Job Information
Scotts Miracle-Gro AI Manager in Marysville, Ohio
Here at Scotts Miracle-Gro there is no such thing as a typical day. Our culture is constantly energized by new and exciting growth opportunities and at a rapid pace. Below are details on an open job. If the role interests you and you would like to be considered we encourage you to apply!
Role Summary
The Manager / Senior Manager, AI/ML will serve as the operational backbone of the AI Center of Excellence at Scotts Miracle-Gro - translating the AI/ML roadmap into production-grade systems, running the day-to-day operations of the CoE, and overseeing the progress and impact of forward-deployed AI engineers embedded in business units. This role bridges strategy and execution, ensuring AI initiatives deliver measurable business outcomes.
In this role you will:
AI/ML Solution Development and Delivery:
-Lead end-to-end development of AI/ML models and applications - from experimentation through production deployment and monitoring.
-Own technical execution of priority initiatives, applying modern techniques (LLMs, RAG, multimodal AI, reinforcement learning) to solve real business problems.
-Design and build consumer-facing AI agents, back-office agentic workflows, and automation solutions using emerging capabilities (multi-agent orchestration, MCP, A2A protocols).
-Drive advanced analytics, predictive modeling, and prescriptive insights across business units. Maintain model monitoring, drift detection, and retraining pipelines.
AI COE Operations and FDE Oversight:
-Manage day-to-day COE operations: intake/prioritization of AI requests, capacity planning, sprint management, and delivery tracking.
-Run team cadences (standups, reviews, retrospectives) and own delivery metrics - throughput, cycle time, adoption rates, and business value delivered.
-Serve as day-to-day manager and technical mentor for forward-deployed AI engineers embedded in Marketing, Insights, and future business units.
-Track FDE impact, facilitate cross-FDE knowledge sharing, and ensure reusable patterns flow back to the central CoE.
-Partner with business unit leaders to assess FDE effectiveness and identify new embedding opportunities as the CoE scales.
Cross-Functional Partnership and Team Leadership:
-Partner with stakeholders across marketing, product, operations, and finance to define success metrics and deliver AI solutions that move KPIs.
-Manage and mentor data scientists, ML engineers, and FDEs - fostering experimentation, technical excellence, and measurable impact.
-Conduct code reviews, guide architecture decisions, and maintain high standards for quality, documentation, and reproducibility.
-Implement responsible AI practices, ensure data governance, and partner with legal/compliance as needed.
What you'll need to be successful:
Required:
-Master's in Data Science, Computer Science, Mathematics, Statistics, or related quantitative field.
-8+ years in AI/ML or data science (5+ for PhD candidates). 2+ years managing a technical team.
-Strong hands-on experience: ML (supervised/unsupervised), deep learning, generative AI (LLMs, RAG, vector databases, prompt engineering, fine-tuning).
-Proficiency in Python, SQL, and ML frameworks (PyTorch, TensorFlow, scikit-learn, Hugging Face).
-Experience with cloud platforms (GCP, AWS, or Azure) and ML infrastructure (MLflow, Vertex AI, SageMaker).
-Proven track record delivering AI solutions that drove tangible business outcomes.
-Strong project mana