Head of Data Platform

Fastmarkets is at its core a data business. The prices indices and market intelligence we produce are relied upon by participants across global commodity metals forest products agricultural and carbon markets to make investment/risk management decisions.

The Head of Data Platform leads the team responsible for the organisations foundational data capability and for unlocking the commercially strategic opportunities that the platform makes possible. The role exists to ensure that data is ingested modelled governed and served to internal

and external customer groups through a Data Platform that operates as a product rather than a reactive service.

This is a strategic leadership role with both technical depth and a product mindset. The Head of Data Platform owns the maturity of the organisations Snowflake implementation the data engineering function that staffs the team the platform roadmap and SLAs and the governance framework that underpins it. They are accountable for delivering against the needs of internal and external customer groups.

The role reports to the Director of Data & AI and has peer leaders in the AI Enablement Data Insights and Data Governance practices.

Principal Accountabilities

• Define own and deliver the multi-year strategy for the Data Platform including the maturation of the Snowflake implementation the curated data product layer the published service catalogue that customer groups consume and the strategic capabilities the platform enables.
• Own the direct monetisation capability for the Data Platform. Define and stand up in close partnership with Product the model by which curated data products are delivered to external paying customers via Snowflake-to-Snowflake sharing and equivalent mechanisms. This includes the technical pattern (including security and entitlements) the commercial packaging the customer onboarding experience the SLAs and the operational model. The Head of Data Platform owns what this looks like and how it works; Product owns commercial strategy pricing and go-to-market.
• Build lead and develop a world-class highly-engaged high performing team of data engineers and adjacent disciplines.
• Run the Data Platform as a product. Maintain a roadmap that balances customer-driven demand against foundational investment (governance lineage cost optimisation observability) and the strategic capabilities that unlock new value and that no single customer group could justify on their own.
• Own strategic vendor relationships.
• Represent the Data Platform to senior stakeholders internal customer groups and external paying customers. Build and broadcast the narrative that connects platform investment to revenue and to the strategic capabilities it enables.
• Work as a trusted design partner with neighbouring technology functions to deliver the above including but not limited to Information Security Cloud Engineering Enterprise Architecture IT and Engineering.

Qualifications :

We recruit talented dynamic people with diverse backgrounds and experiences all united by a belief in our mission to provide the worlds leading and most trusted price reporting events and intelligence service for the markets we serve. Were proud to be an equal opportunities employer and are committed to creating a fully inclusive workplace where everyone feels able to participate and contribute meaningfully.

If you are open-minded curious resilient solutions-oriented and committed to promoting equality then read on.

KNOWLEDGE EXPERIENCE AND SKILLS

We are looking for an individual who is highly motivated driven and have a passion to be part of a fast-paced successful team. Being a strong team player is also important as well as someone who is happy to work flexibly.

Essential

• Demonstrable experience leading a data engineering or data platform team at senior level ideally including a transition from project-based or reactive delivery to a product operating model.
• Deep technical credibility in modern data platform architecture cloud data warehousing (Snowflake or Databricks strongly preferred) ELT patterns dimensional and analytics engineering practice (data build tool or equivalent) semantic modelling and governance tooling.
• Practical experience with ultra-modern data sharing patterns including secure data sharing reader accounts and marketplaces.
• Track record of maturing a fledgling data platform into a strategic capability with visible improvements in reliability cost management and customer adoption.
• Product mindset with commercial fluency the ability to articulate a platform roadmap define services and SLAs defend foundational investment against demand-led pressure and engage substantively with Product and Commercial colleagues on data product packaging pricing and customer experience.
• Strong stakeholder leadership across diverse customer types non-technical business users embedded technical users internal analytics teams engineering peers and external paying customers with the ability to set expectations and build trust.
• Experience hiring and developing a highly-engaged high-performing team.
• Vendor management experience particularly with strategic data infrastructure vendors at meaningful commercial scale.

Desirable

• Familiarity with the data needs of AI and ML use cases: feature engineering embeddings vector stores retrieval patterns sufficient to engage credibly with the AI team as a customer.
• Familiarity with the legal contractual and licensing considerations specific to selling data data rights customer obligations audit and the boundary between the technical delivery and the commercial agreement.

If youre excited about the role but your experience skills or qualifications dont perfectly align we encourage you to apply anyway.

Additional Information :

Our Values

Fastmarkets people come from all different walks of life. Its this mix of brilliant personalities experiences and insights that gives us that warm open and friendly culture you can feel as soon as you meet us. But however wonderfully different we all are there are six things we all have in common and they form our Fastmarkets values.

Created by our own employees to reflect some of the personal traits that Fastmarkets people have our values are key to what makes our culture unique. They reflect who each of us are and theyre embedded in everything we do. Our values are:

• METRICS DRIVEN. We use insights to improve our customers experience and our business performance
• ACCOUNTABLE. We are accountable to ourselves and those we work with: we keep our promises and get things done
• GROWTH MINDSET. This value enables us to be nimble to the changing realities and operate with a sense of urgency
• INCLUSIVE. We are inclusive and respectful celebrating each of us and giving everyone a deep sense of belonging with the desire to bring their best self to work every day.
• CUSTOMER CENTRIC. We are customer-centric in all that we do
• COLLABORATIVE. We are collaborative able to work across teams and capitalise on the diversity of intellect perspectives and experiences.

We are committed to ensuring all candidates feel welcomed and supported. Should your application advance and you require accommodations for the interview process please inform us so we can make the necessary arrangements.

Youve read a little about us now its over to you!

If you like what youve read so far and think you can see yourself as a Fastmarkets person its time to fill in your application form. This form is an important part of the selection process: its used to determine whether or not youll be chosen to have an interview and acts as a basis for the questions well ask you on the day.

Its vital that you try to capture all the relevant information we have asked for on the form so we can get a good feel for who you are and why youre great.

Remote Work :

No

Employment Type :

Full-time

Experience: years
Vacancy: 1