Senior Data & AI Strategy Lead (Forecasting & GenAI)

Endava; Northern (KY); Hybrid; USD 150,000 - 210,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health Insurance

401(k) Plan

Flexible Spending Accounts

Life Insurance

AD&D

Health Savings Account

Employer Match

Job summary

Endava is seeking a senior data and AI leader to drive discovery and translate complex business problems into production-ready solutions. You will design end-to-end architectures spanning data platforms, analytics, ML, GenAI, and integrations, while leading advanced forecasting and model validation efforts.

You will mentor multidisciplinary teams and present recommendations to executives, shaping proposals and technical solutions for revenue and operational impact.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of applied forecasting and data domain experience.
• Proven experience leading at least two comparable forecasting engagements from discovery through production/handover.
• Strong experience with comparable-unit / same-store-style forecasting approaches.
• Expert-level multivariable regression, collinearity analysis, VIF interpretation, model tuning, selection, and holdout validation.
• Strong understanding of sparse and zero-inflated datasets; must understand why nulls cannot be silently treated as zero.
• Strong metric fluency, including R², WAPE, MAPE, and p-values, with the ability to explain metric selection in business language.
• Deep understanding of data leakage and point-in-time feature correctness.
• Strong Python and SQL skills and experience creating reproducible analytical workflows/notebooks.
• Git and pull-request-based software delivery experience.
• Strong Data Architecture and Solution Architecture capability across ingestion, transformation, modeling, security, governance, APIs, cloud, and production operations.
• Strong understanding of ML, GenAI/LLMs, RAG, AI agents, and modern enterprise AI patterns.
• Proven executive communication skills; must be able to present to non-statistical audiences using business outcomes first and methodology second.
• Must be capable of explicitly communicating forecast/model limitations, uncertainty, and risk in plain language.
• Proven client consulting and thought-leadership experience; able to teach methodology, not simply execute it.
• Demonstrated experience leading senior client workshops, technical discovery, architecture discussions, and executive readouts.
• Strong commercial judgment and ability to connect technical decisions to revenue, operational, or customer outcomes.
• Preferred domain experience in sports, media, entertainment, streaming, ticketing, subscriptions, sponsorship, advertising, telecom, or commercial/revenue analytics.
• Hierarchical/mixed-effects modeling, ADRs, large-scale categorical encoding, MLOps, governance, and responsible AI experience.
• Strong Snowflake experience; Snowflake ML / Model Registry experience.
• 10–12+ years overall Data, Analytics, AI, Architecture, or related technology experience.

Responsibilities

• Serve as a senior trusted advisor to CIO, CTO, CDO, CRO, business, product, and technology stakeholders.
• Lead Data & AI discovery and translate ambiguous business problems into measurable, production-ready solutions.
• Design end-to-end architectures spanning data platforms, analytics, machine learning, GenAI, applications, APIs, governance, and integrations.
• Lead and challenge advanced forecasting and predictive-modeling approaches, including regression, sparse and zero-inflated data, feature design, model selection, tuning, and validation.
• Define appropriate business and model success measures, including R², WAPE, MAPE, statistical significance, and business-impact KPIs.
• Ensure point-in-time correctness, prevent data leakage, and maintain rigorous model-development and validation practices.
• Provide hands-on technical leadership using Python, SQL, Snowflake, notebooks, Git, and modern Data/AI platforms.
• Shape AI use cases across forecasting, sponsorship sales, lead scoring, next-best-action, revenue intelligence, personalization, subscription growth, and commercial optimization.
• Evaluate when classical analytics/ML, GenAI, or agentic AI is the appropriate solution.
• Lead architecture and solution-design workshops and present recommendations to senior and executive audiences.
• Support proposals, SOWs, RFI/RFP responses, estimates, staffing models, and technical solution shaping.
• Lead and mentor multidisciplinary teams across Data Science, Data Engineering, AI Engineering, Software Engineering, and Architecture.
• Actively participate in client stand-ups, backlog refinement, executive readouts, and strategic planning.
• Teach and transfer knowledge to client teams; documentation, reproducibility, and handover are expected parts of delivery.
• Challenge client requests when the proposed approach does not solve the underlying business problem.

Skills

Forecasting

Data Architecture

Machine Learning

GenAI

Executive communication

Client consulting

Data governance

Tools

Snowflake

Python

SQL

Git

Job description

Endava is seeking a senior data and AI leader to drive discovery and translate complex business problems into production-ready solutions. You will design end-to-end architectures spanning data platforms, analytics, ML, GenAI, and integrations, while leading advanced forecasting and model validation efforts.

You will mentor multidisciplinary teams and present recommendations to executives, shaping proposals and technical solutions for revenue and operational impact.