Senior Data Product Manager

About the Role

Nando's is committed to creating lasting happiness for its employees, customers, and communities. Originating from Johannesburg, South Africa, the company values memorable experiences for all stakeholders including customers, employees, suppliers, and founders.

As a Senior Data Product Manager, you will be a key driver of data and AI product strategies, possessing deep domain expertise and serving as a recognized authority in your area. Your role involves influencing senior stakeholders, translating complex data capabilities into trusted, governed assets that help restaurants and support teams make informed decisions daily. You will also contribute to enhancing product management capabilities within the function.

This position bridges technology, insights, and strategy, requiring close collaboration with engineering, data engineering, analytics, and AI teams to define product goals, build plans, and measure outcomes by converting intricate technical possibilities into clear business values.

Key Responsibilities & Expectations

• Shape and contribute to aligning data and AI product strategies with business goals.
• Prioritize and manage competing analytics, AI, and governance opportunities.
• Integrate roadmaps across data engineering, analytics, and AI teams for strategic coherence.
• Maintain expertise in data products, platforms, and domain knowledge, anticipating industry shifts and trends.
• Collaborate and influence senior stakeholders to maximize return on data investments.
• Understand business stakeholder outcomes and resolve these through data and tech products.
• Lead complex product launches involving multiple teams and business change.
• Translate technical architecture (pipelines, models, warehousing) into business-friendly concepts.
• Partner with Tech Leads for backlog and sprint management, focusing on product vision and purpose.
• Promote a culture of experimentation within data product areas.
• Continuously improve data product methodologies across domains.
• Forge strong strategic partnerships with stakeholders to align data initiatives and priorities.
• Build consensus and support decision-making on project prioritization and sequencing.
• Cultivate adoption of data products and self-service analytics throughout the organization.
• Collaborate with other Product Managers to streamline data capabilities and avoid duplicated efforts.
• Serve as the data product expert within teams, fostering strong internal relationships.
• Conduct user research to uncover unmet needs of internal data users (e.g. restaurant managers, finance analysts).
• Identify and help resolve data quality and accessibility challenges affecting operations.
• Contribute to procedural improvements for delivery pace and quality.
• Support the development of self-serve analytics and BI tools to enable trusted, easy data access.
• Develop and share insights on data product analytics to enhance decision-making.
• Define measurement frameworks and enforce data quality standards to build trust.
• Promote data accessibility to make insights relevant and usable for all Nando's employees.
• Lead product definition and delivery for AI/ML features including demand forecasting, labor optimization, and automation.
• Collaborate with engineers on model evaluation frameworks ensuring safety and reliability in production.
• Translate AI capabilities into actionable product requirements and user stories.
• Monitor AI industry developments to introduce relevant innovations aligned with strategic priorities.
• Define product approaches for data governance aspects including ownership, lineage, cataloguing, and access controls.
• Work with Risk and Data Platform teams to ensure compliance with regulatory demands like GDPR without hindering innovation.
• Set and monitor data quality standards that promote confidence in data reliability.
• Champion a product mindset treating datasets as first-class products with clear ownership and outcomes.
• Share knowledge and best practices with the wider product management community.
• Commit to continual professional growth in data product management, experimentation, and AI product methodologies.
• Support the growth and mentoring of fellow Product Managers.
• Contribute to evolving ways of working and product function enhancements.

Required Skills & Competencies

• Strong product thinking and strategy skills specific to data products.
• Excellent stakeholder engagement and communication capabilities.
• Solid understanding of data, analytics, and AI including SQL, data modelling, and pipeline architectures.
• Ability to analyze problems comprehensively within data domains.
• Experience measuring business impacts like ROI and defining service level agreements (SLAs) for data.
• Familiarity with AI/ML product development and evaluation processes.
• Advocacy for data governance, quality assurance, and regulatory compliance.
• Collaborative mindset working effectively with data engineering and analytics teams.
• Experience mentoring and supporting product managers.
• Proven ability to manage complex product launches.
• Promotion of an experimental and data-driven culture.
• Competence in gathering requirements and mapping processes to inform AI and automation development.

Experience Required

• Over five years in product management, ideally with a focus on data or analytics-driven products.
• Proven record of delivering data-centric products that generated business value.
• Hands-on data literacy including SQL proficiency and effective collaboration with data technical teams.
• Familiarity with data governance frameworks and quality standards.
• Experience mentoring peers and managing stakeholders effectively.
• Track record of fostering data-driven decision-making across organizations.
• Comfort working in agile, scaled environments.
• Industry experience in retail, hospitality, or consumer technology is advantageous.
• Desirable experience with modern data stack tools such as Snowflake, dbt, Looker, Airflow or similar technologies.