Data and Analytics Lead

Data & Analytics Lead

Location: Office Based/Hybrid - Cheshire
Salary: £70,000-£80,000 + benefits
Reports to: IT Director

Overview

Our client is a fast-growing, privately-backed group of financial services businesses, built through an active buy-and-build acquisition strategy and now entering a rapid growth phase. This newly created role is the organisation's first dedicated data hire, tasked with building its central Data & Analytics function from the ground up and working directly with the executive and senior leadership team.

Role

A deliberately hands-on role: approximately 60% delivery/40% strategic today, shifting towards strategy as the function and a team are built around the successful candidate. Not a Head of Data role at the outset - the candidate will do much of the work themselves while carrying genuine influence over data strategy and a clear path to leadership. Works across the organisation's core adviser/CRM, client portal and finance systems, with Power BI as the reporting layer and an enterprise data platform on the roadmap. A growing part of the role is defining, and in time leading, the migration of acquired firms' data into the group's systems.

Key Responsibilities

• Clean, reconcile and integrate data across core systems; build day-to-day KPIs, dashboards and MI in Power BI (assets under advice, flows, revenue, adviser metrics) for the Board and finance team, from a single trusted source.
• Own data quality - define and apply the checks, controls and audit evidence that underpin a trusted single source of truth, Consumer Duty and regulatory reporting.
• Build and maintain data pipelines and reconciliation logic across the core adviser platform, client portal, finance system and provider platforms.
• Define, and once established lead end-to-end, a repeatable process for migrating each newly acquired firm's data into the group's systems (profiling, mapping, cleansing, reconciliation, cutover).
• Contribute to data strategy - platform selection, target data model, governance - and help define and in time, lead the growing data team.

Skills & Experience

Essential

• Strong, hands-on SQL and data manipulation skills.
• Genuine depth in Power BI - data modelling and DAX, not just report-building.
• Experience building and maintaining data pipelines, reconciliation and integrations.
• Track record producing reporting, KPIs and MI for business and finance stakeholders.
• Sound data quality/governance instincts, and the ambition to grow into a team-leading role.
• Experience of the Snowflake data platform.
• Financial-services data experience (assets under advice/flows, Consumer Duty); Python; a finance/management-reporting background; data migration or system onboarding experience; other platforms (Microsoft Fabric/Azure, Databricks).

Personal Attributes

Genuinely hands-on yet able to think strategically. Curious, ambitious and self-directed - comfortable being the first data hire and building from the ground up. Collaborative and credible with finance and senior stakeholders. Pragmatic, delivery-focused and comfortable with ambiguity in a fast-growing, acquisitive business.