Innovation Hub Lead: AI & Strategy

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

Job summary

Kaelo seeks an Innovation Hub Manager to lead its research and development capability, driving AI-driven product concepts from idea to production. You will build a capable team, empower the AI Architect, and govern the portfolio with stage-gated processes to deliver commercial value.

The role focuses on managing and maturing innovations, collaborating with executives, and ensuring responsible AI, information security, and data protection policies are followed across initiatives.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, Data Science or a related field.
• Postgraduate qualification or formal training in AI, product or innovation management is advantageous.
• Minimum 8 years’ experience in technology, including at least 3 years managing teams in a research, innovation, product or advanced engineering function.
• Experience taking new technology concepts from idea through POC to production adoption.
• Knowledge of AI landscape, including LLMs, agentic systems and ML operations.
• Experience establishing governance for exploratory work, including stage gating and portfolio-level decision making.
• Track record of engaging executive stakeholders and securing sponsorship for speculative investment.

Responsibilities

• Manage the Innovation Hub, setting direction and prioritising initiatives.
• Develop and retain AI, analysis and design skills within a largely greenfield team.
• Empower the AI Architect to set reference architecture and standards.
• Set objectives, manage performance and budget for the department.
• Develop SOPs for stage-gate, experimentation and handover.
• Enforce Kaelo policies including responsible AI and data protection.
• Translate AI strategy into a sequenced portfolio balancing near-term value and long-term capability.
• Run stage-gated governance to fund initiatives incrementally and stop unpromising ones.
• Horizon-scan emerging tech and assess applicability to health insurance and financial services.
• Report portfolio progress and realised benefits to IT Executive.
• Engage stakeholders to identify opportunities with commercial or member value.
• Ensure each initiative has use case, value hypothesis and success criteria.
• Measure realised benefit after production and build partner relationships.
• Establish responsible AI practices covering fairness, bias, explainability and oversight.
• Govern data use in experimentation with POPIA compliance.
• Assess third-party model risk and ensure security requirements from the outset.
• Agree acceptance criteria with Systems Solutions Manager for production deployment.
• Ensure documentation, test coverage, observability and runbooks for production.
• Plan and resource productionisation with Systems Solutions.
• Act as a trusted partner to the business and communicate progress clearly.

Skills

AI/ML knowledge

Governance

Stakeholder influence

Team development

Rapid prototyping

Product discovery

Experimentation

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science/Engineering/IS/Data Science

Postgraduate qualification in AI/innovation management (advantage)

8+ years technology experience including 3+ years leading teams

Tools

AI architecture guidance

Policy enforcement SOPs

Job description

Kaelo seeks an Innovation Hub Manager to lead its research and development capability, driving AI-driven product concepts from idea to production. You will build a capable team, empower the AI Architect, and govern the portfolio with stage-gated processes to deliver commercial value.

The role focuses on managing and maturing innovations, collaborating with executives, and ensuring responsible AI, information security, and data protection policies are followed across initiatives.