D2C Data & Business Intelligence Manager

We're now recruiting a D2C Data & Business Intelligence Manager to join our D2C Insights team; the team that drives customer-focused, data-led decision making across our direct-to-consumer strategy, product, PR & content, and business development teams. The team are responsible for insights across customer research, customer feedback, market intelligence, competitor analysis, and data-driven insights.

The D2C Data and BI Manager leads a small but dynamic and experienced group of BI developers and engineers who work across customer, financial and commercial data held in our Enterprise Data Warehouse Snowflake alongside our CRM and Customer Data Platform Bloomreach.

We’re passionate about delivering an increasingly personalised and segmented approach to every customer touchpoint to empower our customers to reach their financial goals.

This role is a hands‑on leader for the team, who can ensure we continue to have strong technical processes and governance whilst working with technical and non-technical colleagues to gather requirements, develop and deliver elegant and robust solutions, and embed insights.

What does the job involve?

• Leadership of a growing and high performing team of data engineers and BI developers – coaching individuals and the team to deliver their best for the business.
• Ensuring strong technical and business processes including documentation so that our data pipelines and data assets are robust, and that change is delivered in a governed and controlled manner and at the pace our stakeholders require.
• Working closely with our stakeholders in D2C (particularly Marketing and Product) to understand their plans and strategies to develop an operating model and plans that deliver robust data products and dashboards when required.
• Continually assess our ways of working and roadmaps, proactively identifying opportunities for efficiency and innovation.
• Ensuring change is delivered in line with agreed plans and QA'ing before delivery to the business.
• Supporting the team to develop engaging and accurate dashboards and reports. You’ll take the lead on rolling these out to the business, ensuring colleagues understand how to navigate and interpret the data including leading on our approach to self‑service and data literacy across the division.
• Working closely with our central data and technology colleagues to collaborate on projects, share best practice and agree on common ways of working across the AJ Bell data community.
• Proactively identify risks or opportunities highlighted through data and reporting, taking the lead on surfacing these to senior management along with context and what practical options we have to address them.
• Ensuring compliance with regulatory requirements and industry standards related to data privacy, security, and confidentiality.
• Supporting and enabling the business to achieve its regulatory requirements, including consumer duty.

About you:

We're looking for someone with a broad range of competence, knowledge and skills which would help you succeed in this role, but it is not critical to meet every single criteria listed below. We encourage a wide range of applicants.

• Proven experience in leading data and reporting teams in financial services or highly regulated industries
• Demonstrable experience of delivering improved outcomes from data and BI particularly governance, efficiency and scalability
• Previous responsibility for business‑critical data assets and platforms
• Experience of working with diverse data sources across customer, transactional and external data and different cadences including real time. Experience of working with third party data enhancement and marketing data sources such as Google Analytics is highly desirable
• Outstanding stakeholder engagement and management skills
• Excellent long‑term planning and short‑term prioritisation skills, including effective communication and ensuring delivery of priorities
• Experience in analysis and development within a BI environment
• Agile/scrum experience would be a benefit
• Good levels of data and market awareness
• Highly effective communication skills and comfortable working with both technical and non-technical teams
• Excellent analytical and problem‑solving skills, with the ability to interpret complex datasets and generate actionable insights.
• In‑depth knowledge of cloud‑based data architecture, database development and management. Previous experience with Snowflake in particular is desirable
• Strong understanding of data and systems integration and data pipelines including development approaches.
• Broad knowledge of business intelligence principles, approaches and tools/platforms. Power BI is preferred
• Understanding of marketing and communication technologies, particularly CRM platforms and orchestration tools. Experience with Bloomreach is desirable.
• Best practice for systems and data governance including development processes and documentation
• Reporting architecture and approaches including self‑service enablement
• Understanding of marketing and product performance metrics and approaches.Exposure to Google Analytics and user engagement tools and testing platforms such as Contentsquare, AppsFlyer, Optimizely is highly desirable
• Proven understanding of GDPR and data governance, preferably in financial services
• Knowledge of AJ Bell and our product offerings, and interest in the investment platform market would be a plus
• Excellent proficiency in data manipulation languages, particularly SQL, and able to write complex queries and repeatable stored procedures. Experience in low‑code solutions like DBT is highly desirable
• Experience of developing data pipeline and automations, for example via Python
• Ownership of systems critical data and strong experience of maintenance, development and improvement.
• Dashboard design, development and delivery. Experience with Power BI including semantic model development and with DAX is preferred.
• Self‑serve approaches and improvements to data literacy and adoption.
• Documentation and workflow management using tools such as JIRA and Confluence

About Us

AJ Bell is one of the fastest-growing investment platform businesses in the UK offering an award‑winning range of solutions that caters for everyone, from professional financial advisers to DIY investors with little to no experience. We have over 644,000 customers using our award‑winning platform propositions to manage assets totalling more than £103.3 billion. Our customers trust us with their investments, and by continuously striving to make investing easier, we aim to help even more people take control of their financial futures.

Having listed on the Main Market of the London Stock Exchange in December 2018, AJ Bell is now a FTSE 250 company.

Headquartered in Manchester with offices in central London and Bristol, we now have over 1,500 employees and have been named one of the UK's “Best 100 Companies to Work For” for six consecutive years and in 2024 named a Great Place to Work®.

At AJ Bell you can expect a friendly working environment with a strong sense of teamwork, we have a great sense of pride in what we do, and this is reflected in our guiding principles.

What we offer:

• Starting holiday entitlement of 27 days, increasing up to 31 days with length of service and a holiday buy and sell scheme
• A choice of pension schemes with matched contributions up to 8%
• Discretionary bonus scheme
• Annual free share awards scheme
• Buy As You Earn (BAYE) Scheme
• Health Cash Plan – provided by Simply Health
• Discounted private healthcare scheme and dental plan
• Free gym
• Employee Assistance Programme
• Sick pay+ pledge
• Enhanced maternity, paternity, and shared parental leave
• Loans for travel season tickets
• Charitable giving opportunities through salary sacrifice
• Calendar of social events, including monthly payday drinks, annual Christmas party, summer party and much more
• Personal development programmes built around you and your career goals, including access to personal skills workshops
• Monthly leadership breakfasts and lunches
• Casual dress code
• Access to a range of benefits from our sponsorship deals

At AJ Bell, our people are the heart of our culture. We believe in building strong connections by working together. That's why we offer a hybrid working model, where you’ll spend a minimum of 50% of your working time per month in the office. For new team members, an initial period will be full-time in the office to help you immerse yourself in our business and build valuable relationships with your colleagues.

AJ Bell is committed to providing an environment of mutual respect where equal employment opportunities are available to all applicants and all employees are empowered to bring their whole self to work.

We do not discriminate on the basis of race, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, pregnancy, religion, physical and mental disability, marital status and any other characteristics protected by the Equality Act 2010. All decisions to hire are based on qualifications, merit and business need.

If you like the sound of the above, or just want to know more about the company and the role, we'd love to speak to you.