Job Description:
Sr Manager Growth AI Transformation
Function: Global Growth — AI Transformation
Reports to: Global Head AI Transformation, Global Growth
Level: Senior Individual Contributor – T3
Location: Chicago, IL (must be based in, or relocate to, Chicago)
About the Role
This is a newly created senior role at the heart of a large-scale AI transformation agenda within Mars Snacking. The Sr Manager, Growth AI Transformation will work directly with the Global Head AI Transformation to identify, develop, and scale AI-powered initiatives across the Global Growth function and across regional and local markets worldwide.
This is a business role, not a technology role. The ideal candidate is a commercially grounded CPG professional who understands how brands grow through marketing, sales, and consumer insights, and who has used data and AI to accelerate that growth. You will bring enough technical fluency to work credibly alongside engineers, data architects, and platform partners, but you will not build models, write code, or design technical architecture; our technical teams and partners do that. You will be the connective tissue between business ambition and technical execution, orchestrating a broad portfolio of initiatives, managing external partners, and ensuring that what gets built actually lands and creates impact.
Key Responsibilities
1. AI Opportunity Scanning & Industry Intelligence
Continuously monitor the external AI landscape: tools, platforms, competitor moves, and partner capabilities, to identify where AI can create the most value for our brands and for our Marketing, Sales, and Human Insights teams.
Translate external signals into opportunity briefs that shape the portfolio roadmap and inform leadership decisions.
Maintain a point of view on where the industry is heading, ensuring the team's pipeline stays ahead of the curve rather than catching up to it.
2. Portfolio Orchestration & Prioritisation
Grow and manage a mixed portfolio of AI initiatives, including flagship engines and smaller rapid experiments, ensuring appropriate rigour at each stage of development.
Inform strategic direction of initiatives to support AI transformation and building of new capabilities; identify and manage interdependencies with enterprise-wide AI plays (e.g. Gemini Enterprise, ODAI, Tech-fuelled sales); identify AI risks and implement guardrails; orchestrate across workstreams to drive efficiencies; and ensure a seamless end-to-end user experience across initiatives.
Identify and facilitate escalations and decision-points to and from cross-functional implementation teams and leadership to ensure that timely, informed, evidence-based prioritisation decisions are made across competing demands and transformed into tangible next steps.
3. Business Case Development & Stakeholder Alignment
Lead the structuring and articulation of business cases for new AI initiatives, working in close partnership with Digital, ODDA, Finance & Analytics, and other functions to source funding, to model and measure ROI.
Own the narrative, translating technical possibilities and data inputs into compelling proposals that secure senior approval and budget.
Build and maintain strong relationships with stakeholders across the Global Growth function and in regional markets, and lead discussions in key leadership forums.
4. Agile Delivery Oversight & External Partner Management
Act as the strategic manager across rapid/agile delivery teams and external partners (e.g. Writer, Google, Fractal, Publicis).
Define ways of working, set clear deliverables and accountability structures, and ensure development stays aligned to intended business outcomes.
Apply sufficient technical fluency to challenge, unblock, and redirect technical and partner teams where needed, without replacing the engineers and data scientists.
5. Scaling, Governance & Change Enablement
Own the path from pilot to scale for validated initiatives, navigating the varying governance and compliance…