Industry Solution Leader - Food & Agriculture (Agriculture Production)
About this role
Agricultural production organizations often struggle to translate complex operational constraints and plant-level inefficiencies into scalable digital solutions that drive measurable economic value. To address this challenge, C3 AI seeks an Industry Solution Leader for Food and Agriculture specializing in agricultural production to design and deliver enterprise artificial intelligence systems for clients.
In this capacity, the selected leader will bridge the gap between domain expertise and technical execution by working directly with customer manufacturing teams, plant operators, and executive stakeholders. The professional will own end-to-end customer engagements, guiding cross-functional groups of data scientists, forward-deployed engineers, and product managers from initial problem definition to full-scale production deployment.
Candidates who thrive in this environment typically possess deep operational experience in food or beverage plant environments alongside strong technical judgment and client leadership skills. This position suits individuals who can challenge customer assumptions, structure ambiguous business problems, and translate operational realities into robust software and machine learning architectures.
What you will do
- Manage the overall solution strategy, technical direction, and delivery outcomes for client engagements from initial definition to production scale.
- Act as the primary customer-facing domain expert to understand operational workflows, constraints, and business objectives.
- Translate complex operational challenges into tractable artificial intelligence, machine learning, and optimization problems with defined success criteria.
- Lead cross-functional teams comprising forward-deployed engineers, data scientists, and product managers to drive alignment around client outcomes.
- Collaborate directly with plant operations, manufacturing teams, and executive stakeholders to validate requirements, workflows, and business impact.
- Partner with internal product management and engineering teams to identify reusable capabilities and inform future product development.
- Support sales operations during opportunity assessments by defining customer problems, solution approaches, and deployment strategies.
What you need
- Hold a Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Operations Research, Supply Chain Management, Industrial Engineering, Computer Science, Mathematics, Economics, or a related quantitative field.
- Bring at least seven years of experience in supply chain, manufacturing, operations, planning, logistics, procurement, pricing, operations research, or technical consulting.
- Demonstrate hands-on experience in food or beverage plant operations, covering areas such as continuous or batch processing, packaging, and utilities.
- Possess a strong background managing operational metrics including overall equipment effectiveness, yield, throughput, quality, sanitation, downtime, labor, or energy.
- Exhibit robust analytical and quantitative problem-solving skills to reason through tradeoffs, constraints, uncertainty, and optimization objectives.
- Demonstrate experience leading complex, customer-facing technical engagements and communicating directly with operational and executive stakeholders.
Nice to have
- Experience delivering artificial intelligence, machine learning, operations research, mathematical optimization, advanced analytics, or supply chain digital transformation solutions.
- Hands-on technical experience.
Skills and tech stack
Questions candidates ask
What compensation is associated with this role?
The salary range for this position is $130,000 to $203,000 USD.
Where is the position located?
The role is based in Chicago, Illinois, United States, with travel to customer locations required.
What type of employment is this?
This is a full-time position.
What specific industry background is required for this position?
The ideal candidate must have hands-on experience in food or beverage plant operations, including continuous and batch processing, packaging, and utilities, along with ownership of metrics like overall equipment effectiveness, yield, and throughput.