Our client is one of the world’s largest restaurant brands, serving millions of guests across more than 100 countries through a franchise-driven model and a rapidly expanding digital ecosystem. With a renewed commitment to innovation, operational excellence, and data-driven decision-making, the organization continues to invest heavily in modernizing its customer experience and technology stack. Recognized globally for its scale and brand strength, the company is in the midst of a multi-year transformation focused on digital growth, personalization, and loyalty expansion. As the business accelerates this next phase of transformation, they are hiring a Vice President of Data Science to help lead the future of data-powered decisioning across the enterprise.

Position Overview

This role will define the enterprise data science strategy and drive measurable business impact across marketing, pricing, loyalty, operations, and customer experience. The VP of Data Science will build, scale, and lead a high-performing team responsible for developing production-level machine learning models, next-gen customer analytics, and advanced forecasting capabilities that shape commercial and guest-facing decisions at scale. This is a highly visible role with executive exposure, reporting directly to the Chief Digital & Analytics Officer and serving as a key voice in shaping how AI, ML, and predictive intelligence fuel the company’s growth strategy. For the right leader, this role offers the opportunity to influence one of the largest consumer footprints in the world and to architect a data science organization in a company undergoing significant digital reinvention.

Position Responsibilities

• Define and lead the enterprise data science strategy aligned to commercial, marketing, digital, and operations priorities.
• Build, manage, and mentor a team of data scientists, ML engineers, and analysts while fostering a culture of experimentation and technical excellence.
• Develop predictive, prescriptive, and generative AI models that unlock value across loyalty, CRM, pricing, traffic forecasting, and customer lifetime value optimization.
• Create scalable measurement and modeling frameworks for pricing elasticity, promotional lift, personalization, and omni-channel engagement.
• Partner with marketing, product, digital, and finance leadership to embed analytics into business decisioning and enterprise dashboards.
• Oversee deployment of production-level models and ensure governance, model monitoring, and lifecycle management best practices.
• Drive executive thought leadership on AI/ML maturity, experimentation, and data science investment strategy.
• Serve as a strategic advisor to C-suite stakeholders, translating complex analytics into clear recommendations that influence business outcomes.
• Champion ethical AI practices and advocate for data quality, platform standardization, and cloud-native scalability.

Position Qualifications

Required:

• Proven track record building and scaling enterprise data science functions with measurable business impact.
• 15+ years of experience in data science, advanced analytics, or machine learning, including 3+ years building and leading high-performing teams.
• Experience developing and deploying production-grade ML models in cloud environments (AWS, GCP, or similar).
• Deep expertise in statistical modeling, machine learning, experimentation, and predictive analytics.
• Strong technical fluency with Python, SQL, Spark, cloud data platforms, and modern ML frameworks.
• Experience applying analytics in a large-scale consumer, retail, eCommerce, or QSR environment.
• Executive-level communication skills with the ability to influence strategy at the highest levels of the organization.

Preferred:

• Experience with pricing elasticity, customer lifetime value modeling, loyalty and CRM analytics, or personalization engines.
• Background working within a multi-location, franchise, or high-transaction business model.
• Familiarity with tools such as SageMaker, GitHub, Databricks, or similar modern ML ops stacks.

Location

Miami or NYC metro area preferred (hybrid).

If you are a transformational data science leader ready to build at scale and shape the future of AI inside one of the world’s most recognized consumer brands, we’d love to hear from you. Apply now and a member of Talentfoot’s executive search team will be in touch if your background aligns with our client’s needs.

Talentfoot Overview

Talentfoot Executive Search specializes in future-proofing organizations by securing forward-thinking leaders across sales, marketing, eCommerce, product, data, operations, finance, and technology with a track record of accelerating growth, innovation, and profitability. Since 2010, we’ve partnered with more than 2,500 companies and lead the industry with a 98% client success rate. Learn more at Talentfoot.com.