Director, Artificial Intelligence

Overview

Samsonite is the worldwide leader in superior travel bags, luggage, and accessories combining notable style with the latest design technology and the utmost attention to quality and durability. For more than 100 years, Samsonite has leveraged its rich heritage to create unparalleled products that fulfill the travel lifestyle needs of conscious movers everywhere. With a portfolio of brands including Samsonite, Tumi, American Tourister, High Sierra, Gregory, Hartmann, and Lipault Paris, our products are sold in over 100 countries in North America, Asia, Europe and Latin America through our company‑operated retail stores, websites and a variety of retail partners.

At Samsonite Group, we are building the next generation of AI‑enabled capabilities to elevate consumer experience, sharpen operations, and scale innovation across a global, multi‑brand portfolio. We are seeking a Director of AI to help shape and accelerate this transformation – a role at the intersection of applied AI, enterprise platform delivery, and global business transformation, translating enterprise strategy into shipped outcomes.

Reporting to the CIO, the Director is accountable for execution and measurable business impact. A successful candidate will partner closely with the regional IT leaders, business function heads, and AI champions to ensure consistent delivery across our multi‑brand, multi‑region portfolio. This is not a traditional engineering role and not a purely strategic role – it is a high‑leverage delivery leadership role for someone who can identify the right problems, shape AI‑enabled solutions, drive pilots, measure value, and help scale what works.

• Execute the enterprise AI roadmap across table stakes, transformational, and disruptive opportunity tiers; own end‑to‑end delivery from prototype through production.
• Drive rapid experimentation cycles and accelerate time‑to‑value, ensuring disciplined progression from pilot to scaled deployment without bottlenecks.
• Own definition, tracking, and reporting of ROI and business KPIs; tie initiatives directly to revenue growth, margin improvement, cost efficiency, or working capital optimization.
• Maintain a disciplined backlog of AI use cases across consumer experience, supply chain, retail and eCommerce, marketing, finance, and operations.

• Lead the development, deployment, and scaling of AI/ML and GenAI solutions, including consumer‑facing experiences (conversational assistants, agentic commerce, personalization) and AI‑driven marketing and discovery capabilities.
• Work with Digital and Data Strategy team to lay solid foundation for Samsonite’s AI journey.
• Drive integration of AI capabilities into core enterprise platforms (eCommerce, CRM, CDP, SAP, O365) and establish scalable MLOps practices for lifecycle management, monitoring, and cost/performance optimization.
• Operate the AI technology stack day‑to‑day and drive strategic platform and ecosystem decisions in partnership with IT leadership (hyperscalers, GenAI platforms, agentic commerce platforms, enterprise SaaS).

• Operate the enterprise AI governance framework; ensure compliance with EU AI Act, GDPR, SOX/GRC, and equivalent regional regulations, with support from regional teams.
• Maintain audit‑ready model documentation, risk assessments, and validation evidence in coordination with Legal, Compliance, and Internal Audit.
• Apply readiness tests before promoting AI from pilot to production, particularly for autonomous and agentic deployments; flag governance gaps to the CIO.

• Partner with regional IT and business leaders across Americas, EMEA, and APAC to deliver AI use cases tuned to local market and regulatory needs.
• Coordinate with regional AI roles and adoption leads to ensure consistent execution; scale proven regional use cases group‑wide.

• Build, lead, and develop the global AI CoE; create reusable patterns, accelerators, and documentation to compound delivery velocity.
• Operate enterprise AI literacy and upskilling programs (tiered by user…