AI Programme & Product Lead

Recruiter:

A 1L Realization (Pty) Ltd

Job Ref:

JHB001045/PN

Date posted:

Thursday, August 27, 2026

Location:

Midrand, South Africa

SUMMARY:
Our client in the telecoms sector is seeking a AI Programme & Product Lead on a contract duration of 6 to 12 months.

As Programme Lead, it runs the operating system behind the AI strategy: converting strategic intent into a governed, sequenced, funded roadmap, then holding the organisation to it. It owns the single source of truth for what is being built, what it is worth, when it lands, and whether the value materialised. As Product Owner, it takes personal delivery ownership of the function’s flagship agentic products, from problem definition through agent design, build, deployment, adoption and measured impact. The two halves are deliberately connected. Portfolio credibility depends on knowing what delivery actually costs, and product decisions are better when made by someone who can see the whole portfolio. Indicative split of effort: approximately 60% programme and portfolio, 40% hands-on product ownership. This is not a PMO administration role, and it is not a backlog-management role. The successful candidate will think like an owner, challenge weak business cases, ship product, and be credible in front of both engineering teams and executive stakeholders.

POSITION INFO:
Experience and qualifications Essential Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Computer Science, Data Science, Information Systems, Business or a related field. 8+ years' professional experience spanning both programme or portfolio management and product ownership of technology products. Candidates strong in only one discipline will be considered where there is clear evidence of capability in the other. 3+ years' experience on data, machine learning or AI initiatives taken into production. Evidence of at least one AI or data product shipped to production, with a clear account of how adoption and business impact were measured. Demonstrable benefits realisation track record on initiatives carrying hard financial commitments, able to explain how value was measured and verified, not only claimed. Working fluency across the cloud data and AI stack (GCP or AWS): data pipelines, machine learning lifecycle, MLOps concepts, and LLM or agentic architectures. Sufficient depth to credibly challenge an engineering estimate; hands-on build not required. Practical understanding of LLM-based systems: prompting, retrieval and grounding, tool use, agent orchestration, evaluation methods, and latency and cost trade-offs. Data literacy: independent SQL capability, able to interrogate a dashboard and interpret an experiment readout without a translator. Experience running A\/B tests or holdout-based measurement and acting on the results. Financial literacy: business case construction, payback and NPV, operating versus capitalised expenditure, vendor commercials. Executive-grade written and verbal communication. Agile delivery experience within a product or squad structure. Preferred Postgraduate qualification (MSc, MEng or MBA). People leadership experience. Domain experience in personalisation, customer value management, recommendation systems, conversational AI or customer service automation. Experience with causal measurement: control groups, uplift modelling, incrementality testing. Telecommunications, financial services or large-scale consumer business background. Cloud provider or systems integrator commercial management experience. Delivery or product certification (PMP, PRINCE2, SAFe, CSPO), valued but not a substitute for track record.

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