Director of Applied AI

IHG is seeking a Director, Applied AI for our Data Science team to lead efforts across forecasting, predictive modeling, optimization, Model Ops, and GenAI. In this role, you'll set the strategy, prioritize high-value opportunities, and build reusable capabilities that improve business decisions and deliver measurable impact.

In this position, you'll act as a bridge to centralize efforts in three specific areas:
Non-guest predictive modeling & forecasting - solutions supporting commercial planning, channels, sales, groups and events, hotel performance revenue, and operations, Model Ops-MLOps & LLMOps - shared capabilities and standards that help data science teams deploy, evaluate, monitor, and scale solutions reliably, and GenAI & agentic solutions - analytics products and workflows that accelerate insight generation, reporting, and business productivity.

As the Director, Applied AI, you will manage a team and collaborate cross functionally with internal stakeholders. You will hire, lead, and develop a team of applied scientist and AI/ML specialist, inclduing managers and senior technical talent. In this role, you'll define the standards for scientific rigor, engineering practices, documentations, and business communication. You'll also build capability across teams through mentoring, technical reviews, and shared standards.

You'll partner with senior leaders to communicate priorities, progress, risks, and business impact as well as coordinate with stakeholders across the buisness, product, technology as well as governance teams to support adoption and reliable operations.

• Own the Applied AI roadmap, with a clear process for intake, prioritization, delivery, and measurement.
• Translate business needs into opportunities for predictive modeling, forecasting, optimization, and GenAI.
• Set priorities across the portfolio based on business value, feasibility, data readiness, and adoption.
• Build reusable capabilities and consistent standards that help successful solutions move from experimentation into production.
• Partner with business leaders to define success measures and ensure solutions become part of operating workflows.

• Lead the development of GenAI analytics products that provide accurate, explainable answers from governed data products, including structured Data Analytics Products (DAPs).
• Develop conversational analytics and analyst copilots that help users explore “what changed?” and “why did this move?” through metric drivers, segment shifts, channel mix, and anomalies.
• Produce outputs grounded in data: tables, charts, narratives, hypotheses, and recommended next analyses.
• Develop insights from unstructured sources such as reviews, surveys, and call transcripts, including themes, sentiment, reasons for contact, and friction points.
• Build agentic workflows that improve productivity, automate recurring analytical work, and support business decision-making.
• Establish evaluation and release standards covering accuracy, grounding, traceability, consistency, and usability.

• Lead applied AI and forecasting solutions for commercial planning, demand, revenue, operations, and performance management.
• Develop forecasting products for business outcomes such as revenue, occupancy, demand, and aggregate co-brand spend.
• Combine statistical forecasting methods with machine learning to capture seasonality, business drivers, events, promotions, and nonlinear relationships.
• Develop scenario and what-if capabilities that help stakeholders evaluate alternatives and understand uncertainty.
• Establish backtesting, baseline comparisons, performance monitoring, and appropriate…