Head of Data Science – Marketing

More about the role 

We have ~90 Analysts and Data Scientists within Marketing focusing on the broad spectrum of customer analytics, and we have 30 million known customers to play with…

Retail & Nectar Analytics are on a journey to deliver hyper-personalised messages and offers to customers wherever they interact with our brands. We already deliver over 150m personalised offers every week to our Digital Nectar customers and our models and segmentations power multi-million pound CRM programmes like Trade Driving. However, there is still significant headroom to leverage the deep understanding of our customers developed in the Customer Value and Understanding (CVU) team, expand the scope of our bespoke Customer Decisioning Platform (Krang) and develop best in class attribution modelling to support Nectar’s new media measurement tool Unified Platform (UP). The continued convergence of these Data Science teams requires a Leader capable of driving the technical roadmap of the teams whilst delivering against stretching commercial objectives and the broader Marketing & Loyalty strategy.

This Head of Data Science role will own the overall Data Science roadmap across Marketing & Loyalty Analytics, identifying synergies across the CVU and Krang teams as well as opportunities to broaden the scope and impact our DS capability have on the wider business. In conjunction with their Data Science Managers, Product and Programme Owners they will be responsible for delivering optimised decisioning across all customer touchpoints. The role will also build closer relationships with other DS teams across the business, helping to define best practise and drive standardisation.

What you need to do 

• Leading the data science function in Marketing, overseeing the roadmaps of CVU, Krang and UP and setting the strategic direction.

• Providing technical thought leadership through a deep understanding of the application of statistics and Machine Learning in the context of Customer Decisioning and being at the forefront of Data Science tooling and techniques.

• Establishing and developing the right mix of skills and people within and across the two teams and setting the priorities to deliver against our ambitious targets.

• Enable the teams to grow their impact and influence through building positive relationships with existing and future stakeholders across Marketing, Finance, Commercial, Retail & Digital and Sainsburys Tech.

• Ownership of the models and algorithms which control budget distribution of multi-million pound programmes like Your Nectar Prices – optimising these to deliver commercial and customer value whilst remaining compliant with the latest data and marketing regulations.

• Overseeing the continued transition towards centralised decisioning of 1:1 personalised offers across all channels.

• Enable Unified Platform to meet it’s commercial targets through the development and maintenance of robust and efficient Attribution models.

• Raise the profile and increase the usage of the broad set of customer models and segmentations developed, looking for novel use cases which drive commercial value and monetise the capabilities

• Work in collaboration with the Product, Engineering and CDO colleagues as required to define and land the requirements of the new capability, including an efficient ML Ops platform, production pipelines and documentation

• Be an active member of the Marketing Analytics Leadership Team with collective responsibility for the strategy of the broader team as well as culture and development of ~80 colleagues spanning multiple brands, and multiple sites.

• Play an active role in the Analytics community across the group – sharing best practice and learning with other divisions.

What you need to know and show 

• A strong quantitative academic background likely to consist of a university degree and post graduate qualifications (e.g. statistics, mathematics, physics, machine learning, engineering)

• Proven experience of leading a data science function that delivers tangible business value through the application of data products in a fast-paced environment

• The passion, drive and commitment to succeed in a fast-moving, highly pressured environment.

• Experience of establishing a Test & Learn culture where the whole team are focussed on continuous optimisation of CRM & Loyalty’s primary KPIs.

• A broad understanding of the Corporate strategy and the KPIs that can be impacted through Marketing Data Science use cases

• An inquisitive mind, with the curiosity to be constantly on the lookout for opportunities to unlock more value from existing and future capabilities

• A strong commercial acumen and willingness to work closely with Finance and Marketing colleagues to ensure the programmes we support are commercially sound and driving the desired returns on investment

• A genuine Customer closeness mindset – recognising the diversity of our customer bases across our retail brands and striving to use 1st and 3rd party data to understand them better than anyone else

• Awareness of the full breadth of Sainsbury’s, Argos, Habitat & Tu direct and digital marketing programmes and a view on how Data Science can be deployed both tactically and strategically to drive cost efficiency and commercial performance.

• Experience working at scale and balancing experimentation and cost on cloud platforms such as AWS.

• An expert in the field of Data Science ensuring the whole team keeps abreast of the latest algorithms and technologies and how they can be applied to Sainsbury’s

• A strong understanding of Data Governance Principles in relation to algorithmic decisioning and direct marketing

• The ability to influence senior stakeholders and budget holders, bringing to life the strategic advantage of algorithmic decisioning and demonstrating the commercial impact

• Strong leadership and development of others: and not just for your own immediate team

What decisions I can make including budget 

• How to structure your team and resource it

• How to remove blockers from your team delivering to our outcomes and continually improving

• Autonomy to distribute multiple programme budgets in the most effective way to deliver against business and customer outcomes including Your Nectar Prices, Digital Nectar Product and Basket Offers with a combined budget of over £90m

Directly or indirectly manages 

• This role will directly manage 3 Data Science Managers and a team of approximately 12 onshore Data Scientists

• Being a leader within the Analytics community, driving the direction of the community

Support we will provide 

• Wholly engaged stakeholders and significant investment due to personalisation being a key component of the corporate strategy

• Technology teams in order to progress customer analytics data & tools requirements and capabilities

• Analytics community including support of Data Management, Quality and Governance teams

• Access to appropriate third party resources.

We are committed to being a truly inclusive retailer so you’ll be welcomed whoever you are and wherever you work. Around here, there’s always the chance to try something new — whether that’s as part of an evolving team or somewhere else across the business - and we take development seriously and promise to support you. We also recognise and celebrate colleagues when they go the extra mile and, where possible, offer flexible working. When you join our team, we’ll also offer you an amazing range of benefits. Here are some of them:

Starting off with colleague discount, you'll be able to save 10% on your shopping online and instore at Sainsbury's, Argos, TU and Habitat, and we regularly increase the discount to 15% at points during the year. We've also got you covered for your future with our pensions scheme and life cover. You'll also be able to share in our success as you may be eligible for a performance-related bonus of up to 65% of salary, depending on how we perform (in cash and shares).

Your wellbeing is important to us too. You'll receive an annual holiday allowance, and you can buy up to an additional week's holiday, and we provide private healthcare. We also offer other benefits that will help your money go further such as season ticket loans, cycle to work scheme, health cash plans, salary advance (where you can access some of your pay before pay day) as well access to a great range of discounts from hundreds of other retailers. You'll also receive a company car cash allowance unless you are going to travel 10,000 business miles in your role, then you'll be able to choose a car. And if you ever need it there is also an employee assistance programme.

Moments that matter are as important to us as they are to you which is why we give up to 26 weeks’ pay for maternity or adoption leave and up to 4 weeks’ pay for paternity leave.

Please see www.sainsburys.jobs for a range of our benefits (note, length of service and eligibility criteria may apply).