Sr Manager Data Science and AI Platform Enablement

Academy Sports + Outdoors•Katy, TX

10d•Onsite

About The Position

At Academy Sports + Outdoors, the vision is to be the best sports + outdoors retailer in the country. The company culture is built on putting people first, creating opportunities for growth, fostering meaningful connections, and supporting every Team Member’s journey. This role is an opportunity to launch an adventure, whether starting out or leveling up, at a place where fun can’t lose.

Requirements

Bachelor’s in engineering, Statistics, Data Science, or Computer Sciences
8+ years of experience in data science, advanced analytics, applied machine learning, or related fields.
4+ years of experience leading teams or major technical initiatives, including people management or matrixed leadership
3+ years of experience in B2C, retail, e-commerce, marketing analytics, or customer-facing analytics domains
3+ years of experience building, deploying, or enabling production-grade analytics or ML solutions
Strong engineering mindset with experience in: Modular code, Reproducibility & Production-grade analytics or ML systems
Experience working with digital analytics, customer data platforms, or experimentation data (e.g., Adobe, web/app analytics, or similar ecosystems)
Proven ability to influence across matrixed organizations without direct ownership
Experience partnering with data engineering, platform, and governance teams
Ability to balance speed to value with long-term scalability
Acceptable level of hearing and vision to perform job duties
Adhere to company work hours, policies, procedures, and rules governing professional staff behavior

Nice To Haves

Master’s degree in Analytics or data science
Experience in retail or B2C is preferred
Experience enabling MLOps or analytics platforms, preferred
Exposure to customer analytics, personalization, marketing, or e-commerce use cases, preferred
Experience operating in early-to-mid maturity data organizations, preferred
Comfort shaping standards without formal authority, preferred

Responsibilities

Define and evolve reusable data, feature, and modeling patterns, MLOps and model lifecycle standards, and production-ready analytics/ML solutions.
Partner with CIO Data Engineering and Platform teams to influence canonical customer data models, shared datasets, feature reuse, and data access/consumption standards.
Translate customer, marketing, and omnichannel needs into scalable technical and platform-aligned patterns.
Enable domain-aligned data scientists, analysts, and engineers to adopt standards, reduce reinvention, and accelerate delivery.
Influence enterprise priorities through evidence, design proposals, and proof-of-value work.
Represent customer-domain data needs in governance forums.
Help evolve governance standards that are practical for personalization, experimentation, and customer analytics.
Ensure quality, fairness, trust, and compliance are embedded by design.
Lead Adobe Analytics and Quantum Metrics data capture, acting as a catalyst for effective use across analytics, personalization, and experimentation.
Serve as the data domain owner for all customer-facing data domains, including tag management, Bridg, and clean room capabilities, accountable for data definitions, quality, access, and downstream usability.
Partner with IT pods, platform, and engineering teams to define and govern customer data flows securely and at scale through well-documented integrations.
Systems thinker with a pragmatic bias toward delivery.
Trusted by both business and technical stakeholders.
Comfortable letting teams execute independently while influencing across a matrixed organization.
Optimizes for scale and reuse, not personal ownership.