Principal Data Scientist / Analytics Lead job description

Data and analytics — Principal Data Scientist / Analytics Lead
Shapes the analytics and data science strategy org-wide.

REQUIRED SKILLS
Data Engineering
- Analytical SQL Querying — You can set query and warehouse-cost standards across the organisation, and you are the person other teams bring their slowest, most contested query to.
- Dimensional Data Modelling — You can set the modelling standards for the warehouse and arbitrate between teams whose models disagree about what a shared entity means.
- Data Pipeline Development — You can set the pipeline platform and reliability standards for the organisation, and you are called in when a cross-system pipeline failure is not obvious.
- ETL/ELT Transformation Design — You can set the transformation standards for the warehouse, including where logic belongs, and resolve disputes about which version of a number is correct.
- Data Warehouse Architecture — You can set the warehouse architecture strategy for the organisation, including platform choice, and defend it against both cost and performance pressure.
- Data Pipeline Monitoring and Alerting — You can design monitoring across a chain of dependent pipelines so a failure is traced to its source instead of surfacing in five dashboards downstream. You cut noisy alerts others have set too loosely.

Data Governance
- Data Quality Monitoring — You can set data quality standards and tooling across the organisation, and judge when a quality problem is a modelling gap rather than a source-system fault.
- Metric Definition and Governance — You can own the metric governance framework for the organisation and arbitrate the highest-stakes disputes about what a headline number means.
- Data Lineage and Documentation — You can untangle the lineage of a messy legacy dataset nobody has documented, and design how lineage is captured so it stays accurate as pipelines change. You get other teams to document what they own.
- Data Privacy and Compliance — You can set data privacy standards for the organisation, and represent it in a regulatory audit or a serious incident involving personal data.
- Role-Based Data Access Control — You can design access for data of mixed sensitivity spread across several systems, balancing what analysts need against the exposure it creates. You are who people ask when a request fits no existing role.

Statistics & ML
- Statistical Analysis and Inference — You can set the statistical standards the organisation's analyses are held to, and are the final call when a result is genuinely disputed.
- Experiment Design and A/B Testing — You can set experimentation strategy and standards for the organisation, and decide when a question genuinely cannot be answered by an A/B test.
- Predictive Modelling Fundamentals — You can take a model from prototype to a production prediction that a team relies on, including monitoring for its performance degrading over time.
- Feature Engineering — You can engineer features from messy or sparse data where the obvious fields do not work, and build them so training and production see the same values. You review what others build for leakage and drift.
- Forecasting and Trend Analysis — You can forecast where the pattern breaks, such as a launch, a promotion or a structural shift, and say plainly what the model cannot know. You review forecasts before they drive a commitment.

Visualisation
- Dashboard Design — You can set the reporting and self-serve analytics strategy for the organisation, and judge when a dashboard is the wrong tool for the question being asked.
- Data Visualisation Best Practice — You can present awkward data, such as many series, wide ranges or heavy uncertainty, so it stays readable and accurate. You review what others publish and can say precisely what a design overstates.
- Exploratory Data Analysis — You can explore a large or poorly understood dataset where nobody can tell you what a field means, and reconstruct the truth from the data itself. You catch the flaw others missed before a conclusion is published.
- Stakeholder Analytics Translation — You can shape how the organisation's leadership uses data in its decisions, and are trusted to say plainly when the data does not support a preferred answer.
- Analytics Storytelling and Reporting — You can take a difficult or unwelcome finding to senior stakeholders and keep the argument standing under challenge. You coach others to cut the detail that interests an analyst but changes no decision.

Delivery
- Project Management — You can run the organisation's largest and most contested programmes, and the planning practices you introduce get adopted by teams you do not lead.
- Planning & Estimation — You can forecast at the scale of quarters and headcount, and the estimation practice you set is what the wider organisation plans against.
- Ownership & Accountability — You can take on the outcomes the organisation is most exposed on, and other leaders route ownerless problems to you by default.
- Quality Focus — You can raise the quality bar across the organisation by building the tooling and habits that make the careful path the easy one.

Craft
- Problem Solving — You can crack problems the organisation has repeatedly failed to solve, and your approach becomes how others tackle that whole class of problem.
- Domain Expertise — You can influence how the field is practised beyond this organisation, and your expertise settles questions that have stood open for years.
- Continuous Learning — You can set what the organisation invests its learning time in, and the material and practice you create outlive your involvement.

Communication
- Communication — You can set how the organisation communicates, and the forums and norms you create measurably improve how information travels through it.
- Collaboration — You can dismantle the barriers that stop teams working together, and how the organisation collaborates changes because of what you built.
- Technical Writing — You can set the writing standard the organisation works to, and documents you authored are still in use long after you moved on.
- Stakeholder Management — You can represent the organisation in its most consequential relationships and set how it engages with everyone who depends on it.

Leadership
- Leadership — You can set direction for the whole organisation, make hard calls under real uncertainty, and carry the decisions nobody else wants to own.
- Mentoring — You can shape how the organisation grows its people, and those you developed are themselves named by others as strong practitioners.
- Strategic Thinking — You can shape the organisation's strategy, and the bets you argued for are visible in where it ended up.

REQUIRED CERTIFICATIONS
- Salesforce Certified Tableau Desktop Foundations (required from Data Analyst)
- AWS Certified Data Engineer - Associate (required from Senior Data Analyst)
- Databricks Certified Data Engineer Associate (required from Senior Data Analyst)
- Google Professional Data Engineer (required from Lead Data Scientist)