Sr. Manager, AI Enablement

About the role

The Senior Manager, Artificial Intelligence leads the development, execution, and ongoing evolution of Ocean Spray’s enterprise AI strategy. This role plays a critical part in driving initial awareness, adoption, and value, particularly through Microsoft Copilot, SAP and other AI tools. This role oversees the full AI portfolio, identifying and prioritizing high-value use cases that deliver measurable business impact while building the foundational processes and capabilities the cooperative needs for long-term growth.

Responsibilities

• Develop and refine the enterprise AI strategy in alignment with cooperative business priorities.
• Identify, assess, and prioritize high-impact AI opportunities across Commercial, Operations, Supply Chain, Finance, Corporate, and IT.
• Build business cases that quantify expected outcomes, ROI, risks, and success metrics.
• Lead execution of the AI portfolio to ensure delivery of measurable value.
• Strengthen AI governance, security, and responsible AI practices.
• Provide clear updates, portfolio reporting, and executive communications.
• Partner with Data Engineering, Cloud/Infrastructure, Enterprise Applications, Data Governance, and Cybersecurity teams to architect scalable AI solutions.
• Contribute hands-on to solution design, prototyping, model evaluation, and prompt engineering.
• Support implementation of MLOps and model lifecycle practices with platform teams.
• Ensure operationalization, monitoring, and performance optimization of AI solutions.
• Provide technical direction to data scientists, ML engineers, IT product owners, and other contributors.
• Serve as a champion for AI awareness and adoption across the cooperative, especially focusing on embedding Microsoft Copilot, SAP, Workday and other approved tools into processes and workflows.
• Support change management efforts to drive adoption of AI-enabled improvements.
• Build strong partnerships with internal stakeholders and external vendors to introduce leading tools and methods.
• Foster a collaborative, learning-oriented team environment.

Requirements

• Strong understanding of AI/ML concepts (supervised/unsupervised learning, NLP, generative AI, optimization, predictive modeling).
• Ability to prototype or evaluate AI models and prompts using tools such as Python and SQL.
• Familiarity with enterprise AI platforms, cloud technologies, MLOps, and responsible AI frameworks.
• Solid knowledge of data engineering fundamentals, data quality, and integration.
• Experience with enterprise systems such as SAP S/4HANA, SAP IBP/SAC, Microsoft 365 Copilot, Maximo or SAP EAM/APM, Workday, and Azure services.

Strategic & Analytical Skills

• Strong ability to evaluate business needs and size opportunities.
• Skilled at translating complex technical concepts into business-friendly language.
• Capable of managing complex initiatives while balancing short- and long-term priorities.

Leadership & Collaboration

• Proven ability to lead, coach, and develop AI talent.
• Strong cross-functional influence and stakeholder management skills.
• Sound decision-making and adaptability in dynamic environments.

Communication & Change Leadership

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills for technical and executive audiences.
• Able to articulate value, risks, progress, and recommendations clearly.
• Experience supporting change management related to AI adoption.