take on more responsibility over time. But sometimes a different context is what helps you develop further.
Through regular reflection and conversations with your coach, you can look at whether your current work still gives you enough energy, challenge and room to grow. A regular check-in on your energy, growth and connection helps make those conversations concrete.
A different project, responsibility, technology or client environment can open a new perspective. The goal is not change for the sake of change. It is finding the context in which you can keep learning and contributing.
Interesting work is good. Interesting work that changes something is better. At AE, digital challenges come with a real business, organisational and human context. That means understanding not only what needs to be built, but why it matters and what must happen for it to work in practice.
Depending on the challenge, that can involve strategy, analysis, design, architecture, engineering, implementation, change or adoption. You may work on one part of that process or across several. Either way, you should understand how your contribution connects to the bigger result.
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Don’t stop at your assigned task.
You have a role and clear responsibilities. You are also expected to think.
See a better way? Say so. Think we are solving the wrong problem? Ask the question. Notice an assumption that does not hold up? Put it on the table.
Ownership at AE is not something you unlock after a certain number of years. Your perspective matters from the beginning. As your experience grows, so can the responsibility you take on.
That does not mean carrying everything alone. You get autonomy, with colleagues, experts and coaches around you when you need another perspective.
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From idea to something that works.
We do not want our contribution to end with a good recommendation.
AE connects thinking with making. We help shape solutions and stay close enough to implementation and adoption to see whether they work for the organisation and the people who use them.
Some projects start with strategy. Others start with a technical problem, a data question or a product challenge.
What matters is getting beyond the presentation and helping make the change real. Think of Q8’s customer experience platform (MIXX Award), Mediahuis’ frictionless login experience (CIO of the Year Digital Project) or platform engineering for Jan De Nul.
A project that matters for both sides.
A good project has to work for the client and for you.
When a new opportunity comes up, you get context about the work and the expectations. You can say what does and does not appeal to you and explore whether the assignment fits your expertise and the direction in which you want to develop.
Your internal profile keeps your experience, expertise and interests up to date, so our allocation teams can look for opportunities that make sense.
That does not mean you can choose any project at any moment. Consultancy comes with real client needs, timing and availability. But you are part of the conversation, and we look for a match that works for both sides.
You can learn a lot by yourself. Eventually, you need other people.
A colleague who solved something similar before. Someone from another discipline who sees the problem differently. An expert who questions an assumption you were fairly confident about five minutes ago. That is the kind of community we want AE to be.
Sometimes helping each other means taking twenty minutes to think through a problem together. Sometimes it means telling someone their idea is not there yet. Both count.
Your network goes beyond your project.
Many AE colleagues spend a large part of their time working with clients. That makes staying connected something we have to do deliberately. Your network is not limited to the people sitting beside you on a project.
Within AE, you connect with people who have related expertise. Account communities bring together colleagues working for the same client. Knowledge communities connect people working on similar challenges across different projects and domains.
Business unit meet-ups, internal training days and other AE events help those networks stay active. And some moments are simply about being together, from the yearly kick-off and the AE Weekend to the Family Day and the summer BBQ.
Community is something you can shape.
Not every community at AE starts because someone in management put it on a plan.
Often, someone has an idea or interest, finds a few other people who share it and starts something.
AE FIT brings colleagues together around activities such as running, cycling and padel. Board Gamers meet over board games. The AE Book Club brings readers together.
WeCaere WeShaere creates initiatives around people, charity and planet. And Consultants of Swing is our own house band.
The exact communities can change. That is part of the idea. You do not just join the AE community. You can help shape it.
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We check in on more than just the work.
How a project is going matters. So does how you are doing in it.
Through regular conversations and check-ins, we look at things like your energy, development, connection with AE and whether your current context still fits.
That support does not disappear when you are between client assignments either. Coaching, learning, internal initiatives and your AE network remain there while you work towards another relevant project.
Being part of AE should not depend on which client you happen to be working for.
How we work matters too.
Growth, Impact and People describe what working at AE should feel like. Our company values describe how we work together to make that experience possible.
Recognition is earned in the everyday.
AE has been recognised as a Great Place to Work 15 times. We are proud of that.
But what matters most is what people have to experience for that recognition to keep happening: trust, open dialogue, knowledge sharing, connection and the opportunity to have a voice.
Those things are not separate from the way we work. They are what make growth, ownership and strong collaboration possible in the first place.