Embedded Data & AI Product Leader

Guardrisk; Sandton; On-site; ZAR 900,000 - 1,300,000; Full time

Job summary

Guardrisk seeks an experienced Data & AI Product Manager to own data and AI products from discovery through rollout, adoption and value realisation. You will work embedded with business teams, understand workflows, uncover underlying problems, and shape reusable, certified data products in Guardrisk’s Data CoE.

You will collaborate with data engineers, analysts and AI engineers to balance user need, technical trade-offs and speed, ensuring measurable value beyond initial deployment.

Qualifications

• Significant product-management experience with data/analytics/AI-enabled products.
• Experience taking complex products from discovery through delivery and adoption.
• Strong discovery skills: work with users to understand workflows and outcomes.
• Experience developing strategies, roadmaps, backlogs, requirements and release plans.
• Understanding of product lifecycle and post-launch management.
• Experience defining success measures using adoption and business outcomes.
• Sufficient technical fluency to discuss data engineering and AI trade-offs.
• Strong stakeholder-management and cross-functional collaboration.

Responsibilities

• Build trusted relationships with business teams to understand processes and pain points.
• Lead product and problem discovery, distinguishing requests from underlying needs.
• Translate needs into opportunities for data, analytics, ML models and AI solutions.
• Develop clear visions, strategies and value cases linked to business outcomes.
• Own a portfolio of data and AI products with coherent roadmaps and lifecycles.
• Prioritise backlogs balancing value, strategic fit, reuse and risk.
• Define requirements for data engineering, analytics and AI teams.
• Collaborate with engineers, data scientists and AI engineers on trade-offs.
• Plan releases and drive rollout, adoption and operational change.
• Define success metrics and monitor usage, feedback and value realization.
• Use live-product evidence to decide on improvements or retirement.
• Identify reusable data/AI products from one-off requests.
• Maintain clear product documentation and stakeholder alignment.
• Help establish mature data product-management disciplines.
• Ensure data products are AI-ready, documented, governed and certified.
• Coordinate with Technology and enterprise AI teams for trusted data products.

Skills

Product management

Data/Analytics/AI products

Stakeholder management

User discovery & problem framing

Roadmaps & backlog prioritisation

Communication skills

Commercial/analytical thinking

Technical fluency (data/AI)

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Business/CS/IS/Engineering/Data Analytics

Equivalent practical experience

Tools

Azure DevOps

Job description

Guardrisk seeks an experienced Data & AI Product Manager to own data and AI products from discovery through rollout, adoption and value realisation. You will work embedded with business teams, understand workflows, uncover underlying problems, and shape reusable, certified data products in Guardrisk’s Data CoE.

You will collaborate with data engineers, analysts and AI engineers to balance user need, technical trade-offs and speed, ensuring measurable value beyond initial deployment.