Sr. Director/VP, Data & AI Strategy

Department: Technology & Product

Location: Cardiff, UK

Description

We are seeking a dynamic and visionary leader to join our team as Sr. Director / VP of Data Strategy and ML/AI. This role is responsible for shaping and driving our enterprise-wide data strategy—leveraging data as a strategic asset to deliver actionable insights, enable innovation through ML/AI, and support scalable, secure, and trustworthy data practices.

This high-impact leadership role requires cross-functional collaboration across Product, Engineering, Operations, Finance, and Compliance. You will be the steward of our data ecosystem, championing a culture of data excellence, insight-led decision making, measurable business outcomes, and embedded ML/AI capabilities.

What that means day to day

Architecture & Platform Leadership:
- Architect a unified and scalable enterprise data platform supporting structured and unstructured data.
- Build a modern Data Lakehouse/Warehouse as a single source of truth.
- Implement reporting and dashboarding solutions that empower internal teams and customers.
- Ensure platform reliability, observability, and security.
- Promote reusable, curated datasets and self-service analytics across teams.
- Collaborate with BI, Engineering, and business stakeholders to enhance analytics delivery.
- Leverage cloud platforms and modern pipeline tooling (e.g., Snowflake, Databricks, Azure, AWS).

ML/AI Strategy & Execution:
- Lead the design and deployment of scalable ML/AI capabilities on top of the data infrastructure to enhance our applications and business processes.
- Deliver high-impact initiatives such as predictive modeling, advanced analytics, and intelligent automation.
- Collaborate with Product and Engineering to embed ML/AI into core application features and workflows.
- Establish success metrics and a governance model for AI deployments.

Data Strategy & Governance:
- Define and execute a modern, enterprise-wide data strategy aligned with business objectives.
- Foster a culture of trusted data stewardship, literacy, and transparency.
- Establish data governance practices including change control, provenance tracking, and auditability.
- Build and evolve a robust data integration, reporting, and analytics platform using a Data Lakehouse, Warehouse, or Data Mart architecture.

Cross-Functional Collaboration:
- Align data initiatives with Product, Engineering, and Operations roadmaps.
- Act as a unifying force across departments to eliminate silos and improve insight delivery.
- Lead enterprise reporting initiatives, benchmarking, and data-driven transformation.
- Ensure measurable outcomes from all data and analytics programs.

What you’ll need to be successful

Required Qualifications:
- Degree educated in Computer Science, Data Science, Engineering, or related field; Master's/PhD preferred.
- 10+ years in data strategy, analytics, or ML/AI leadership roles.
- Proven experience with platforms like Snowflake, Databricks, Microsoft Fabric, etc.
- Deep expertise in data architecture, pipeline orchestration, and real-time analytics.
- Ability to influence executive stakeholders and communicate complex ideas clearly.
- Strong leadership and organizational change skills.

Preferred Qualifications:
- Experience in high-growth or private equity-backed environments.
- Familiarity with SaaS, compliance, or workforce management platforms.

What you'll get in return

Alcumus has a hybrid workplace policy, where you will work from the office 3 days per week. We want you to be able to do your best work here. We emphasize providing many ways to support our team to do their best work and below are some of the perks and benefits we offer:



Personal Health & Wellbeing / Benefits


> Enhanced Parental Leave

>Generous annual leave

> Healthcare Plan

> Annual Giving Day – an extra day to give back to yourself or your community

> Cycle-to-work Scheme

Future Planning


>Pension scheme with employer contributions

> Life Assurance – 3X base salary

> Rewards Program – access to discounts and cashback

> LinkedIn Learning License for upskilling & development

Interested but don’t feel you meet all the requirements?


Our recruitment team assesses and reviews all applications against the role and business needs. We believe in people having transferable and soft skills and want you to know that we do consider where an individual might not meet all the criteria, but have the aptitude and capability, nonetheless. Our priority is to ensure we set people up for success. We will make a final call based on our determining whether we can offer the necessary support to upskill or provide the developmental support needed for you to get the best out of this opportunity with us!

Bring Your Whole Self to Work.


Alcumus is proudly an equal-opportunity employer. We are committed to ensuring that no candidate is discriminated against because of gender identity and expression, race, disability, ethnicity, sexual orientation, age, colour, region, creed, national origin, or sex. We are dedicated to growing a diverse team while continuing to create an inclusive environment where everyone feels safe and empowered to be themselves.

What you can expect if you apply:

• A response to your application within 15 working days
• An interview process consisting of:
  • An initial discovery call with the recruiter
  • A first stage interview via Microsoft Teams
  • Additional interview (likely face to face) with the stakeholders you’ll be working with closely in the role

We’re keen to ensure our hiring process allows you to be at your best, so if you need us to make any adjustments, please just let us know.