Head of Data – 18 Months FTC

Role Overview

• Develop and deliver the Foundation’s enterprise data strategy aligned to mission and organisational goals.
• Enable data-driven decision-making across all Foundation operations, including Finance & Legal, Endowment, Charities and Impact on Urban Health.
• Embed data into customer experience, operational resilience, risk management and strategic planning.
• Ensure measurable outcomes linked to data quality, adoption and organisational value.
• Lead and mature a robust data governance framework, including standards, policies, ownership models, quality controls and metadata management.
• Ensure compliance with GDPR, Data Protection and relevant regulatory and audit requirements.
• Establish trusted data across the organisation through strong controls, lineage, classification and lifecycle management.
• Lead on the enterprise data architecture design, including data lakes, warehousing, integrations, pipelines and modelling.
• Own and optimise cloud-native data technologies across Microsoft Azure, including Fabric, Azure Data Lake, Data Factory, Databricks, Synapse and SQL.
• Ensure the data platform is scalable, high-performing, secure and aligned to organisational transformation needs.
• Partner with the Business Systems team to deliver seamless integrations with CRM, finance, impact measurement tools and third-party platforms.
• Lead on the development of enterprise reporting and analytics, delivering timely, accurate and actionable insights.
• Oversee Power BI governance, semantic models and self-service enablement.
• Drive predictive analytics, operational insight and (where appropriate) responsible AI/ML adoption to enhance outcomes and impact measurement.
• Champion the delivery and innovation in line with emerging technologies to support operational insight.
• Work closely with the Head of Change, Head of Business Systems, and IT Operations Manager to develop end-to-end solutions for business systems, data and infrastructure.
• Over time, build and lead the multidisciplinary data.
• Champion data literacy, high-quality data habits and a culture of curiosity across the Foundation.
• Represent the organisation externally with regulators, suppliers and strategic partners.
• Effectively manage internal and external delivery, including procurement and vendor oversight.

Requirements

• Proven experience leading data functions in regulated or complex organisations (charity, financial services, healthcare, public sector or similar)
• (essential)
• Strong background in enterprise data management, governance, data quality and architecture (essential)
• Deep technical expertise across the Microsoft Azure data ecosystem (Fabric, Data Lake, ADF, Databricks, Synapse, SQL, Purview, DevOps)
• (essential)
• Experience scaling cloud-native data platforms and modern data stacks (Lakehouse, pipelines, BI tooling)
• (essential)
• Strong understanding of GDPR, data protection, compliance and data risk frameworks (essential)
• Track record of influencing at senior/executive levels and leading cultural change (essential)
• Experience with Microsoft Purview governance and responsible AI frameworks (desirable)
• Certifications such as Azure Data Engineer, Solutions Architect or equivalent (desirable)
• Experience with Azure/OpenAI, Snowflake/BigQuery/Redshift, dbt or modern orchestration tools (desirable)
• Experience enabling insights in impact-driven, donor-focused or audience engagement organisations (desirable)

Tech Stack

• Amazon Redshift
• Azure
• BigQuery
• Cloud
• SQL

Benefits

• Contributory pension
• Annual personal development budget
• Annual health and wellbeing personal allowance
• Enhanced maternity, paternity, and parental leave pay accessible without length of service requirements.
• Health and wellbeing programme that offers optional free yearly health check-ups.
• Support for healthy eating via fruit bowls and onsite lunch facilities.
• Agile working, flexible hours, and supportive IT kit.
• Shower facilities and bike lock area.
• Generous annual leave (27 days + bank holidays)
• Subsidies for glasses
• Employee Assistance Programme