The Talent Source has been retained to conduct a search for a visionary Data Leader to join a company pursuing high-growth market opportunities. This leader will leverage cross-industry data, point of sale consumer purchase, wallet choices, behavior and loyalty trends to ignite innovation through advanced analytics that meets consumer demand, exceeds expectations and outpaces the competition.

The Senior Director Data is a critical role and will be responsible for establishing a modern data ecosystem that will create near-term value and long-term competitive advantage for this company by enabling trusted data insights across the Enterprise.

This leader will be responsible for:

• Championing a data strategy with a target state architecture that moves data gravity to a commercially centric cross-application sourced data layer through the establishmentof a data management program including tools, governance, processes, and sustainment methods
• Leading a team of data engineers and data analysts to implement a modern data ecosystem that can leverage external consumer data sources and marry them with internal data sources to create compelling analytics
• Determining how to leverage data science, machine learning, AI and other analytical techniques in building a short- and long-term program roadmap enabling the commercial strategy including restaurant location, food choices, personalization, pricing and loyalty
• Balancing the priorities needed to deliver the longer-term target state and related differentiation, while delivering near-term business needs
• Being a thoughtful, responsive, dispassionate voice of simplicity in pursuit of business goals
• Partnering with business to deliver data needed to drive performance, in ways the business can easily consume and leverage for better real-time visibility & decision-making
• Enabling analysis of large, complex data sets to reveal underlying patterns, correlations, and trends quantitatively
• Developing analytics deliverables, including documentation of measurement planning, key business questions, data requirements, and front-end visualization approaches (Business Intelligence/dashboards)
• Partnering with strategists (and 3rd parties as need) to leverage data from various platforms (CRM, CDP, credit card processors, web, industry data aggregators, etc.) in order to develop disruptive insights and actionable recommendations and strategic next steps
• Prioritizing program initiatives based on value, dependency, business strategy, and other commercial factors through collaboration with business stakeholders
• Managing data driven initiatives involving timelines, vendor relationships, and budgets to ensure projects are delivered with the highest quality and within specified timeframes
• Leading the development of data science and modeling capabilities in a transformation journey to enable growth at speed and scale targeting solutions to business problems and barriers.
• Investigating and creating experimental prototypes that work on specific domains and verticals
• Developing data science solutions that can be tested and deployed to enable data-driven recommendations and outcomes

Experience Guidelines:

• 8-10 years of Data Engineering and Analytics experience and at least 5 years in a data focused leadership position.
• Experience conceiving, implementing and continually improving enterprise data management programs including storage, analysis, transformation including enrichment, governance, visualization and intelligence
• 3-5 years of cloud-based data engineering experience including cloud data warehouses and open-source platforms including experience with AWS, Azure, data modeling, cloud data storage and data visualization tools and techniques
• Demonstrated ability using data / systems to drive commercial results
• Experience in high growth businesses, both organic and M&A
• Consumer Driven Industry experience required Restaurant experience highly regarded
• Private Equity or Management Consulting experience a plus.
• Advanced expertise in creating and evangelizing best practices and methodologies

Characteristics

• Visible leadership skills and executive presence; can motivate individuals and teams to achieve objectives.
• Ability to work in a collaborative, transparent style with cross-functional stakeholders across the organization to lead and deliver results
• Strategic thought leader
• Strong skills in oral and written communication including experience in effectively communicating with executives, employees, colleagues, suppliers and customers
• Self-starter
• Adept at leveraging external expertise and resources to provide speed, scale and capacity

Biased toward delivery and measurable commercial value

Education:

Undergraduate degree in computer science, mathematics, engineering, data science or a related field.

An MS, MBA or related advanced degree is a plus.