Vice President Enterprise Analytics and Innovation

Generac Power Systems•Waukesha, WI

About The Position

We are Generac, a leading energy technology company committed to powering a smarter world. Over the 60 plus years of Generac’s history, we’ve been dedicated to energy innovation. From creating the home standby generator market category, to our current evolution into an energy technology solutions company, we continue to push new boundaries. The VP IT – Enterprise Data, Analytics & Innovation will lead efforts to realize the full potential of Generac’s data and knowledge across the enterprise. A successful candidate will create a vision that illustrates the art of the possible and elevates data and AI capabilities across the company to drive future growth and competitiveness. This person will lead a team that will design, build and manage the data and AI platforms, and the associated strategy including the architecture, technologies, and operating model that delivers solutions quickly while also managing data as a valued asset. They will partner with business and technical leaders to establish and influence data quality, data management, and data governance practices. They will serve as the go-to expert on data and AI capabilities across the enterprise and will work closely with functional and IT leaders to identify opportunities and implement solutions to create and drive value for all stakeholders. Structure: This leader will develop the hub and spoke model for the Enterprise Data, AI and Innovation working in close partnership with the Analytics leaders from each of the functions and Business Units globally, creating clear accountabilities and governance model to drive Generac towards a mature data driven culture. Innovation: Build a world class process and governance model that helps Generac source innovation ideas, prioritize them and deliver MVPs (building a funnel of “data products” to be scaled) in the areas of data, advanced analytics, AI – focused on the opportunities around IT/ OT convergence, Product based predictive analytics, predictive use experience and ensuring we have a model to move towards a data monetization strategy.

Requirements

Minimum of 10 years of leadership and technology experience required, with a minimum of 5 years of leading enterprise data and AI efforts for a business.
Experiencing establishing a vison and strategy and then successfully leading a business through a data and AI transformation journey.
Deep expertise working in data & analytics with large volumes of data and experience with “big data”, predictive analytics, prescriptive analytics, simulation, optimization, data visualization, IoT, generative artificial intelligence (GenAI), and causal AI.
Experience with cloud-based tools and solutions.
Experience with Azure and AWS technologies as well as SQL, Power BI, and ETL tools.
Experience with data modeling and data warehouse/lake design for the enterprise.
Experience identifying data-driven opportunities and elevating the use of data and AI within a business for internal and external use cases.
Experience working with large, global, multi-entity manufacturing business applying data to solve business problems in supply and demand planning, inventory, distribution, quality, service, sales, marketing, production, new product development, and finance.
Experience building technology platform to support “intelligent products” where algorithms are embedded into those products.
Proven experience establishing data quality, data management, data governance, and data literacy procedures and metrics.
Experience establishing and influencing best practices for automating data capture and ensuring accuracy of data at point of origination.
Good business acumen with strong financial skills and excellent communication skills – good at storytelling and influencing others.
Proven track of execution, delivery, and realization of value at scale, time and again.
Experience with both Agile and Waterfall project management methodologies.

Responsibilities

Lead Generac’s data transformation journey establishing vision and strategy for how to leverage all of Generac’s data assets and establish a data culture.
Identify and drive investments required to support overall strategy with ability to influence and garner support from a diverse set of leaders from across the enterprise with different needs, opinions, and level of data maturity.
Establish an operating model with clear roles and structure for how data solutions are created and supported.
Serve as recognized data and AI expert to evangelize best practices and standards.
Build strong collaborative relationships across enterprise with business and technical leaders to identify opportunities for how data will transform the business and provide thought leadership.
Define and market data products and services to maximize value and usage internally and externally.
Design and implement a program to raise the level of data and AI knowledge across all functions of the company.
Drive One Team mentality and collaboration across Generac to maximize potential of all data related resources.
Serve as a member of IT Senior Leadership team reporting to the CIO setting overall direction, establishing standard processes across IT organization, and balancing budgets, resources, and priorities to focus on key initiatives.
Manage overall resources and develop and attract best-in-class talent to support organization’s rapid growth and increasing investment in technology.
Develop, communicate and imbue the organization with a sense of the possibility for innovation rooted in data, analytics, and AI in the IT, OT, experience and product offering space.
Establish technical data strategy and engineering practices to enable vision including architecture, technologies, patterns, and standards.
Create a common data framework and enterprise data architecture for leveraging data across the enterprise and all relevant external data sources.
Establish and influence data governance, data quality, data management, data literacy, regulatory/legal compliance, and master data management practices by partnering with leaders across the company.
Ensure operational excellence of all data products and services in terms of reliability, accuracy, and performance for internal and external customers and stakeholders.
Proactively explore new and emerging technologies to identify future business opportunities.
Provide data platforms and data services that enable automation, advanced analytics, AI, and ML across the enterprise.
Partner with IT and functional teams to deliver solutions, leverage best practices, and educate teams on data and AI platforms and capabilities.
Build and develop engineering and support teams providing coaching and mentoring of staff.