Head of Data and Business Intelligence

Job Summary

The Head of Data and Business Analytics plays a critical role in shaping Elementis’s data direction and ensuring the organisation maximizes the value of its data assets. You align the data and analytics strategy with business priorities, ensuring that data-driven insight supports operational performance, commercial decision-making, and long term value creation. You act as the strategic partner to business leaders, bridging the gap between technical data capabilities and business needs, and ensuring that data is trusted, well governed, and consistently used across the organisation. This role is central to embedding a “one version of the truth” approach, strengthening data governance, and driving a culture of data driven decision making across Elementis.

Responsibilities

Job Description

• Enterprise Data & Analytics Strategy and Roadmap
• You define and drive the enterprise data and analytics strategy, ensuring alignment with business objectives and digital transformation priorities.
• You maintain a clear, prioritized data roadmap that reflects business needs, regulatory requirements, and value opportunities.
• You identify opportunities for data to deliver tangible value across operations, performance, and innovation, embedding data as a critical enabler of business success.
• You engage and communicate clearly with business stakeholders on the strategy and roadmap.
• Business Partnership & Value Creation
• You act as the primary link between the ExCo and the centralised data organisation, ensuring data needs are understood, prioritized, and translated into scalable, value‑focused solutions.
• You represent the business data function in strategic planning sessions and enterprise-wide governance forums. You will ensure data is considered as a strategic asset at the highest levels and that its role is reflected in decision-making across programmes and investments.
• You ensure analytics initiatives deliver measurable business value and eliminate duplicated analysis across teams.
• Data Governance, Platform Integrity and Analytics Stewardship
• Provide overall direction, priorities, and standards for data governance, architecture, and platform integrity, ensuring both roles work toward a unified, business‑aligned data strategy.
• Coordinate and align the work of the Data Architecture & Governance Manager and the Technical Specialist so that data quality, governance, and platform performance reinforce each other and deliver reliable, trusted data to the organisation.
• Ensure both roles work closely with Business Data Managers and Analysts - providing guidance, receiving feedback, and aligning on data definitions, quality issues, and analytical needs - to strengthen the end‑to‑end data value chain.
• You ensure consistent compliance with legal and regulatory requirements, including GDPR and ethical data use. In collaboration with risk and legal teams, you will embed responsible data practices and support a governance model that balances control with innovation.
• Data Operations, Performance & Vendor Management
• You oversee the performance of data workflows, tools, and platforms, monitoring KPIs and adjusting strategies to improve efficiency and impact.
• You own the relationship and contractual arrangements with delivering run, transformation, and data management services, ensuring delivery quality and alignment with business priorities.
• Leadership, Capability Building & Cultural Change
• You lead and develop the Elementis data team, supporting the team and stakeholders effectively embed a matrix-management style of management.
• You foster collaboration, continuous learning, and a strong business‑oriented mindset in all data roles.
• You champion data literacy and drive adoption of data‑driven decision making across the organisation.
• You stay abreast of industry trends to continually refine the organization’s data strategy;

Decision making

You will hold decision-making authority over the direction and priorities of business-facing data initiatives.

You are empowered to make strategic and operations decisions on resource allocation within the business data team, prioritizing requests, and defining standards in partnership with stakeholders.

You also act as the final business authority on key data definition, KPIs, and quality thresholds – ensuring consistency across the organisation and alignment with strategic goals.

You oversee the relationship with third parties supporting the data ecosystem. As such, you hold decisions on scope, performance, contractual matters and delivery.

What will it take

Job Competencies & key personal attributes

Strategic Mindset: You take a long‑term, enterprise‑wide view of how data enables performance, innovation, and value creation. You anticipate trends and shape the data agenda accordingly.

Moves Seamlessly from Strategy to Detail: You can step back to define strategic direction while also diving into data definitions, quality issues, and operational processes when needed.

Influences and Communicates Effectively: You translate complex data concepts into clear business language, building trust and ensuring stakeholders understand the implications of data insights and governance decisions. Ability to interact and adjust to stakeholders of different seniority and functional areas.

Passionate about data: You are enthusiastic about data as a business asset and generate following and support in others to enable change and create value for Elementis.

Optimises Work Processes: You continuously improve data processes, governance, and workflows to enhance efficiency, quality, and consistency.

Acts with Integrity and Professionalism: You uphold the highest standards of data ethics, compliance, and responsible data use, ensuring trust across the organisation.

Technical Knowledge And Skills

• Ability to interpret data in a business context and translate it into actionable insight.
• Working knowledge of data ecosystems, such as Data Lake, Platform, Data Management tools, such as Databricks.
• Solid understanding of cloud‑based data platforms (Azure, Databricks) at a conceptual level.
• Strong understanding of data governance frameworks, master data management, and data quality principles.
• Expert working knowledge of BI tools (Power BI preferred) and how they enable business insight.
• Knowledge of regulatory requirements (GDPR, PII, data ethics).

Position Requirements

Education: Bachelor’s degree in business, information systems, data management, or related field.

Experience:

• Proven experience in data leadership and/or data governance within a complex global organization.
• 8+ years in leading cross-functional teams and delivering through others in a matrixed or centralised model.
• Demonstrated ability to drive data strategy, governance, and value‑focused analytics.
• Experience managing third‑party service / outsource providers.
• Strong track record of partnering with business leaders to unlock value from data.

IT Skills: Clear understanding of Cloud based technology, preferably Azure. Datbricks and best practice data lake methodology. Power BI (highly advantageous).

Language Skills: Verbal and written fluency in English.

Working arrangements: Minimum 3 days per week in the Porto office. Traveling required: Occasional international travel to other Elementis sites as required.

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