Group Head of Analytics Platform and Data Engineering in Chester House, Epsom Ave, Handforth, Cheadle, Greater Manchester, SK9 3DF

Using data to better serve our customers is central to our pet care strategy, placing pets and their owners at the heart of everything we do.

Our Petcare Analytics Group creates value by helping our business to make better decisions that improve pet welfare, enable a brilliant customer experience, and optimise the working practices of our colleagues and partners.

Since the appointment of the Chief Data Officer to the Executive team, we have outlined a strategy to establish “Pet Care Analytics for All” and analytics and AI have become the lifeblood of our Pet Care ambitions across the Group.

To date, our data and analytics teams have enabled the business to:

• Deliver more impactful, relevant, and timely insight out to colleagues and partners
• Increase the velocity and effectiveness of our VIP activity and customer experience
• Leverage advanced analytics to optimise our supply chain, customer spend, workload, colleague rotas, pricing and profitability.

About the role

As the Group Head of Analytics Platform & Data Engineering, you will report directly to the Chief Data Officer and be accountable for driving value from data across the Pets at Home group.

With accountability for all data platforms, you will ensure robust and effective delivery of our pet care analytics data engineering services to ensure value opportunities are being realised.

The role will lead and grow a data function of up to 50 colleagues (with five direct reports) with purpose, promoting analytics excellence by identifying and assessing the applicability of new analytical tools & methods for the Group, whilst acting as an ambassador for the function across the business.

This role represents a unique and fantastic opportunity to take a high performing and well-regarded function to the next level, leveraging achievements to date and providing even greater value to the organisation.

You will be leading a cloud native function that has engineered bespoke solutions in the latest technology, from scratch.

Key responsibilities will include;

• Assisting our Chief Data Officer and leading a cultural change so that leveraging data and analytics becomes the norm for Pets at Home, driving a culture focussed on accuracy, relevancy and timeliness of insight and analysis derived from data
• Providing thought leadership across the Pet Care Analytics Group on the use of Visualisation and cloud analytic solutions that are built in alignment with platform principles and standards
• The control and governance of the GCP analytics platform including data engineering patterns, data quality management, access policies, architecture & governance, data ingestion ingress and egress, ML Ops, environment set-up & availability, monitoring and enforcing monetary boundaries of all analytic environment and cloud usage
• Governing and being a custodian of our primary customer cloud repository and ensuring that DPA practices are enforced.
• Providing thought leadership to ensure Pets at Home can apply timely, leading edge thinking and technology to realise competitive advantage through analytics
• Establishing and ensuring compliance of cloud software, engineering development patterns and best practices, particularly around open-source components
• Establishing implementation patterns and best practices for an analytical platform

About your experience

As a data leader, you will have a proven track record of developing and executing data strategies that provide value to the wider organisation. Comfortable leading large teams in a complex environment of change, you will be able to draw upon your expertise in data management and leadership to work with teams across our business, including our executive group.

You are likely to have a breadth of technical experience and knowledge across data & analytics platforms, data architecture, BI, data warehousing and engineering. However, what really sets you apart is your ability to think beyond the technology – so you’ll have a proven ability of translating how the team delivers value through data and AI across a wide range of stakeholders.

Further key experience/attributes include:

• A passion for developing people, championing career development and performance
• An understanding and proven track record in project delivery and change management
• An understanding of the Agile framework and delivering within this
• An ability to translate the subject matter to a wider commercial audience
• Commercially astute, with comfort levels in building and presenting business cases
• A passion for thought leadership, with active contribution to the wider data industry (panels, forums, events, public speaking etc)

Our diversity and inclusion vision is that everyone is welcome and feels part of our group. If you think you’re a good match to what we are looking for, and you share our belief that together ‘we’re better with pets’, we’d like to hear from you, whatever your background or circumstances.

About the Pets at Home Group

At Pets at Home we have an ambitious plan, to become “The Best Pet Care Business in the world” and a key part of delivering this in sustainable way will be our most cherished assets: our People and our Culture. We are a business built on strong values and behaviours which guide everything we do. These are our foundations which will help us to deliver our better world pledge to create a better world for pets and the people who love them.

The Pets at Home Group includes over 450 stores, over 310 Groom Rooms and 440 First Opinion Vet Practices. It’s fast-paced, innovative, fun and we put people at the very heart of everything we do. We are committed to developing a culture of inclusivity where everyone is able to come to work and be themselves, a culture which welcomes everyone irrespective of what makes us all unique.

We’re driven by the wellbeing of pets and we make sure we look after our people too. We depend on your commitment and innovation, and reward it with competitive pay and comprehensive benefits. Together we’ll create the future of pet care.