Head of Data & AI

Role overview

The Head of Data & AI will own HOYA’s enterprise-wide data and artificial intelligence direction for Group Digital. This position is responsible for defining the strategy, governance, capabilities, and operating model needed to turn data and AI into a dependable source of business value across the company’s divisions.

This is a senior leadership position that blends business transformation, data leadership, AI adoption, and responsible oversight. The role will set the roadmap for data and AI, create the base for scalable analytics and AI use, and ensure innovation operates within clear safeguards for security, privacy, compliance, quality, and ethical use.

To succeed, the person in this role must be comfortable operating at executive level while staying close enough to day-to-day execution to produce practical results. The role calls for someone who can earn trust with divisional leaders, convert business priorities into data and AI initiatives, strengthen internal capability, and guide a focused portfolio of use cases with measurable outcomes.

Data and AI strategy and leadership

• Create and continually refine HOYA’s enterprise data and AI strategy, roadmap, and priorities so they support business goals, digital transformation, and Group Digital objectives.
• Set up the operating model needed to scale data and AI consistently across divisions, including governance structures, roles, forums, funding approach, and decision rights.
• Build alignment at the executive level by working with senior leaders across divisions to rank high-value opportunities and establish shared accountability for adoption and benefit delivery.
• Maintain a balanced portfolio of data, analytics, automation, and AI initiatives, using business value, readiness, risk, and scalability as the main prioritisation factors.

Data foundations, governance, and platforms

• Strengthen the organisation’s data foundations by advancing scalable data platforms, data products, integration approaches, and semantic models that support dependable analytics and AI.
• Define and lead data governance standards covering ownership, stewardship, data quality, metadata, lineage, classification, retention, and access control.
• Improve the usability of key Group-wide data assets so they are easier to discover, understand, and reuse for reporting, analytics, automation, and AI initiatives.
• Work closely with infrastructure, architecture, and security teams to ensure data and AI platforms remain secure, compliant, resilient, and aligned to enterprise architecture principles.

AI enablement, centre of excellence, and responsible innovation

• Design the organisation’s AI capability model, including how use cases are identified, assessed, developed, governed, deployed, and supported across HOYA.
• Put in place practical responsible AI guardrails that address ethics, privacy, security, transparency, human oversight, and risk management.
• Shape the AI Centre of Excellence with reusable standards, patterns, tools, review processes, and communities that help divisions adopt AI safely and consistently.
• Encourage adoption of approved AI capabilities, including generative AI and Agentic AI, in routine business workflows.

Business value delivery and adoption

• Partner with divisions to identify high-impact opportunities where data, analytics, automation, or AI can improve productivity, decision-making, quality, or customer outcomes.
• Define success measures, monitor adoption and results, and make sure initiatives progress beyond pilots into long-term business value.
• Support change at scale by working with Communications, HR/L&D, and divisional champions to build data literacy, AI literacy, and user confidence across the organisation.
• Coordinate with strategic vendors and implementation partners to bring in expertise, speed up delivery, and transfer knowledge to internal teams.

Essential background

• Extensive senior leadership experience in data, analytics, AI, digital transformation, or enterprise technology within a multinational or multi-division organisation.
• Demonstrated ability to define and deliver a data and AI strategy that aligns with business objectives, governance needs, and technology capabilities.
• Solid understanding of enterprise data platforms, analytics, data governance, data quality, metadata, reporting, and AI enablement concepts.
• Working knowledge of generative AI, Microsoft 365 Copilot, AI governance, AI risk management, and responsible AI practices.
• Proven track record of influencing senior stakeholders, building cross-functional alignment, and translating complex issues into clear business decisions.
• Experience leading teams, partners, or communities of practice across both business and technology functions.