Chief Data Officer | London, UK (London)

Job Title
Chief Data Officer

Job Description

So, who are we?

Hello, we're IG Group. We are a FTSE250 FinTech company who run mobile, web and desktop platforms that help our clients trade stocks & shares, leveraged products, Futures & Options and Crypto.

We are ambitious. Over 340,000 people already use our platforms. We're global with offices in 18 countries and products in 16 regions. We're hungry to move faster, ship better product for our customers and grow our user base. We believe in high autonomy, and we want people who are looking to do things differently in order to create better experiences for our customers.

We work in cross-functional teams and are laser focused on increasing the number of active clients we serve to drive sustainable growth.

Your team

The Data department is responsible for designing, building, and maintaining datasets, as well as the end-to-end data platform, to meet the data needs of the business.

The fundamental objective is to ensure the quality and trust of data, empowering data practitioners within the business and technology, through the implementation of data standards, policies and principles. This function plays a crucial role in helping accelerate IG on its journey to becoming a data-enabled organisation.

Your role in the Team's Success

The Chief Data Officer is a senior technology role reporting to the CTO of Enterprise Technology Services. IG's data capabilities are a mixture of on-prem and off-prem services, and as such the role requires strong partnerships with several external vendors. As a member of the Extended Technology Leadership Team the role demands excellent interpersonal, leadership and stakeholder collaboration skills.

What you'll do

- Technology and Engineering

• Establishing and maintaining the departmental vision and culture
• Designing, implementing, and advancing capabilities to better discover and exploit our data assets.
• Collaborate with department heads to ensure a strategic and integrated use of data across the organisation.
• Establishing the processes to define how data quality targets are achieved, delivering trusted data to support the group strategy.
• Data ownership governance and maintaining data standards, policies, and principles.
• Delivery of a modern data platform architecture and infrastructure, collaborating with technical and system experts to optimise data management.
• Continually assess and improve our legacy data position.
• Operational fitness a (EOL, Incidents, problems, vulnerabilities, security etc) Ensuring the day-to-day technology services within the Client Technology domain are fit for purpose and aligned to the overall IG risk appetite and are yielding the desired results for our clients

- Leadership and People Development

• Build an effective and motivational team environment, aligning behaviours, values and performance expectations across the function.
• Sustain a high degree of employee engagement throughout the teams and embed a culture of continuous improvement, thereby enabling a step-change in performance.
• Deploy appropriate talent development strategies to ensure the best possible talent pipeline for now and the future.
• Works as part of the Extended IT Leadership Team to achieve collective success for IG IT and helps shape and develop long term direction of the function.
• Ensure effective communication at all levels both internally and externally, providing briefings to all team members on business strategies, performance and priorities.
• Shares accountability and decision-making for direction of IG's IT as a critical business unit for the Group.

- Ways of Working

• Foster a culture of modern working practices within the Data Engineering department.
• Instill the culture of continuous improvement and automation into the infrastructure Teams.
• Create and nurture a data as a service for IG Group, enabling line of business functions to efficiently consume shared services.
• Drive a culture of engineering and innovation within technology.

- Data Technology Lifecycle/Change

• Maintain the currency, functionality and affordability of the group's Data Technology, ensuring a multiyear roadmap is in place that develops the infrastructure to deliver the Group Data Strategy.
• Deliver a multi-year change roadmap via an ongoing annual portfolio of change projects, successfully delivered to time, quality and cost.

- Financial and Supplier Management

• Manage the Opex and Capex budgets for the department. Ensure budgets are planned appropriately and met within the financial year.
• Deliver a multi-year change roadmap via an ongoing annual portfolio of change projects, successfully delivered to time, quality and cost.

How we work

We try to take a thoughtful approach to our ways of working as a company. We follow a hybrid working model with 3 days in the office -- which we think balances the need to collaborate effectively and connect with each other. When it comes to how we deliver, there are 5 things we want everyone to do to drive high performance, better learning and career satisfaction:

• Lead and Inspire: Drives trust, alignment, and enthusiasm
• Think Big: Focus on the problems that most impact commercial outcomes
• Champion the client: Understand and prioritise client's needs
• Deliver at pace: Push for fast, sustainable growth;
• Raise the bar: Take ownership, be accountable and share feedback

What you'll need for this role

- Person specification

• A dynamic and ambitious leader who demonstrates a level of gravitas commensurate with a senior leadership role, while also being able to engage effectively at all levels of the organisation.
• Provides clear vision and direction, inspiring and engaging individuals and the team to deliver excellence.
• Demonstrates sound and pragmatic judgement, balancing pace, risk and business value to reach decisions which are well informed, rigorous and actionable.
• Leads with determination and drive, taking initiative willingly, acting with both sensitivity and self-assurance to achieve results.
• Respects individuals' views and positively encourages and contributes to a learning environment in which individuals are supported to develop to their full potential and excel in role.
• Establishes and maintains effective working relationships and influence with key stakeholders based on professional credibility and excellent communication and engagement.
• Highly structured thinker, able to define how to approach the business question and execute appropriate analysis.

- Likely background experience

• Championed a data-as-a-product operating model , introducing product management principles to data pipelines, platforms, and services.
• Led the end-to-end delivery of reusable data products , including customer 360 views, ML feature stores, and real-time analytics layers.
• Established data product ownership roles and SLAs, enhancing trust and adoption of data assets across business units.
• Built cross-functional squads to deliver domain-specific data products aligned with business outcomes and federated governance principles (inspired by Data Mesh).
• Designed productized data APIs and self-serve interfaces, enabling internal teams to consume data with minimal engineering support.
• Implemented usage analytics and feedback loops to continuously improve data products based on user adoption and impact metrics.
• Experience in running multinational, distributed data teams at scale.
• A proven track record of creating, adapting, and developing a growing data practice focused on outcomes.
• Demonstrable experience in developing and executing data strategies that have driven real value in the organisations they serve.
• Excellent communication skills with a proven ability to influence senior leadership.
• Excellent understanding and working knowledge of modern data architecture, including databases, data lakes, warehouses, and pipelines.
• Experience in designing, implementing, and running data platforms in public and private cloud - GCP and/or AWS (former is preferred)
• Strong experience with some of the following languages and data technologies: Java, Python, SQL, Confluent Kafka, Apache Spark, Apache Beam, REST, Spring, Spring boot, Apache Tomcat, JMS, Gitlab and DBT

We believe that diversity is vital to success, it fuels creativity, drives innovation and sets us up for global success. We're committed to building teams with a variety of perspectives and skills to help us realise our vision and strategy, that's why we encourage applications from people with diverse backgrounds and experiences to join us on this journey. Learn more about our D&I approach here.

The Perks

Your growth fuels our success! Thrive with tailored development programs, mentoring opportunities with leaders, and clear career progression. Expand your network through committees, sports and social clubs. Enjoy extra time off for volunteering and community work.

As well as having the chance to attend regular social events and join special-interest groups, you get an attractive selection of benefits working with IG:

• Competitive salary
• Flexible Benefits Package on top of your salary (12%)
• Performance-related bonuses & LTIP
• Private medical cover for you and your family
• Life insurance