Principal accountabilities

1. Build, lead, recruit to and manage a new data & insight function, comprising a highly skilled team of data engineers, business intelligence analyst and data scientists, that moves the Council away from shadow IT and ad-hoc reporting into a centralised, scalable service model.

2. Accountable for designing, articulating, and implementing a comprehensive enterprise data and insight strategy. Translate a low-maturity baseline into a phased, multi-year roadmap that balances immediate tactical wins with long-term infrastructure modernisation.

3. Accountable for establishing the organisation’s first formal data governance framework. Ensure policies, standards, and data ownership models are defined to remediate systemic data quality issues and ensure consistency across highly fragmented systems.

4. Partner with wider technology leadership to evaluate, select, and implement a modern data stack (ingestion, storage, transformation, and visualisation layers) and appropriate infrastructure, while maintaining awareness of emerging technologies and best practice in the field.

5. Accountable for the creation of a unified data architecture; lead efforts to break down institutional data silos, establishing master data management practices to create “single sources of truth” for critical operational entities.

6. Pioneer the delivery of user-focused reporting, dashboards, and advanced analytics. Shift organizational behaviour from retroactive, manual spreadsheet manipulation to proactive, automated, and predictive insight.

7. Manage complex, senior stakeholder relationships across diverse business units. Translate technical data complexities into tangible business outcomes, securing ongoing investment by clearly demonstrating the ROI of data initiatives.

8. Provide strategic leadership of data services, analytics and business intelligence, ensuring high-quality, timely and accessible data supports decision-making across the organisation

9. Acting as a senior advisor to leadership, provide expert data insight, analysis and recommendations to support strategic planning, and devise analytics use cases that deliver measurable organisational benefit, including improved outcomes, efficiency savings and service redesign.

10. Deputise for the Director of Digital Innovation as required, both for normal cover and as a point of escalation and authority in a crisis or emergency.