General Manager - Artificial Intelligence Center of Excellence

The General Manager: AI Centre of Excellence will be responsible for driving AI strategy, execution, and governance across the organization. The incumbent will be responsible for setting the vision, defining AI roadmaps, and ensuring that AI initiatives deliver tangible business value.

The GM will oversee a team specializing in AI platform architecture, AI solution design, AI infrastructure, program governance, and AI value realization. They will establish best practices, ensure AI models are ethical and compliant, and drive innovation to maintain a competitive advantage.

The role will be instrumental in defining AI investment priorities, aligning initiatives with business objectives, and fostering a culture of AI-driven decision-making. The role requires a blend of deep technical expertise, strategic foresight, and strong leadership to build a high-performing AI organization that continuously evolves with emerging technologies and industry trends.

Job Outcomes and Results

• Develop and implement a strategic AI roadmap aligned with business priorities to ensure sustainable value creation and measurable impact
• Oversee the successful deployment of AI solutions that optimize processes, enhance customer and employee experiences, and improve business performance
• Drive AI ethics, governance, and compliance standards to ensure responsible AI adoption & mitigate risks related to data privacy & security
• Strengthen AI infrastructure and architecture, ensuring seamless integration of AI tech into existing business systems and processes
• Establish AI performance measurement frameworks and KPIs to track value realization, ensuring AI investments deliver tangible business outcomes
• Build and lead a high-performing team, fostering a culture of collaboration, experimentation, and continuous learning

Values

We at MTN are a purpose and value-led organization. At MTN, we believe that understanding our people’s needs and aspirations is key to creating experiences that delight you at work, everyday. We are committed to fostering an environment where every member of our Y’ello Family is heard, understood and empowered to live an inspired life. 

Our values keep us grounded and moving in the right direction. Most importantly, they keep us honest. It is not something we claim to be. It is in our DNA.

As an organisation, we consider it our mission to create an exciting and rewarding place to work, where our people can be themselves, thrive in positivity and ignite their full potential. A workplace that boosts creativity and innovation, improves productivity, and ultimately drives meaningful results. A workplace that is built on relationships and achieving a purpose that is bigger than us. 

Our commitments go beyond an organisational promise. It is in our leadership and managerial ethos to meaningfully partner with our employees, customers and stakeholders with a vision to realise our shared goals.

Live Y’ello

• Lead with Care
• Can-do with Integrity
• Collaborate with Agility
• Serve with Respect
• Act with Inclusion

The General Manager: AI Centre of Excellence will:

• Define and drive the strategic vision, ensuring alignment with the organization’s broader digital transformation and business strategy
• Lead the design and implementation of enterprise AI infrastructure, ensuring scalability, security, and seamless integration with existing IT ecosystems
• Oversee AI program governance, ensuring AI initiatives adhere to regulatory requirements, ethical AI principles, and organizational compliance frameworks
• Ensure development of architecting scalable, high-performance AI platforms tailored to meet the unique requirements of MTN applications, such as customer service automation, predictive maintenance, network optimization, and fraud detection in alignment with business objectives
• Oversee the design and implementation of robust, scalable, and innovative AI solutions, managing the entire end-to-end AI solution blueprint and roadmap ensuring alignment with the MTN’s technical and architectural standards
• Oversee the design of scalable, modular solutions that efficiently accommodate growing data volumes, user demands and evolving business needs, while enabling future upgrades and AI advancements
• Develop a scalable AI infrastructure strategy aligned with enterprise-wide digital transformation goals, ensuring a high-performance and secure foundation for AI workloads
• Develop AI performance tracking mechanisms, defining clear KPIs to assess the effectiveness of AI initiatives and optimize AI model performance
• Drive continuous improvement in AI deployment methodologies, adopting best practices to accelerate AI model development, testing, and deployment
• Establish AI ethics and risk management guidelines, ensuring AI solutions align with MTN values and regulatory requirements
• Oversee AI infrastructure investments, ensuring alignment with long-term business objectives and emerging technology trend
• Identify emerging AI technologies and assess their potential impact on business operations, positioning the organization for future AI advancements
• Oversee AI data management and governance, ensuring AI models are trained on high-quality, unbiased data to produce reliable and ethical outcomes
• Lead the strategic establishment and ongoing governance of standards, processes, and frameworks across all AI programs, ensuring the programs comply with industry best practices and strict adherence to regulatory requirements

Education:

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Data Science, Information Technology or a related field
• Relevant certifications in AI/ML, Cloud Architecture (preferred)

Experience:

• 10+ years of experience in AI Strategy, deployment, and optimization, ideally within large-scale telecom environments
• Proven track record of leading AI strategy, governance, and execution at scale within large organization
• Expertise in AI infrastructure, Solution Architecture, cloud platforms, and enterprise AI applications across industries
• Strong experience in AI governance, ethics, risk management, and compliance with regulatory standards

Skills:

• Proficiency in AI and machine learning frameworks (TensorFlow, PyTorch, Keras)
• Proficient with public cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud) for AI and telecom solutions
• Experience in containerization and orchestration tools (e.g. : Docker, Kubernetes) for AI deployment
• Strong understanding of telecom networks (5G, IoT, edge computing) and how AI can optimize them
• Experience with MLOps practices for managing AI model lifecycles
• Strong Understanding of AI Model Deployment & MLOps

We are a purpose and value-led organization.

At MTN, we believe that understanding our people’s needs and aspirations is key to creating experiences that delight you at work, everyday. We are committed to fostering an environment where every member of our Y’ello Family is heard, understood and empowered to live an inspired life.

Our values keep us grounded and moving in the right direction. Most importantly, they keep us honest. It is not something we claim to be. It is in our DNA.

As an organisation, we consider it our mission to create an exciting and rewarding place to work, where our people can be themselves, thrive in positivity and ignite their full potential. A workplace that boosts creativity and innovation, improves productivity, and ultimately drives meaningful results. A workplace that is built on relationships and achieving a purpose that is bigger than us. This is what we want you to experience with us!

Our commitments go beyond an organisational promise. It is in our leadership and managerial ethos to meaningfully partner with our employees, customers and stakeholders with a vision to realise our shared goals.

We are delighted that you are considering us as your career partner to make a mark in the world. We look forward to your application!