Asset Alliance Group - Head Of Data & Analytics

Asset Alliance Group is part of the Arbuthnot Latham Banking Group. We serve the commercial vehicle, bus, coach, and general asset finance sectors with tailored award-winning lending, contract hire, rental and finance packages. We are a full-service finance and leasing business.

Today our group is the UK’s fastest growing commercial vehicle and bus and coach finance and sales company. We have the in-depth knowledge and specialist industry experience to provide an individual finance and asset management solution to all our customers.

Job Purpose

• The Head of Data & Analytics will lead data initiatives with a goal to leverage data-driven insights to enhance decision-making, drive innovation, and optimize operational efficiency.
• Data is key to our adoption of agentic AI and predictive analytics and the role will lead solutions to provide a platform for automation and data driven insights.
• The role will lead a team of multi-disciplined specialists, where focus will be on developing, designing, implementing and maintaining new and existing business focused solutions and data analytics.
• To place the interests of customers at the centre of all activities, act in a way that is consistent with achieving good outcomes for consumers and to comply with the FCA and PRA's Conduct Rules.

Key Responsibilities:

• Define the strategy and vision, including the road-map of future enhancements and growth opportunities for the data strategy.
• Uphold data integrity and availability to provide a reliable data platform for use by key consumers such as agents and customers. Seek to improve data quality through enrichment and governance.
• Responsible for designing, developing, and managing data engineering solutions, with a primary focus on Azure-based technologies.
• Establish and maintain scalable and efficient data pipelines and integration processes, ensuring efficient and reliable data ingestion, transformation and storage.
• Responsible for leading the data strategies in designing, developing, and implementing data solutions using Azure cloud and Salesforce Data Cloud technologies.
• Collaborate with external teams and business stakeholders to understand data requirements, identify opportunities for data-driven insights, and develop appropriate data models.
• Develop and enforce data governance policies, ensuring data quality, integrity, and security throughout the data lifecycle.
• Drive the adoption of best practices and industry standards for data engineering, including data architecture, ETL processes, and data warehousing.
• Manage and optimize Azure-based infrastructure and services, ensuring high availability, scalability, and cost efficiency.
• Keep abreast of industry technical best practices in data engineering, data analytics, Salesforce and Azure, ensuring innovative development of systems to meet organisational immediate and future needs.
• Collaborate with IT teams to ensure seamless integration of data solutions with existing systems and applications.
• Work closely with other Senior Leads, IT and Change Leaders to ensure that support is obtained from these areas to deliver the agreed outcomes.
• Financial responsibility for maintaining and optimising costs within agreed Investment and Operational budgets.
• Lead the planning of Platform release plans and set the expectation for delivery of new functionalities.
• Provide technical leadership, guidance, and mentorship to the data engineering and analytics team, fostering a culture of continuous learning and growth.
• Monitor and analyse data performance metrics, identify areas for improvement, and implement appropriate optimizations.
• Assure Platform performance and provide leadership and coordination in the resolution of platform defects, outages and incidents.
• Providing vision and direction to the Platform development team and stakeholders throughout projects and creating customer focussed outcomes.
• Planning and managing the pipeline of activity for the team (both engineering, analytics, governance and change disciplines) in order to optimise resource capacity and workloads, whilst securing timely engagement and input from cross platform shared service functions.
• Responsible for managing risks inherent to the role by diligently observing internal policies and procedures.

Key Interfaces:

• IT and Business Transformation teams
• Relevant stakeholders in Finance, Credit, Operations and Sales teams
• Third parties including integration partners, and software companies

Person Specification

Knowledge/Experience/Skills:

• Previous experience in data engineering, governance & analytics preferably in a cloud-based environment, with a strong focus on Azure and Salesforce technologies, operating at a similar level.
• In-depth knowledge of data concepts, including data modelling, ETL processes, data integration and data warehousing.
• Extensive hands-on experience with Azure cloud services such as Azure Data Factory, Azure Databricks, Azure Synapse Analytics, and Azure Data Lake Storage.
• Proficiency in programming languages such as Python, SQL, and ,Net, PowerBI.
• Previous experience of working with various LLMs, Copilot, Agentforce and MuleSoft would be advantageous
• Strong understanding of data governance, data security, and compliance requirements.
• Excellent problem-solving skills and the ability to translate business requirements into scalable data engineering solutions.
• Leadership experience, including managing and mentoring a team of data engineers.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to effectively interact with cross-functional teams and stakeholders .

Qualifications

• Degree in Computer Science, Data Science or a related field.

Competencies

• Team Working
• Performance Focus
  
• Change Focus
  
• Creativity and Innovation
• Problem Solving and Judgement
• Communication & confidence