Head of BI &Data

At Great Rail Journeys, we’re the UK’s leading provider of holidays by rail, offering escorted tours, river cruises and tailormade adventures across more than 40 countries worldwide. With five decades of experience, we’re experts in showcasing the beauty and diversity of the destinations we travel to, taking people to places only rail can reach.

Every year we proudly take over 50,000 customers on unforgettable journeys, creating moments of great connection through thoughtful planning, exceptional service and a genuine passion for what we do. We care deeply about our customers and never lose sight of the small touches and attention to detail that make a holiday truly special. Our customer first ethos sits at the heart of every decision we make, helping us deliver the high‐quality tours our customers love and return to year after year.

Our stunning Hudson Quarter office in York right opposite the station is a modern, collaborative space designed to bring people together, with 4 days in the office, it’s the perfect place to maintain our strong culture and teamwork. Don’t worry, we’ve got coffee on tap AND even a balcony for those sunny days! 🌤️😎

And because great people deserve great perks, here’s a taste of what we offer:

Benefits You’ll Love✨

🛍️ Up to 25% off Colleague Discount on our tours

🌴 33 days Holiday (incl BH) Plus the Option to Buy 3 Extra Days

🚍 Commuter Club discount

💙 Westfield Health Cash Back Plan

🌍 Eurostar Agent Rates

💼 5% matched Pension Plan & Salary Exchange

Role

Salary FTE £80,000 - £85,000 (DOE)

This role suits a technically exceptional, intellectually strong, and highly hands‐on leader who enjoys working close to the detail while guiding the direction of our data capability. You will help the organisation get the best from its data, ensuring delivery aligns with business needs and supporting major upcoming changes, including the migration from our data warehouse to Microsoft Fabric and the development of customer, CRM, and CDP data capability.

The Head of BI & Data is accountable for scaling Business Intelligence, Data, Reporting, and Decision Support across the organisation. The role ensures the business has access to trusted, timely insights that support our ambition to double turnover within five years.

As a hands‐on leader, you will remain close to delivery, shaping solutions, making key design decisions, solving complex problems, and contributing directly where your expertise adds most value. You will lead from the front, actively contributing to technical work while enabling the team to deliver high‐quality data products. You will also set clear direction and technical standards while fostering strong cross‐functional collaboration.

You will work across technology, operations, and the wider business, building strong relationships to co‐create data solutions that drive commercial and operational performance.

Accountable for

1. Evolving and maintaining the enterprise data platform and reporting estate, ensuring it continues to meet the organisation’s growing needs and supports our planned transition to Microsoft Fabric.
2. Leading the end‐to‐end delivery of data projects, from shaping requirements through to production, ensuring solutions are robust, scalable, and aligned to business priorities.
3. Defining and upholding high standards for data modelling, reporting, and engineering, ensuring technical excellence and consistency across all data products.
4. Ensuring the stability, performance, and supportability of BI and Data services, resolving issues quickly and maintaining a reliable, trusted data environment.
5. Driving high‐value analytical and insight work where it delivers meaningful business or strategic impact, providing clarity, depth, and intellectual rigour.
6. Contributing to wider IT leadership and cross‐functional planning, bringing a data‐driven perspective and collaborating closely with colleagues across the organisation.
7. Carrying out any duties necessary for the success of the BI & Data function, ensuring progress, momentum, and continuous improvement.

Responsibilities

Data & BI Strategy

• Define and own a clear, practical BI and Data strategy that supports business objectives, the digital roadmap, and our ambition to scale rapidly over the next five years.
• Translate business priorities into a focused, achievable, and prioritised data delivery roadmap.
• Champion a data‐driven culture across the organisation, enabling confident decision‐making through accessible, trusted insights.

Data Platform & Architecture

• Own and evolve the organisation’s enterprise data platform—including pipelines, models, integrations, and our transition from the existing warehouse to Microsoft Fabric.
• Ensure the data architecture is scalable, secure, well‐governed, and able to support future growth and increased analytical capability.
• Provide strong technical leadership across data engineering practices, including cloud pipelines, ELT/ETL processes, and modern data modelling approaches.

Reporting, MI & Analytics

• Ensure the delivery of reliable, consistent MI, reporting, and dashboards that support operational and strategic decision‐making.
• Maintain a trusted “single version of the truth”, with clear definitions, ownership, and transparent metric governance.
• Enable self‐service reporting where appropriate, supported by strong governance and user education.

Leadership & Team Development

• Lead, support, and develop the BI and Data team, ensuring analysts and engineers are empowered to deliver high‐quality work.
• Set clear direction, priorities, and standards for the design, delivery, and quality of data solutions.
• Coach and mentor team members, building capability, confidence, and resilience within a high‐performing data function.

Stakeholder Engagement

• Partner with senior stakeholders to understand objectives, clarify requirements, and translate them into well‐designed data solutions.
• Act as the organisation’s senior authority on BI and Data—providing guidance, influencing decision‐making, and acting as the point of escalation for key issues.
• Communicate complex data and technical topics in a clear, accessible, and business‐focused way tailored to different audiences.

Data Quality & Governance

• Establish and maintain strong data standards, definitions, and quality controls across the enterprise data platform.
• Ensure transparency around data lineage, transformations, assumptions, and limitations within reporting and analytics.
• Provide confidence that the data used for decision‐making is accurate, complete, and trustworthy.

Essential:

• Exceptional senior‐stakeholder leadership, able to build credibility quickly, understand what leaders truly need, influence direction, and manage expectations with confidence and clarity.
• Deeply collaborative and highly cross‐functional, working seamlessly across teams, breaking down silos, and ensuring data initiatives are aligned, understood, and embedded into business processes.
• Clear, proactive communicator who brings transparency, articulates complexity simply, and adapts communication style to suit technical and non‐technical audiences—especially at senior levels.
• Supportive, hands‐on leadership style, promoting partnership, shared ownership, and a culture where challenges are solved together and people feel safe to contribute.
• Intellectually strong and analytically curious, able to approach problems from first principles, bring clarity to ambiguity, and add rigour and depth to decision‐making.
• Business‐aligned mindset, ensuring delivery is focused on organisational priorities and real business value rather than personal technical interest.
• Influential and forward‐looking, able to guide stakeholders through data change (e.g., CRM, CDP, Fabric), shape what good looks like, and help the organisation get the best from its data.

Desirable:

· Experience with Microsoft Fabric.

· Experience with cloud‐based data platforms and modern data engineering approaches.

· Familiarity with Agile delivery in a data context.

· Experience supporting commercial, operational, or customer analytics.

· Exposure to advanced analytics or modern data products beyond traditional reporting.