Vice President II, AI Domain & Insights Orchestration

Vice President II, AI Domain & Insights Orchestration

Let’s be unstoppable together!

Circana is a leading provider of technology, AI, and data solutions for consumer packaged goods companies, manufacturers, and retailers. Our predictive analytics and Liquid Data® platform help clients measure market share, uncover consumer behavior, and drive growth—powered by six decades of expertise and an expansive, high-quality data set.

At Circana, we are fueled by our passion for continuous learning and growth, we seek and share feedback freely, and we celebrate victories both big and small in an environment that is flexible and accommodating to our work and personal lives.  We’re a global company dedicated to fostering inclusivity and belonging. We value and celebrate the unique experiences, cultures, and viewpoints that each individual brings. By embracing a wide range of backgrounds, skills, expertise, and beyond, we create a stronger, more innovative environment for our employees, clients, and communities. With us, you can always bring your full self to work.  Join our inclusive, committed team to be a challenger, own outcomes, and stay curious together. Circana is proud to be Certified™ by Great Place To Work®. This prestigious award is based entirely on what current employees say about their experience working at Circana. Learn more at www.circana.com.

Role Overview

We are seeking a senior leader to own the end-to-end vision and build of our AI-powered "digital teammate" for Client Insights—Starfinder— to help them more effectively serve our Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) and General Merchandise clients. This role spans large language model (LLM) architecture and orchestration, domain knowledge capture at the individual and organizational level, human-in-the-loop training, and productization across our solutions portfolio. The leader will manage a team of consultants who will design mechanisms to efficiently elicit and encode expert know-how from our Client Insights teams and clients, govern how that knowledge is weighted and validated, and drive trusted diagnostics and actionable recommendations that leverage our market measurement data and agents (e.g., data access, assortment optimization).

Reports to: EVP/SVP, AI, Technology & Product. Partners closely with Client Insights, Data Platform, and Solution Product leaders

Job Responsibilities

• Architect & Orchestrate the AI Teammate
  • Own the end-state architecture and roadmap for domain centric AI application: multi-agent orchestration, tool/agent registry (e.g., data access, assortment modeling), retrieval augmentation, and guardrails.
  • Design interfaces and workflows so Client Insights users can delegate tasks (diagnose, recommend, forecast) and see evidence, steps, and data lineage (trust-by-design).
  • Operationalize "human-in-the-loop" training modes that expose rationale, artifacts, and gaps, enabling experts to correct/extend the system efficiently.
• Capture & Model Domain Knowledge
  • Build the end-to-end mechanism to elicit, structure, and weight domain knowledge from experts—balancing industry best practice, company standards, and personal/role-level nuances.
  • Develop schemas/ontologies, taxonomies, and playbooks that encode diagnostic and recommendation patterns (e.g., brand health, price/promotions, assortment, equity).
  • Implement governance so contributions are validated, versioned, and weighted by authority (role, expertise, regulatory constraints).
• Deliver Trusted Diagnostics & Recommendations
  • Stand up repeatable analyses for the most common client questions (e.g., "What's going on with my brand?") using our market data alongside learned heuristics.
  • Quantify actions via specialized agents (e.g., assortment optimization for SKU-level recommendations; pricing/trade scenarios) with transparent trade-offs and expected impact.
  • Enable strategic overlays (portfolio, pricing posture, innovation bets) so guidance reflects client-specific objectives—not just generic best practice.
• Productize & Integrate Across the Portfolio
  • Partner with Product, Data Platform, and Solutions teams to package reusable capabilities into Liquid AI/Brainwaves and client-facing experiences.
  • Define APIs and integration patterns so agents and external data sources can be plugged in, discovered, and governed.
  • Evolve the user experience away from static forms towards natural-language workflows that pull the right data, tools, and logic on demand.
• Lead, Influence & Change

• Oversee vendor performance, ensuring quality, compliance, and alignment with internal teams.
• Lead a matrixed squad of architects, applied scientists, and process/knowledge engineers; coach Insights SMEs on how to improve the AI teammate.

• Set standards for evidence, explainability, and outcome-orientation ("sell more or operate more efficiently").
• Drive adoption, training, and change-management across Client Insights and selected clients; measure impact and iterate.

Requirements

• 10+ years in AI/ML-enabled products or decision-support systems, with 2+ years architecting LLM-powered solutions (prompt engineering, retrieval augmentation, multi-agent systems).
• Demonstrated ability to design "human-in-the-loop" workflows and encode expert heuristics into governed, reusable logic (schemas, ontologies, taxonomies).
• Experience working with domain experts to capture and structure domain knowledge.
• Proven experience managing external technology or consulting partners delivering AI/ML or complex enterprise systems.
• Strong product-thinking: transforming ambiguous problem spaces into shippable capabilities with measurable impact.
• Comfort with CPG/retail analytics contexts (brand health, price/promotions, assortment, cannibalization, panel vs market measurement) or adjacent domains.
• Experience with agent frameworks/tools, data access patterns, and integration (APIs) across analytics solutions.
• Exceptional communication and change leadership—earning trust with Client Insights teams and senior client stakeholders.

Circana Behaviors

Beyond technical skills, experience, and role-specific attributes, these shared behaviors are fundamental to our culture and success. We seek individuals who consistently demonstrate and champion these behaviors in their daily work:

• Stay Curious: Being hungry to learn and grow, always asking the big questions.
• Seek Clarity: Embracing complexity to create clarity and inspire action.
• Own the Outcome: Being accountable for decisions and taking ownership of our choices.
• Center on the Client: Relentlessly adding value for our customers.
• Be a Challenger: Never complacent, always striving for continuous improvement.
• Champion Inclusivity: Fostering trust in relationships engaging with empathy, respect, and integrity.
• Commit to each other: Contributing to making Circana a great place to work for everyone.

Location: This position can be located in the following area(s): Unites States – Flexible hybrid; periodic travel to client and team sites as needed.

The below range reflects the range of possible compensation for this role at the time of this posting. We may ultimately pay more or less than the posted range. This range may be modified in the future. An employee’s position within the salary range will be based on several factors including, but not limited to, relevant education, qualifications, certifications, experience, skills, seniority, geographic location, performance, shift, travel requirements, sales or revenue-based metrics, any collective bargaining agreements, and business or organizational needs. The salary range for this role is $250,000 to $280,000.

This job is also eligible for bonus/incentive pay.

We offer a comprehensive package of benefits including paid time off, medical/dental/vision insurance and 401(k) to eligible employees.

An offer of employment may be conditional upon successful completion of a background check in accordance with local legislation and our candidate privacy notice. Your current employer will not be contacted without your permission.

You can apply for this role through the Circana careers website or Intranet site for internal candidates. This role is subject to AI-assisted screening. Circana uses artificial intelligence (AI) to assess resumes for alignment with job requirements by helping locate details in resumes that relate to the job description.

This position is expected to remain open for approximately 30 days and may close earlier if sufficient qualified candidates are identified.

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