Manager Data and AI

At National Foods Limited, we are on a journey of growth and on building our most valuable assets which include our brands, financial strength, global presence, and our unbridled commitment to becoming a truly sustainable and a renowned company in the world.

Job Purpose Lead the Data & AI function within DDT, enabling the organization to create measurable value from trusted data, advanced analytics, and AI (including GenAI) for strategic decision-making and operational excellence. Drive the roadmap, delivery, and governance of analytics and AI platforms, semantic models, and data/AI products, ensuring alignment with DDT’s federated structure, security and compliance requirements, and business objectives.

Key Accountabilities & Responsibilities

• Support the Head of ERP & Application in defining and executing the enterprise Data & AI strategy and ensuring alignment with business priorities.
• Own and maintain the Data & AI roadmap (use-cases, platforms, governance), including prioritization, value tracking, and delivery cadence across the federated model.
• Partner with business leaders to identify, assess, and deliver high-impact analytics, AI/ML, and GenAI use-cases; translate requirements into scalable data/AI products.
• Lead solution design for analytics and AI products, including data pipelines, feature/semantic layers, model serving patterns, and integration with business workflows.
• Manage the operational development of semantic layers and curated datasets, ensuring data is validated, structured, and business-ready with clear KPI definitions.
• Work with data engineering teams to ensure timely data ingestion, quality checks, observability, and pipeline reliability.
• Develop and govern BI products (dashboards, reports, self-service datasets) for Sales, Finance, SCM, Marketing, Export, HR, and Manufacturing; drive adoption and consistent UX standards.
• Build, deploy, and operationalize ML models (e.g., forecasting, segmentation, optimization, risk) and establish MLOps practices (CI/CD, model registry, monitoring, drift/quality checks, versioning).
• Lead AI experimentation and delivery (e.g., copilots, RAG/search, summarization, knowledge assistants) with strong focus on security, privacy, and evaluation (quality, grounding, toxicity, bias).
• Define and enforce Responsible AI and AI governance controls (model risk, approvals, documentation, explainability, auditability), in partnership with Cybersecurity, Legal, and Compliance.
• Ensure adherence to data governance, quality standards, naming conventions, metadata/lineage practices, and KPI frameworks.
• Establish standard ways of working: intake & discovery, PoC-to-production criteria, product documentation, and post-deployment value measurement.
• Provide hands-on guidance and coaching across tools and practices (Power BI, SQL, Python, DAX, ML frameworks, prompt engineering fundamentals) to uplift capability and delivery quality.
• Drive adoption via training materials, workshops, enablement sessions, and support for day-to-day analytics and AI queries.
• Engage with vendors and implementation partners for analytics/AI tools, cloud services, model platforms, and platform upgrades; manage licenses, subscriptions, and platform administration tasks.
• Ensure compliance with cybersecurity, privacy, and audit requirements for data access, reporting layers, models, and AI applications.
• Track product adoption and business impact (usage, value realized, SLA/quality KPIs) and prepare performance reports for leadership.

Preferred Qualification & Experience

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Data Science, Statistics, Mathematics, Engineering, or related field; Master’s preferred.
• 5+ years in data, analytics, BI, and/or AI/ML roles with proven experience leading teams and delivering data/AI products end-to-end.
• Hands-on experience with cloud data & AI platforms (Azure/AWS/GCP), modern data warehousing/lakehouse patterns, and BI ecosystems (Power BI/Tableau/Qlik).
• Practical experience building and operationalizing ML solutions, including MLOps (monitoring, drift, CI/CD, model registry) and model risk/controls.
• Exposure to GenAI use-cases (e.g., copilots, RAG, summarization) and understanding of Responsible AI, privacy, and security considerations.
• Certifications in analytics/cloud/AI preferred (e.g., Azure Data Scientist/AI Engineer, AWS ML Specialty, Google Professional ML Engineer, Power BI).

Location: Corporate Office, Karachi.

National Foods Limited provides equal employment opportunity (EEO) to all persons regardless of age, color, origin, physical or mental disability, race, religion, creed, gender, marital status, status with regard to public assistance or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws.