Data & AI Consulting Manager / Senior Manager in Consumer & Retail - German Market

You deeply understand Consumer & Retail: commercial mechanics, margin pressures, time-draining processes, and decisions made on gut feel when the data should be driving the strategy. And you’ve watched data and AI initiatives fall short — strategies that never became products, models that were technically impressive but sat on the shelf, and dashboards that answered the wrong questions.

You want to be the person who closes that gap — who translates a real business problem into a solution that actually gets built and adopted, working alongside engineers and data scientists who can make it happen.

As a Data & AI Consultant in our Consumer & Retail practice, you will be involved from the first client conversation — shaping proposals, leading discovery, building the business case, and owning the workstream that takes an idea to production. You will bridge senior client stakeholders and EPAM’s engineering and data science teams, setting direction and ensuring both sides are pulling in the same direction.

The center of gravity is advanced and predictive analytics combined with AI — spanning forecasting, elasticity modeling, scenario simulations, causal attribution, generative AI use cases, and machine learning models. You will not be building the models yourself, but you will be responsible for whether the right ones are being built — judging whether an approach fits the business question, agreeing on what accuracy is good enough to meet business goals, and defining how it will be measured.

The industry focus is on the German Consumer & Retail market, where EPAM has established a strong portfolio of clients across sportswear, fashion, and fashion retail. We partner with some of the most recognized consumer brands and retailers in the market, helping them transform commercial, customer, supply chain, and data-driven decision-making capabilities through advanced analytics and AI. Building on this strong foundation, you will help expand EPAM’s presence, particularly among fashion and CPG manufacturers as well as retail organizations.

Responsibilities

• Shape pursuits and proposals: contribute to presales from the start — defining the problem, scoping the approach, and building EPAM's value narrative for Consumer & Retail clients
• Lead client discovery: facilitate workshops with commercial, category and supply chain leadership, frame the real problem — not just the stated one — and define what a good outcome looks like
• Build the business case: identify, prioritize and size data and AI use cases; translate them into business cases with KPIs, investment rationale and delivery roadmaps that get sign-off
• Own the workstream end-to-end: requirements, backlog, data readiness, governance and value tracking through to adoption
• Brief the builders: work closely with Data Engineers, Data Scientists and Solution Architects to design scalable solutions — you define the what and why, they build the how
• Tell the story: produce clear, executive-level materials and present recommendations to leadership throughout the engagement
• Pricing & promotions: elasticity modeling, promotional effectiveness, trade spend optimization, net revenue management
• Merchandising & category: assortment optimization, product performance, markdown and clearance
• Customer & growth: segmentation, CLV, churn/retention, personalization, next-best-action
• Demand & supply chain: demand forecasting and sensing, replenishment, availability and fulfillment analytics
• GenAI-enabled use cases: commercial copilots for category managers and account managers, knowledge and insight agents, automation of analysis and reporting

Requirements

• Deep Consumer & Retail expertise — whether built in-industry or through sustained consulting work with retailers, CPG/FMCG, eCommerce or wholesale clients — with concrete examples of measurable business impact
• Consulting experience: structured problem-solving, stakeholder management, workshop facilitation and executive-level communication
• Data and AI literate: able to define data requirements and KPIs, hold a substantive conversation with a data scientist or architect, and translate between business and technical audiences
• End-to-end agile delivery experience: from problem framing and business case through to delivery and adoption into a recurring planning or commercial process, with a clear view of what worked and what didn't
• Fluent in CPG data landscape: transaction/order data, product data, customer data (from CRM systems and loyalty programs), syndicated and panel data (NIQ/Nielsen, Circana, Kantar), retailer POS and portal feeds, distributor sell-out, and the practical experience working with them
• Comfortable with ambiguity: taking ownership and driving to outcomes without waiting to be told what the answer is
• Fluent in German, although not mandatory; ability to engage with clients in German or at least have small talk during the coffee break is a strong plus for this role

Nice to have

• Familiarity with major data cloud platforms (Databricks, Snowflake) and hyperscalers (Azure, GCP or AWS) and how data and AI solutions are architected and deployed on them
• Experience with advanced analytics or GenAI patterns (forecasting, recommendation engines, optimization, LLMs, RAG) in a Consumer & Retail context
• Hands-on exposure to the modeling families behind this work — hierarchical and time-series forecasting, econometric and elasticity models, optimization, causal inference and incrementality testing
• Knowledge of enterprise platforms common in Consumer & Retail environments, such as SAP, Salesforce or major ERP and CRM systems
• Change management and adoption skills: ensuring that solutions land and are actually used, not just delivered
• Experience in data governance, data quality frameworks or target operating model design is a plus
• Multi-market experience — working across a regional or global CPG operating model, with the data and process differences that come with it

• International projects with top brands
• Work with global teams of highly skilled, diverse peers
• Healthcare benefits
• Employee financial programs
• Paid time off and sick leave
• Upskilling, reskilling and certification courses
• Unlimited access to the LinkedIn Learning library and 22,000+ courses
• Global career opportunities
• Volunteer and community involvement opportunities
• EPAM Employee Groups
• Award-winning culture recognized by Glassdoor, Newsweek and LinkedIn

EPAM is a leading global provider of digital platform engineering and development services. We are committed to having a positive impact on our customers, our employees, and our communities. We embrace a dynamic and inclusive culture. Here you will collaborate with multi-national teams, contribute to a myriad of innovative projects that deliver the most creative and cutting-edge solutions, and have an opportunity to continuously learn and grow. No matter where you are located, you will join a dedicated, creative, and diverse community that will help you discover your fullest potential.