Intelligence and Automation Lead

What we’re looking for;

In keeping with our current business needs, we are looking for a person who meets the criteria indicated below

Reporting to the Digital Care and Experience Lead, the role purpose is as highlighted below;

The Intelligence and Automation Lead drives the transformation of Digital Care and Experience through AI, automation, and customer intelligence, creating predictive, personalized, and commercially impactful customer journeys. The role leverages advanced analytics, conversational AI, and intelligent automation to enhance customer loyalty, accelerate digital adoption, improve operational efficiency, and maximize customer lifetime value.

As the custodian of intelligent care ecosystems, the role governs AI and automation platforms to ensure resilience, scalability, risk management, and continuous optimization. It leads the adoption of autonomous and self-healing customer journeys while embedding customer and commercial intelligence to strengthen retention, unlock growth opportunities, reduce cost-to-serve, and position the organization at the forefront of the AI-driven customer experience economy.

Key accountabilities and decision ownership:

Strategic Intelligence, Innovation & Transformation

• Define and execute the Digital Care Intelligence, Automation and Experience strategy aligned to company-wide growth, customer, and digital transformation ambitions.
• Lead the evolution of Digital Care into an AI-powered, predictive, and commercially driven customer engagement ecosystem.
• Develop and govern the Intelligence and Automation roadmap, ensuring prioritization of initiatives that deliver measurable business value and competitive advantage.
• Evaluate emerging AI, automation, analytics, and experience technologies, accelerating the adoption of innovations that transform customer and business outcomes.
• Lead innovation labs, pilots, and proof-of-concepts to validate and scale next-generation customer experience capabilities.
• Lead the strategic adoption and scaling of Agile ways of working across Intelligent and Automation chapter, enhancing organizational agility, accelerating delivery, fostering continuous improvement and strengthening customer-centric outcomes.

AI-Powered Customer Experience & Journey Transformation

• Design and optimize AI-driven, omnichannel customer journeys that are predictive, personalized, and frictionless.
• Lead the implementation of conversational AI, virtual assistants, intelligent self-service, and real-time decisioning capabilities.
• Drive the transition from reactive service delivery to autonomous, self-healing, and proactive customer experiences.
• Drive human-centered design principles to ensure superior customer experiences, accessibility, and digital adoption.
• Continuously improving journey performance, reducing customer effort while increasing satisfaction, loyalty, and advocacy.

Customer Intelligence, Analytics & Commercial Growth

• Leverage advanced analytics, behavioral intelligence, predictive models, and customer insights to anticipate customer needs and shape strategic interventions.
• Build propensity models for next-best-action, churn prediction, across customer journeys to enhance retention, loyalty, cross-sell, and upsell opportunities.
• Establish customer intelligence frameworks that transform data into actionable insights, forecasting, and strategic recommendations.
• Deliver executive insights on customer trends, growth opportunities and experience performance to influence business strategy.

Intelligent Automation & Operational Excellence

• Identify, prioritize, and deploy intelligent automation solutions that simplify operations and improve service productivity.
• Lead the implementation of hyper automation capabilities that reduce cost-to-serve while enhancing service quality and responsiveness.
• Optimize operational performance through AI-driven process orchestration, workflow automation and continuous improvement.
• Drive measurable efficiency gains, productivity improvements and service excellence through data-led decision-making.
• Establish a culture of continuous innovation, automation, and operational agility.

AI Governance, Risk & Platform Leadership

• Govern experience, AI, and automation platforms to ensure scalability, resilience, security and business readiness.
• Establish AI governance framework for experience, covering risk management, compliance, ethical AI practices, model controls, and operational oversight.
• Oversee AI model performance, accuracy, explainability, and continuous optimization to maximize customer and business outcomes.
• Ensure service continuity through robust monitoring, incident management, and platform resilience frameworks.
• Drive responsible AI adoption while maintaining regulatory and organizational compliance standards.

Business Clusters Collaboration, Leadership & Capability Building

• Partner with Care and Experience, Technology, Digital, Data, Commercial teams to deliver integrated and business-aligned customer solutions.
• Influence stakeholders and provide strategic recommendations on customer experience, intelligence, automation, and growth opportunities.
• Build Care and Experience capabilities on AI, automation, analytics, customer intelligence, and experience management disciplines.
• Lead, coach, and develop high-performing teams, fostering a culture of innovation, accountability, experimentation, and continuous learning.
• Drive customer-centricity and digital-first thinking across the organization to strengthen market leadership and long-term business growth.

• Bachelor’s degree in information technology, Computer Science, Data Science, Engineering, Business Information Systems or a related field from a recognized institution.
• Professional certifications in Artificial Intelligence, Data Analytics, Automation, Customer Experience, Agile, Project Management, Product Management, or Digital Transformation will be an added advantage.
• Strong understanding of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), Intelligent Automation, Robotic Process Automation (RPA), Conversational AI, Customer Analytics, and Predictive Modelling.
• Experience with customer experience platforms, digital engagement channels, CRM systems, customer journey management, and data visualization tools.
• Strong understanding of AI, automation, customer intelligence, and analytics.
• Strong strategic, commercial, and business acumen.
• Proven ability to lead transformation, innovation, and change.
• Strong stakeholder management and cross-functional collaboration skills.
• Excellent analytical, problem-solving, and decision-making capabilities.
• Customer-centric mindset with a focus on experience and value creation.
• Strong communication, presentation, and influencing skills.
• High levels of integrity, accountability, and professionalism.
• Strong planning, execution, and results delivery skills.
• Innovative, adaptable, and committed to continuous improvement.

How to apply If you feel that you are up to the challenge and possess the necessary qualification and experience, kindly click on the apply button. Remember to attach your resume

Safaricom is the leading technology company in East Africa. Our purpose is to transform lives by connecting people to people, people to opportunities and people to information. We keep over 60 million customers connected across Kenya and Ethiopia, and play a critical role in the society, supporting over 1.13 million jobs both directly and indirectly while our total economic value was estimated at KES 1.1 trillion ($ 8.5 billion) for the 12 months through March 2025.

Listed on the Nairobi Securities Exchange and with annual revenues of close to KES 388 billion as at March 2025, Safaricom provides connectivity through wide range of technology. Our 2G, 3G, 4G and 5G network in aggregate covers over 99% of Kenya’s population.

We run the world’s largest mobile payment system and Africa’s largest Fintech, M-PESA, the world’s first mobile money transfer system. By empowering millions of customers to transact, save or borrow money through their mobile phone, M-PESA has driven financial inclusion in Kenya to 84.8% of the adult population in 2024, from a low of 26.7% in 2006, and generated over KES 161 billion in revenue as at FY25.

Our subsidiary, Safaricom Telecommunications Ethiopia, has deployed world class network and services to contribute to Ethiopia’s digital transformation.

Safaricom is an equal opportunity employer, actively recruiting staff from different backgrounds reflecting the communities that we serve. We are committed to equal gender representation at all levels.

As part of our ongoing commitment to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), we continue to work towards improving energy and resource efficiency in our network and facilities to reduce carbon emissions and our fuel consumption. We remain committed to becoming a Net Zero carbon-emitting company by 2050.