Lead Data Analyst (Loyalty)

Collinson is the global leader in travel experiences and customer engagement, a business that builds loyalty 500 million times a day, across 140 countries, for some of the world's most ambitious brands. Our clients include major financial institutions, airlines, transport operators and retailers who trust us to design programmes that move customers from passive participation to genuine, measurable commitment.

Our loyalty practice sits at the intersection of behavioural strategy, data science and programme design. We believe that the best loyalty programmes are strategic assets - not cost centres - and we've built our methodology around the evidence: that incrementality, not points balances, is the true measure of a programme's worth.

Recent mandates include the design and delivery of large-scale loyalty and customer engagement programmes across the transport, mobility and travel sectors. These are complex, high-stakes initiatives involving multiple stakeholders, significant commercial value and innovative customer propositions. They represent exactly the kind of work this role will be asked to support and lead.

Purpose of the job

You will own the measurement and insight function for a flagship loyalty programme. This is the role that determines how the programme’s success is proved: what gets measured, how genuine behaviour change is separated from activity that would have happened anyway, and whether a result is robust enough to act on. The business case rests on incrementality, so the credibility of that evidence is a single point of accountability, and it is yours.

You will set the measurement approach, own the analytics roadmap and its prioritisation, and be the senior data voice in a governance structure spanning the client’s architects, a global platform vendor, a design team and multiple delivery partners. Metric definitions, measurement design and analytical method are decided by this role and are not changed without its agreement. Matters affecting programme scope, cost or client commitment are escalated to the VP, Loyalty Consulting.

This is a senior specialist role without line-management responsibility. Leadership is exercised through standard-setting, quality assurance, method ownership and mentoring. It suits someone who has owned an analytical function before, who is comfortable being the person who says a number is not yet good enough to act on, and who can hold that position with senior stakeholders who would prefer a different answer.

Key Responsibilities

Owning the measurement function

• Own the measurement framework end to end: what is measured, how each metric is defined, how a result is proved, and what the organisation is entitled to claim from it

• Design and own the control-group, holdout and incrementality approach that separates genuine behaviour change from background activity

• Set the canonical metric definitions every party works to, and hold them stable as the single source of truth

• Own the analytics and insight roadmap: what gets built, in what order, and what is deliberately not built

• Set the analytical standards, tooling and ways of working used across the Loyalty practice, and represent the discipline in practice-level capability planning

Accountability and outcomes

• Accountable for the evidence the programme uses to prove its value, and for that evidence surviving challenge up to client board level

• Accountable for delivering the benefit-realisation position at each programme gate, on the gate date, to the standard the client’s assurance process requires

• Accountable for the commercial value attributed to the measurement function, and for reporting honestly where performance falls short of forecast

Measurement roadmap and sequencing

• Prioritise the analytics backlog against programme milestones, the release train and the governance calendar, and defend those choices when they are challenged

• Sequence measurement design so instrumentation is specified ahead of build rather than retrofitted after launch

• Balance long-run capability building against immediate demand, and make the trade-off explicit rather than absorbing it

Analytical risk and judgement

• Judge when a result is robust enough to act on and when it is not, and say so

• Identify where a measurement approach carries risk, such as contaminated control groups, missing instrumentation or unresolved consent constraints, and escalate with a recommended course of action

• Assess the analytical consequences of design, data and platform decisions before they are taken, and own the analytical entries on the programme risk register

Influence across the programme

• Represent the measurement position at the programme’s design and technical authorities, bringing evidence and a recommendation rather than a set of options

• Work across design, technology, marketing, legal and the client’s own data teams to secure the instrumentation and data access that analysis depends on

• Translate findings into decisions for people who are not data specialists, at every level up to executive, and build the case for change where the evidence points somewhere the programme did not expect to go

Commercial value and raising the standard

• Quantify the commercial value of loyalty and CRM activity, identify where value is being lost, and convert model outputs into recommendations with a named owner and a sizing

• Own forecasting for member value, retention and programme performance, and the variance analysis behind it

• Own predictive modelling and segmentation — propensity, churn, lifetime value, next-best-action — and the derived variables that drive personalisation

• Own the test-and-learn framework and the optimisation roadmap, and lead improvement initiatives in how loyalty is measured, not only in how this programme is measured

• Act as the senior specialist for the discipline: set the method standard, assure the quality of analytical output produced across the programme, and develop less experienced colleagues

Experience & Skills

Essential

· Minimum 5 years’ experience as a data analyst in complex, multi-channel customer environments, including at least 3 years owning an analytical function, service or workstream rather than a task queue

· Demonstrable end-to-end ownership of a measurement or insight capability: you set the approach, defended it, and were accountable for what it produced

· Experience designing incrementality measurement, including control groups, holdouts and test design, and defending the results to stakeholders with a commercial interest in a different answer

· Experience acting as the senior analytical authority in a multi-party delivery environment: setting method standards others work to, assuring output produced by partner and client-side teams, and developing less experienced colleagues

· Track record of influencing senior stakeholders with evidence, including where that evidence was unwelcome, and of prioritising an analytics backlog against competing demands

· Comfort operating within a formal governance structure: design authorities, change control and documented decisions

· Strong SQL and Excel, Python or R for statistical work, BI tools such as Power BI or Tableau, and marketing automation or customer data platforms such as Salesforce, Braze, HubSpot or Klaviyo

· Personally accountable for predictive models and customer segmentations that have run in production

· Deep command of retention, lifetime-value and incrementality metrics in a CRM, loyalty or lifecycle-marketing context, with the judgement to know when a result looks wrong

Desirable

· Loyalty, CRM or lifecycle marketing delivered at scale

· Experience in a regulated or public-facing environment where data use is externally scrutinised

· Exposure to consent frameworks and the constraints they place on measurement design

Personal Attributes

· Sets a standard and holds it, including when holding it is inconvenient

· Makes and defends decisions on incomplete information, and states the confidence attached to them

· Comfortable being the person who says the number is not good enough yet

· A clear communicator who leads with the decision rather than the method

· Builds standards other teams choose to adopt, and raises the capability of the analysts around them

Key Measures of Success

· Incrementality proved to an agreed confidence standard, with the evidence surviving client and third-party audit at every benefit-realisation gate

· Benefit realisation reported against baseline at every governance milestone, with variance explained and a corrective recommendation attached

· Measurement specified ahead of build for every release, with no retrofitting after launch

· Analytical recommendations adopted and tracked to commercial outcome, with an annual value attributed to the measurement function

· Programme spend redirected or protected each year on the evidence this role produces

· Analytics cycle time reduced year on year, and reusable measurement assets adopted by at least one other client programme

Why Join Us

This is an opportunity to work on some of the organisation’s most strategic and visible client programmes, partnering with globally recognised brands and major transport and travel organisations. The role offers the opportunity to combine strategic client leadership with programme delivery in a fast-paced and collaborative environment.

Collinson is an equal opportunity employer and welcomes differences in all their forms including: colour, race, ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation, neurodivergence, family status, age, individuals with disabilities and people from all backgrounds, cultures and experiences as we strongly believe this contributes to our on-going success.

We are focused on continually evolving our purpose driven, high performing culture, providing an environment where our people have the opportunity to achieve their full potential and do interesting and meaningful work. Our company values are: Take Action, Do the right thing, One team and Be insight led. These help guide everything we do internally in terms of how we think, act and interact, right through to how we deliver value to our customers and clients.

In your application, please feel free to note which pronouns you use (For example - she/her/hers, he/him/his, they/them/theirs, etc).

If you need any extra support throughout the interview process, then please email us at ukrecruitment@collinsongroup.com