AI Strategy & Transformation Manager

At Watlow's global headquarters in St. Louis, Missouri, our IT team partners with business leaders across the company to improve how Watlow works around the world. Part of a global thermal solutions leader founded in 1922, our heaters, sensors, and controls power industries like semiconductor, aerospace, energy, and industrial equipment.

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We are hiring an: AI Strategy & Transformation Manager

St. Louis, Missouri

Watlow is seeking an AI Strategy & Transformation Manager who will help shape how Watlow puts AI to work across the enterprise. This is a newly created, highly consultative, individual contributor role where your ability to ask the right questions, influence senior leaders, and prioritize opportunities matters just as much as your understanding of AI. AI is already widely used at Watlow; this individual will bring structure to that use and make sure it delivers measurable value for the business. They will partner with executive and functional leaders to understand their goals, turn them into practical AI initiatives, and drive adoption across manufacturing operations, procurement, quality, engineering, sales, and other functions.

The scope is enterprise-wide and global, spanning the US, Mexico, Europe, and Asia. They will work alongside internal technical teams and global delivery centers, and will report to the Vice President of IT. The ideal candidate brings transformation or consulting experience, hands-on familiarity with LLMs and RAG-based solutions, and the credibility to advise executives with both vision and realism. This role includes periodic domestic and international travel, including Mexico, Europe, and Asia.

What you'll do:

• Executive partnership: Partner with Watlow's leadership teams to understand their business priorities and identify high-value opportunities for AI.
• Opportunity assessment: Assess business processes, products, and operations to uncover ways AI can lower operating and manufacturing costs, improve efficiency, and support growth, with an initial focus on operations.
• Roadmaps and business cases: Build AI adoption roadmaps, develop business cases, and help leaders prioritize initiatives based on value and feasibility.
• Discovery and facilitation: Lead discovery workshops with stakeholders to define problems, explore use cases, and align on next steps.
• Solution translation: Translate business challenges into clear requirements and work with internal technical teams to turn them into practical solutions.
• Delivery prioritization: Set priorities for Watlow's global delivery centers so the right projects move forward, without direct management responsibility for those teams.
• Enterprise AI integration: Help teams get more value from the AI tools Watlow already has by building them into everyday work, rather than adding new tools.
• Adoption and change management: Drive training, use case development, and change management so AI tools are adopted and used effectively across functions.
• Grounded advisory: Give leaders honest, practical feedback on what it will take to bring their vision to life, including risks, barriers, and realistic timelines.
• Best practice sharing: Bring industry best practices into Watlow and share learnings across regions and business units.

What you'll need to succeed?

• Bachelor's degree in business, engineering, information systems, or a related field
• 7+ years of experience in digital or business transformation, technology consulting, product strategy, or a related role
• Proven experience partnering with and influencing executive and senior stakeholders
• Hands-on experience applying large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT, Claude, or Copilot to business problems
• Experience designing or delivering retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) or enterprise knowledge solutions
• Strong communication and presentation skills, from the shop floor to the executive level
• Willingness to travel up to 20% domestically and internationally
• Authorization to work in the United States without current or future sponsorship

Preferred qualifications:

• Big 4 or technology consulting experience, especially in a digital, AI, or transformation practice
• Experience in discrete manufacturing; continuous manufacturing such as oil and gas is also considered
• Experience with sales transformation, including opportunity management and opportunity to project to execution processes
• Familiarity with product taxonomy or product data management
• Exposure to engineering or new product development processes
• Experience applying AI or process improvement in procurement, quality, or manufacturing operations
• Experience working in global, multi-region organizations
• Experience working with offshore or global delivery teams
• MBA or other advanced degree