Manager Data and AI

National Foods Limited is seeking a dynamic leader to head the Data & AI function within the Digital Data & Technology (DDT) team at our Corporate Office in Karachi. This role is pivotal in driving the organization’s ability to generate measurable value through trusted data, advanced analytics, and artificial intelligence, including Generative AI. The successful candidate will lead the development and governance of analytics and AI platforms, semantic models, and data products, ensuring alignment with business goals, security standards, and compliance requirements. This position offers a unique opportunity to influence strategic decision-making and operational excellence across multiple business functions.

Key Responsibilities

- Collaborate with the Head of ERP & Application to define and implement the enterprise Data & AI strategy, ensuring it aligns with overall business priorities.
- Own and maintain the Data & AI roadmap, including use-case prioritization, platform governance, value tracking, and delivery cadence within a federated organizational model.
- Partner with business leaders to identify, evaluate, and deliver high-impact analytics, AI/ML, and GenAI use-cases, translating them into scalable data and AI products.
- Lead the design of solutions for analytics and AI products, covering data pipelines, semantic layers, model deployment, and integration with business workflows.
- Oversee the operational development of semantic layers and curated datasets, ensuring data quality, validation, and readiness with clearly defined KPIs.
- Coordinate with data engineering teams to ensure timely data ingestion, quality assurance, observability, and pipeline reliability.
- Develop and govern BI products such as dashboards, reports, and self-service datasets for departments including Sales, Finance, Supply Chain, Marketing, Export, HR, and Manufacturing, promoting adoption and consistent user experience standards.
- Build, deploy, and operationalize machine learning models (forecasting, segmentation, optimization, risk) while establishing MLOps practices including CI/CD, model registry, monitoring, and versioning.
- Lead AI experimentation and delivery efforts (e.g., copilots, retrieval-augmented generation, summarization, knowledge assistants) with a strong emphasis on security, privacy, and quality evaluation.
- Define and enforce Responsible AI and governance controls in collaboration with Cybersecurity, Legal, and Compliance teams, covering model risk management, approvals, documentation, explainability, and auditability.
- Ensure compliance with data governance policies, quality standards, naming conventions, metadata and lineage practices, and KPI frameworks.
- Establish standardized processes for intake, discovery, proof-of-concept to production transitions, product documentation, and post-deployment value measurement.
- Provide hands-on coaching and guidance on tools and methodologies including Power BI, SQL, Python, DAX, ML frameworks, and prompt engineering fundamentals to enhance team capabilities and delivery quality.
- Drive adoption through training materials, workshops, enablement sessions, and ongoing support for analytics and AI queries.
- Manage relationships with vendors and implementation partners for analytics and AI tools, cloud services, and platform upgrades, including license and subscription administration.
- Ensure cybersecurity, privacy, and audit compliance for data access, reporting layers, models, and AI applications.
- Track product adoption and business impact, preparing performance reports for senior leadership.

Required Qualifications

- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Data Science, Statistics, Mathematics, Engineering, or a related field; Master’s degree preferred.
- Minimum of 5 years’ experience in data, analytics, BI, and/or AI/ML roles with demonstrated leadership in delivering data and AI products end-to-end.
- Hands-on experience with cloud data and AI platforms such as Azure, AWS, or GCP, along with modern data warehousing or lakehouse architectures and BI tools like Power BI, Tableau, or Qlik.
- Proven expertise in building and operationalizing machine learning solutions, including MLOps practices such as monitoring, drift detection, CI/CD pipelines, and model registry.
- Familiarity with Generative AI use-cases (e.g., copilots, retrieval-augmented generation, summarization) and a solid understanding of Responsible AI principles, privacy, and security considerations.

Preferred Qualifications and Benefits

- Relevant certifications in analytics, cloud, or AI such as Azure Data Scientist/AI Engineer, AWS ML Specialty, Google Professional ML Engineer, or Power BI certifications are highly desirable.
- National Foods Limited is committed to providing equal employment opportunities to all individuals regardless of age, color, origin, disability, race, religion, gender, marital status, or any other characteristic protected by law.

This role offers a challenging and rewarding environment to contribute to the growth and sustainability of a globally recognized company by leveraging cutting-edge data and AI technologies.