Sr. Manager, AI Enablement Lead

About Ovative Group:

Ovative Group is an independent, full-funnel media, measurement, and creative firm transforming how brands grow. We partner with leading names like American Eagle, Best Buy, Domino’s, The Home Depot, Polaris, and UnitedHealth Group to build smarter media and measurement programs that drive real, profitable growth.

We don’t just track performance-we redefine it. Powered by our proprietary intelligence platform, EMRge, and our holistic metric Enterprise Marketing Return (EMR), we help brands connect revenue, customer, and brand outcomes into one clear picture of success. Our approach to full-funnel strategy, buying, and measurement delivers results that matter-and it’s getting noticed. Our work has been recognized by Digiday, Google, USA Today, Inc. 5000, and Search Engine Land.

About the Role:

AI capability is moving faster than any annual training plan can keep up with. Ovativeis committed to keeping our people ahead of it, and we have concluded that doing this well is a full-time job rather than something added to the side of someone else’s role. That is why this role exists.

Foundational fluency is not enough. A media strategist, an analyst, and a measurement lead each need something different from AI, and what a senior manager should be able to do with these tools is different from what a first-year analyst should. Building capability that is specific to role and level, andkeeping it current as the tools change underneath us, is the core of the job.

You will ownhow people at Ovativelearn to work with AI: the training everyone gets, what good looks like in each role, and the deeper path for people who want to go further than the baseline. Some of the work you will deliver directly, whereasmuch of it needs to scale through our Center of Excellence AI Captains, who lead adoption with their respective teams. Theyneed materials, coaching, and a clear quality bar to do it well.

Success in this role is measured by change in how the work gets done. That means an analyst who builds a reusable workflow instead of rebuilding the same pull by hand every month, a strategist who starts from our shared skills library rather than a blank page, a team that redesigns a recurring deliverable around what AI can now do, and a new hire who is productive with these tools in their first week rather than their first quarter. You will define the small set of measures that tell us this is actually happening, instrument them, report them honestly to senior leadership, and own the plan where adoption stalls.

You need to use these tools yourself,every day. Captains and practitioners will follow someone who can sit down and build the thingwith them. This role reports to the AI Lead and works closely with our AI engineers, IT and Security, TalentServices, AI Captainsand practice area leaders.

Responsibilities of a Sr. Manager, AI Enablement Lead:

• Own the AI training curriculum end to end:what gets taught, to whom, at what depth, and how often it is refreshed as capability and tooling evolve.Partner with Talent Services to deliver it through our existing learning infrastructure and facilitation support rather than building a parallel system alongside it

• Define the AI fluency baseline by role and level, in partnership with practice area leadership and TalentServices, so expectations are explicit rather than implied

• Equip AI Center of Excellence Captains to run team-level training inside their functions: build the train-the-trainer model, the materials, the quality bar, and the support cadence that makes distributed delivery work

• Partner with Talent Services to build AI into new hire onboarding, so AI-native ways of working are part of how people learn the job rather than a separate program they attend later

• Build and run the adoption and impactmeasurement framework: define the metrics that show both whether people are working differently and what that change is producing in time returned, output quality, and client outcomes. Instrument them, report them to senior leadership, and own the plan where either is lagging

• Design and run the advanced capability track for high-engagement staff and power users, including the path from capable practitioner into more technical build work

• Own the Center of Excellence community: cadence, forums, office hours, recognition, and the internal communications that keep momentum visible across the organization

• Partner with our AI product team to turn new tools & capabilities into practical training people can use right away

• Partner with IT and Security to communicate AI policy and governance expectations in language people understand and follow

• Identifywhere enablement is not the answer: surface workflow, process, or tooling problems that training cannot fix, and route them to the right owner

Requirements:

• 6+ years of relevant professional experience, including at least 2 years owning training, enablement, or capability building for a team, function, or organization

• Experience running a program where you were accountable for whether people adopted it, not only for whether it was delivered. You can describe what changed, how you knew, and what did not work

• Hands-on daily use of AI tools such as Claude, beyond prompting. You have built your own multi-step workflows, reusable skills, and agents, and you can tell when a problem should be automated and when it needs a process change instead

• Experience delivering through people who do not report to you, including how you held a quality bar without formal authority

• Exceptional verbal communication and live facilitation. Most of this role is delivered out loud, to rooms that range from first-year analysts to senior leaders, in person and virtual. You can teach a technical concept live, read the room, take the hard question, and adjust on the spot

• Strong writing skills. The rest of this role is making complicated capability legible in a page or less

• Measurement fluency: you can define adoption metrics, build the reporting, and interpret it without a data team doing it for you

• Comfort operatingwhere requirements evolve. You can make progress and flag blockers without waiting for a complete plan

Preferred:

• Experience with Claude Enterprise or the Anthropic API

• Experience building enablement for AI or automation tooling specifically, including where adoption failed and why

• Prior ownership of a Center of Excellence, community of practice, or similar distributed capability model

• Instructional design background or credentials

• Prior experience in marketing analyticsor media

Pay Transparency:

At Ovative, we offer a transparent view into three core components of the total compensation package: Base Salary, Annual Bonus, and Benefits.

For our Sr. Manager positions, including the position of Sr. Manager, AI Enablement Lead, our compensation range is from $125,000 to $175,000 on an annualized basis, which is inclusive of an annual bonus opportunityof up to 25% of base salary.

Working at Ovative Group:

We provide strong, competitive, holistic benefits that understand the importance of your life inside and out of work.

At Ovative, culture isn’t a buzzword-it’s the reason we’ve been named a Top Workplace for ten years running. We lead with trust, transparency, and a commitment to doing the hard work others avoid.

We offer flexibility. You'll work from our Minneapolis, Chicago, or New York office on set days each week, and an option to work remote on others.

Our open floor plan reflects our open communication and flat structure-where interns collaborate with VPs, analysts partner with senior leaders, and our CEO engages with every team member. Together, we create an environment where smart, driven people can do their best work and support one another in the process.

We’re equally committed to inclusion and belonging. Ovative fosters a workplace where everyone can participate and thrive-regardless of ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or expression or other protected class status. Our benefits and policies reflect that commitment, from inclusive medical leave coverage for same-sex spouses to equitable care and support for all families.

Benefits:

We strive to hire and retain the best talent by offering fair, competitive compensation, a meaningful bonus program, and excellent health coverage. When the company performs well, we all benefit.

Some tangible benefits and amenities we enjoy:

• Access to all office spaces in MSP, NYC, and CHI

• Frequent, paid travel to our Minneapolis headquarters for company events, team events, and in-person collaboration with teams

• Generous paid vacation policy

• 401k match program

• Top-notch health insurance options, inclusive of same sex partners

• Family formation benefits including reimbursement options for fertility, pregnancy, and parenting needs

• Monthly stipend for your mobile phone and data plan

• Sabbatical program

• Charitable giving via our time and a financial match program

• Shenanigan’s Day

Additional information can be found at Ovative's Career Page.

The details of the benefits are covered by applicable plan documents for group benefits and by company policies where a plan document does not apply.

Working at Ovative won’t be easy-but if you like challenging, hard work, driving results, and being surrounded by the best talent, it has the potential to be the most rewarding job you’ll ever have. If you think you can make us better, we want to hear from you!

EEO & Accessibility:

Ovative is an Equal Opportunity Employer committed to a respectful, inclusive workplace for all. Applicants receive consideration without regard to legally protected characteristics (e.g., color, religion, creed, national origin, sex, pregnancy, childbirth and related conditions, sexual orientation, gender identity/, gender expression, gender identity, age, physical or mental disability, marital/ status, familial status, military or veteran’s status, genetic information, status with regard to public assistance, and any other status protected under applicable law).

We provide reasonable accommodations consistent with the Americans with Disabilities Act and applicable state law to qualified applicants and employees with disability, unless doing so would create an undue hardship.

If you need assistance or accommodation at any stage of the application or interview process due to a disability, please contact us at [email protected].

Application Details and Process:

Applicants must be legally authorized to work in the United States for any employer on a full-time basis, without current or future need for visa sponsorship. Ovative is unable to sponsor or take over sponsorship of an employment visa for this position. In compliance with federal law, all persons hired will be required to verify identity and eligibility to work in the United States and to complete the required employment eligibility verification documentation upon hire.

Open Until Filled or Otherwise Withdrawn:

We encourage interested candidates to apply early. The position will remain open for at least 10 business days from the first day of posting. After this time, if the position has not been filled, the posting will remain open until the position is filled, or until the posting is otherwise closed or withdrawn for business reasons.