AI Analyst

About the Company

ED&F Man Commodities is a global commodities business with operations across agricultural products and supply chains. This position will sit within the Cotton business, supporting teams across the cotton value chain. The successful candidate will work with colleagues across commercial, operational, financial and analytical functions to identify opportunities where AI and automation can improve efficiency, access to information and decision making.

About the Role

AI Enablement Analyst – Cotton

Role Overview

We have an exciting opportunity for someone to join ED&F Man as an AI Enablement Analyst within the Cotton business, working in a truly global environment. The role will work closely with colleagues across Trading, Operations, Finance and Research, helping to bridge the gap between business teams and technology. The primary focus will be on understanding how the Cotton business operates, identifying inefficient or manual processes, and determining where AI, automation and data driven tools can improve the way teams work. The AI Enablement Analyst will translate business requirements into practical AI solutions, develop and test new workflows using our in house AI platform, and support employees in embedding these tools into their day to day activities. This is a business facing role rather than a traditional software engineering position. Success will come from understanding processes, identifying valuable use cases, experimenting quickly and helping users adopt solutions that deliver measurable improvements. The role provides long term development potential for someone looking to combine AI, technology and process improvement within the physical commodities industry.

Responsibilities

• Work across the Cotton business, including Trading, Operations, Finance and Research, to understand existing workflows, data requirements, pain points and decision making processes.

• Identify manual, repetitive or inefficient processes and assess whether they can be improved through AI, automation or existing technology solutions.

• Translate business requirements into clear AI use cases, prompts, agent workflows and tool integrations on our in house AI platform.

• Build, test and refine lightweight AI solutions, including prompt templates, AI agents, Retrieval Augmented Generation workflows and prototypes, before partnering with technology teams where further engineering is required.

• Map business processes and document requirements, user journeys and expected outcomes to ensure solutions address genuine business problems.

• Develop AI solutions supporting areas such as:

• Information retrieval and natural language Q&A

• Research synthesis and document analysis

• Operational workflow automation

• Management information and reporting

• Data extraction and reconciliation

• Contract and documentation workflows

• Internal knowledge management

• Finance and operational analysis

• Business summaries and recurring reporting

• Develop and maintain prompt libraries, agent playbooks, evaluation datasets and quality measures to ensure solutions are repeatable and reliable.

• Test AI workflows systematically, identifying errors and weaknesses and improving prompts, workflows and controls.

• Partner with Technology, Data, Risk and Compliance teams to ensure AI solutions are secure, controlled and appropriate for production use.

• Act as a bridge between business users and technical teams, translating operational challenges into practical technical requirements.

• Drive adoption of AI across the Cotton business through demonstrations, training sessions, user support and continuous feedback.

• Develop practical training materials, guides and examples that help employees understand how AI can be incorporated into their day to day work.

• Track adoption and outcomes to ensure AI initiatives are delivering measurable improvements in efficiency, quality or decision making.

What Success Looks Like

• Teams across Cotton regularly use AI tools to improve everyday business processes.
• Manual and repetitive workflows are identified and progressively automated or simplified.
• AI solutions solve clearly defined business problems rather than becoming isolated experiments.
• Prompts and workflows are robust, repeatable and measurable.
• Employees understand how to use AI effectively and adoption increases across different functions.
• Business users see you as someone who understands their problems and can translate them into practical solutions.
• Technology teams receive clearly defined requirements and well tested prototypes when more sophisticated engineering is required.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, Data Science, Finance or a related discipline.

Required Skills

• 2 to 4 years of experience in a technical, analytical, automation or technology enabled business role.
• Hands on experience working with LLMs and generative AI, including prompt design, structured prompting and building repeatable AI workflows.
• Experience designing or configuring AI agents, agentic workflows or tool based automations.
• Understanding of Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) concepts and how AI applications can use internal documents, data or knowledge sources.
• Experience testing and evaluating AI outputs, including prompt iteration, error analysis, guardrails and quality evaluation.
• Ability to build and test lightweight prototypes before handing more complex solutions to engineering teams.
• Python or scripting experience for prototyping, automation or data analysis.
• Strong ability to understand business processes and translate requirements into practical technical solutions.
• Strong communication skills and confidence working with stakeholders across Trading, Operations, Finance and Research.

Preferred Skills

• Previous experience within commodities, physical supply chains, logistics or trading related environments.
• Experience with business process mapping, requirements gathering or user stories.

Our Commitment

We are committed to creating and sustaining an inclusive and diverse work environment where all employees are treated with dignity and respect. We are committed to promoting equal opportunities in employment and are focussed on actively building and developing diverse teams. All qualified applicants will receive equal treatment without regard to race, colour, sex, gender, age, religion or belief, ethnic or national origin, marital or civil partner status, physical or mental disability, military or veteran status, sexual orientation, gender reassignment (identity, gender expression), genetic information or any characteristic protected by local law. We are willing to make any reasonable adjustments throughout our recruitment process. To apply, you must have the right to work in the location where the role is based