Xander Talent
Website:
xandertalent.in
Job details:
About the Role: We are looking for a hands-on AI Technology Leader to build and scale our Artificial Intelligence capabilities with a sharp focus on the retail and consumer industry. This is a rare role for someone equally comfortable architecting a production-grade AI/ML solution and presenting to a retail CXO — someone who has worked with global retail giants (or their technology partners) and translated business problems into deployable, cloud-native AI solutions. You will be the technical face of our AI capability — leading solutioning for customers, driving pre-sales, building reusable IP and accelerators, and mentoring a team of AI engineers and data scientists.
Responsibilities:
- Technical Leadership & Solutioning
- Own end-to-end AI solution architecture — from problem framing and data strategy to model design, MLOps, and production deployment.
- Provide hands-on technical leadership across AI/ML, Generative AI, and Agentic AI solutioning; personally able to architect and prototype solutions for complex, ambiguous customer problems.
- Evaluate build-vs-buy trade-offs, including retail AI platforms (Blue Yonder, o9, RELEX, Invent.ai, Nextail, Kinaxis) versus custom/cloud-native AI builds.
- Set technical standards, reference architectures, and reusable frameworks/accelerators for the AI practice.
- Retail Domain & Technology Expertise
- Bring deep, demonstrable understanding of retail business processes — demand forecasting, merchandising, assortment and space planning, markdown/price optimization, inventory and supply chain planning, order management (OMS), and customer/loyalty analytics.
- Translate retail business challenges into AI/ML use cases with clear ROI narratives (e.g., forecast accuracy improvement, markdown margin recovery, stockout/overstock reduction).
- Maintain working knowledge of the competitive retail-tech landscape and how AI is reshaping it — composable commerce, agentic supply chain planning, autonomous replenishment, GenAI-powered merchandising copilots.
- Cloud-Integrated AI Engineering
- Architect and guide delivery of AI solutions integrated deeply with cloud platforms — AWS (SageMaker, Bedrock), Azure (Azure ML, Azure OpenAI), and/or GCP (Vertex AI) — including data pipelines, MLOps/LLMOps, model deployment, monitoring, and cost optimization.
- Ensure solutions are enterprise-grade: secure, scalable, well-governed, and integrated with existing client data ecosystems (data lakes/warehouses, ERP, POS, OMS).
- Stay hands-on enough to review architecture diagrams, code, and model evaluation approaches — not just oversight at the PowerPoint level.
- Client Engagement, CXO Communication & Pre-Sales
- Serve as a trusted technical advisor to client CXOs (CTO, CIO, Chief Digital Officer, CDAO) — able to move fluidly between strategic business conversations and deep technical discussions in the same meeting.
- Lead and support pre-sales activities: solution design, RFP/RFI responses, technical proposals, PoC/pilot delivery, and client presentations/demos.
- Represent the organization in customer workshops, design-thinking sessions, and executive briefings, with excellent, polished English communication (written and verbal).
- Thought Leadership & Practice Development
- Build and grow the AI practice — capability roadmap, hiring plans, skill development, and partnerships with cloud hyperscalers and retail AI ISVs.
- Publish and represent point-of-view content — whitepapers, blogs, conference talks, webinars — establishing the organization's credibility in retail AI.
- Track emerging AI trends (agentic AI, multi-modal AI, small language models, responsible AI/governance) and translate them into practice offerings and client value propositions.
- Delivery Oversight & Mentorship
- Provide technical oversight and escalation support for AI project delivery, ensuring solutions are delivered on time, on budget, and to quality/architecture standards.
- Mentor and upskill AI engineers, data scientists, and solution architects within the team; build a strong technical bench.
- Partner with delivery and account management teams to ensure customer success and identify account growth opportunities.
Qualifications:
- 15+ years in Technology, with at least 6+ years focused specifically on AI/ML solutioning and leadership.
- Proven, hands-on experience in AI/ML engineering — not purely managerial; must be able to go deep on architecture, model design, and technical trade-offs.
- Strong, demonstrable retail domain experience — prior work with global retail giants, retail technology platforms, or their implementation/technology partners (e.g., Blue Yonder, o9 Solutions, RELEX, Invent.ai, SAP Retail, Manhattan, Kinaxis, Nextail, or similar).
- Strong experience in at least one major cloud platform (AWS, GCP, or Azure), with proven experience delivering cloud-integrated AI solutions to retail/enterprise customers.
- Track record of supporting or leading pre-sales — proposals, PoCs, solution demos, RFP responses.
- Demonstrated thought leadership — publications, conference speaking, practice building, or equivalent industry visibility.
- Excellent English communication skills — able to engage confidently and credibly with CXOs of global retail organizations.
- Experience building or scaling a technology/AI practice or center of excellence is highly desirable.
Required Skills:
- AI / GenAI & Agentic AI Deep — ML/DL fundamentals, LLMs, RAG, agentic frameworks, MLOps/LLMOps
- Cloud Platforms Strong in at least one of AWS / Azure / GCP; working knowledge of the others preferred
- Retail AI Platforms Strong exposure & knowledge
- Architecture Enterprise/solution architecture — scalability, security, governance
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