Senior IT Manager - AI Innovation & Engineering

About the role

The Senior Manager, AI Innovation & Engineering is a strategic technology leader within Ferguson's AI Technology and Innovation organization. This role oversees multiple AI engineering and innovation squads, driving the successful delivery of solutions that transform business operations, enhance customer experiences, and accelerate enterprise innovation.

Responsibilities

• Lead and develop several AI engineering and innovation groups, encouraging a culture of collaboration, accountability, and continuous improvement.
• Partner with business and technology leaders to define AI priorities, roadmaps, and delivery plans aligned with strategic objectives.
• Drive the design, development, and deployment of scalable AI-powered products and solutions on Google Cloud Platform (GCP).
• Provide technical leadership and guidance across solution architecture, engineering practices, code quality, testing, security, and performance.
• Build, coach, and retain high-performing teams through effective hiring, mentoring, and career development.
• Oversee delivery of AI initiatives from concept through production, ensuring quality, reliability, and business value.
• Collaborate with Product, Data Science, Platform Engineering, and Architecture teams to deliver innovative solutions that meet business needs.
• Manage budgets, vendor partnerships, project plans, and team capacity to ensure successful execution of critical initiatives.
• Drive continuous improvement of Agile delivery practices, engineering standards, and software development processes.
• Monitor operational performance, address risks and dependencies, and ensure ongoing support and scalability of AI solutions.
• Build strong relationships with business customers across the organization and communicate progress, outcomes, and strategic recommendations.
• Stay ahead of emerging AI technologies and industry trends to help shape Ferguson's AI strategy and innovation roadmap.
• Adhere to all policies, rules, regulations, and procedures.
• Perform other duties or functions as requested by management.

Qualifications and Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in information technology, computer science or related field, or equivalent experience preferred.
• Must have at least 8-10 years of hands-on experience delivering AI or software engineering initiatives, including meaningful time in a formal people-management role, with a breadth of knowledge on how innovation and engineering squads integrate within and across different business domains.
• Must have prior experience directly managing engineering or technical talent — including managing other managers or squad leads — with performance management and career development responsibility; experience with offshore/onsite personnel preferred.
• Knowledge of Ferguson's business and application data domains, and how they integrate with core enterprise and third-party systems, is a plus.
• Must have experience in process architecture aimed at analyzing, simplifying, and improving existing processes, and bringing in accountability using data/BI tooling to capture and track the right benchmarks across squads.
• Must have a hands-on software programming background in Java and/or Python, with Software Architecture and Engineering experience building services (MSA, SOA, Integrations); architect-level experience strongly preferred.
• Must have experience in DevSecOps, CI/CD, pipeline development.
• Must have hands-on experience building and leading engineering squads on Google Cloud Platform (GCP).
• Must have experience creating operational dashboards, telemetry configurations and alerting templates for end-to-end flow of data services using APM and Data Logging solutions such as AppDynamics, DataDog etc.
• Solid understanding and experience implementing software design patterns and modern standards.
• Must be a hands-on technical leader able to work alongside and guide multi-functional squads of software engineers, software architects, data scientists, and software quality engineers as needed.
• Demonstrates strong competence, initiative, and self-drive across multiple squads.
• Proactively develops technical and cultural direction.
• Sets a tone of responsibility that other leaders follow.
• Strong leadership and interpersonal relationship building skills.
• Strong written communication skills with the ability to deliver compelling presentations.