IT R&D/AI Product Owner (remote support considered)

McCormick & Company, Inc., a world leader in the spice, flavor, and seasonings industry, is seeking a full time IT AI/R&D Product Owner to drive Artificial Intelligence initiatives. This position will be located at 24 Schilling Road, Hunt Valley, Maryland. This position will report to the Business Relationship Director, PLM, Quality, and Regulatory.

With more than $54 billion in annual sales, the Company manufactures markets and distributes spices, seasoning mixes, condiments, and other flavorful products to the entire food industry – retail outlets, food manufacturers and foodservice businesses.  We create differentiating flavors consumers prefer with unmatched quality, science, innovation, and service.  Every day, no matter where or what you eat, you can enjoy food flavored by McCormick.  McCormick brings passion to flavor™!

As a company recognized for exceptional commitment to employees, McCormick offers a wide variety of benefits, programs, and services.  Benefits include, but are not limited to, tuition assistance, medical, dental, vision, disability, group life insurance, 401(k), profit sharing, paid holidays, and vacations.

POSITION OVERVIEW:

With focus on Computational Creativity, Artificial Intelligence, Data Analytics and the R&D business, the IT AI/ R&D Product Owner serves as a proactive partner to the business and as part of a global team to enable business through technology in an integrated enterprise systems environment.  The roles serve as the voice of the customer to guide development teams in building software capabilities with high business and customer impact.  They represent business needs and priorities, prioritize, and manage the product backlog and incorporate feedback from business stakeholders to guide continuous product improvement. 

RESPONSIBILITIES:

• Act as the voice of the customer to guide all stages of software development, including user story development, sprint planning and prioritization and maintenance of product backlog.
• Understand business and end-user needs; identify and prioritize features to be delivered to meet those needs.
• Work with Business and Technical stakeholders to develop and document user stories.
• Analyze feedback from sprint reviews, and other data such as end user feedback and operational metrics to identify and understand product needs.
• Set expectations with business stakeholders for delivery of new capabilities, features and functionality.
• Assist the team on the development of feature tests, test cases, and regression tests to ensure operational readiness before solutions are deployed into production environment.  Coordinate user testing where required.
• Develop and own the product roadmap.

• Foster and maintains good relationships with business and IT colleagues.
• Design and develop IT solutions for AI/ R&D (integrated process, applications, data, and technology, and infrastructure integration points) to business problems in alignment with the organization IT direction and standards.
• Works across solution teams to ensure proper system/data integration.
• Work stream leader from start to finish with accountability for successful project delivery within area of responsibility. Adhere to project timelines to complete tasks on time, budget and aligned with business user expectations.
• Provide guidance and oversight to program standards and performance as it pertains to solution design concepts, deployment and steady state in Research and Development areas, including Artificial Intelligence/Computational Creativity, Sensory, Culinary, and Product Development.

REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS:

• Bachelor’s Degree in Information Technology or related field. May consider 10 years of related experience in lieu of degree.

• Minimum 5 years of experience working with IT in commercial environment.

• Demonstrated facilitation and influencing skills to drive decision making among global stakeholders with diverse perspectives and priorities.

• Demonstrated ability to effectively communicate complex technical information to various stakeholders verbally and in writing.

• Ability to adapt, learn and perform in fast paced environments. 

• Strong problem solving and analytical skills.

• Knowledge of Artificial Intelligence, Data Analytics, Data Modeling, mathematical algorithms preferred.

• Knowledge of SAP RD including specifications, formulas, and recipes preferred.

McCormick & Company is an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer.  All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, race, color, religion, national origin, disability, protected veteran status, age, or any other characteristic protected by law.

As a general policy, McCormick does not offer employment visa sponsorships upon hire or in the future.