Sr Manager, Data Science & AI Engineering

Yum Crave AI is seeking a Senior Manager, Data Science & AI Engineering to lead and scale our hybrid team of Data Scientists and AI Engineers across traditional ML and next-generation AI systems. This individual will oversee workstreams that span forecasting, personalization, experimentation, and intelligent agent development using both structured data and foundation models (LLMs, VLMs, etc.) 

The ideal candidate is an experienced technical leader who thrives at the intersection of applied data science and LLM-driven development, and who can coach teams, collaborate cross-functionally, and communicate complex ideas clearly to technical and executive audiences.

Key Responsibilities:

• Team Leadership & Coaching:
  • Lead and mentor a team of Data Scientists and AI Engineers across multiple domains and products.
  • Provide technical and career development guidance; foster a collaborative, high-trust culture.
  • Drive standards for experimentation, evaluation, reproducibility, and model performance.
• Technical Strategy & Execution:
  • Shape end-to-end ML and AI strategy across core DS use cases (forecasting, pricing, recommendation) and emerging LLM/VLM applications.
  • Guide architectural choices around model selection, evaluation design, and deployment workflows.
  • Provide oversight on LLM fine-tuning, prompt design, ASR/embedding adaptation, and production readiness.
• Communication & Collaboration:
  • Act as a key interface between technical contributors and business/product stakeholders.
  • Distill analytical output and AI system behavior into clear presentations, dashboards, or executive summaries.
  • Partner with Product, Engineering, TPM, and Ops to align team output with company priorities.

Required Qualifications:

• 8+ years of experience in Data Science, Machine Learning, or AI Engineering.
• Experience leading and coaching high-performing technical teams.
• Hands-on expertise in both traditional ML (regression, classification, forecasting) and modern AI techniques (LLMs, RAG, embeddings, multimodal models).
• Strong communication skills with the ability to influence senior leadership and simplify complex topics.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience building or scaling hybrid DS+AI teams in enterprise environments.
• Familiarity with LangChain, HuggingFace, OpenAI, Pinecone, or vector-based ML architectures.
• Exposure to business domains such as QSR, retail, personalization, or intelligent automation.

Salary Range: $165,700 - $226,800 annually + bonus eligibility. This is the expected salary range for this position. Ultimately, in determining pay, we'll consider the successful candidate’s location, experience, and other job-related factors.

The Yum! Brands story is simple. We have the four distinctive, relevant and easy global brands – KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell and The Habit Burger Grill -- born from the hopes and dreams, ambitions and grit of passionate entrepreneurs. And we want more of this to create our future!

As the world’s largest restaurant company we have a clear and compelling mission: to build the world’s most love, trusted and fastest-growing restaurant brands. The key and not-so-secret ingredient in our recipe for growth is our unrivaled talent and culture, which fuels our results.

We’re looking for talented, motivated, visionary and team-oriented leaders to join us as we elevate and personalize the customer experience across our 48,000 restaurants, operating in 145 countries and territories around the world!

We put pizza, chicken and tacos in the hands of customers through customized ordering, unique delivery approaches, app experiences, and click and collect services and consumer data analytics creating unique customer dining experiences – and we are only getting started.

Employees may work for a single brand and potentially grow to support all company-owned brands depending on their role. Regardless of where they work, as a company opening an average of 8 restaurants a day worldwide, the growth opportunities are endless. Taco Bell has been named of the 10 Most Innovative Companies in the World by Fast Company; Pizza Hut delivers more pizzas than any other pizza company in the world and KFC’s still use its 75-year-old finger lickin’ good recipe including secret herbs and spices to hand-bread its chicken every day.

Yum! and its brands have offices in Chicago, IL, Louisville KY, Irvine, CA, Plano, TX and other markets around the world. We don’t just say we are a great place to work – our commitments to the world and our employees show it. Yum! has been named to the Dow Jones Sustainability North America Index and ranked among the top 100 Best Corporate Citizens by Corporate Responsibility Magazine in addition to being named to the Bloomberg Gender-Equality Index. Our employees work in an environment where the value of “believe in all people” is lived every day, enjoying benefits including but not limited to: 4 weeks’ vacation PLUS holidays, sick leave and 2 paid days to volunteer at the cause of their choice and a dollar-for-dollar matching gift program; generous parental leave; competitive benefits including medical, dental, vision and life insurance as well as a 6% 401k match – all encompassed in Yum!’s world-famous recognition culture.