Senior Director - Head of Data Strategy

Senior Director - Head of Data Strategy

Salary: Dependent on Experience Location: London (4 days a week in their office)

I'm looking for a Head of Data Strategy for one of my Biotech clients. This company is a fast-paced biotech startup, dedicated to developing innovative medicines and drug discovery, particularly targeting niche diseases utilizing machine learning and AI.

Key Responsibilities:

• Establish and implement a comprehensive, long-term data strategy aligned with the organization's business and technical objectives.
• Lead the design and creation of scalable, future-ready data and metadata infrastructure.
• Foster a strong curiosity for data, actively seeking new data sources and connections to drive the company's vision forward.
• Ensure data frequency, metadata management, and data provenance remain aligned with business needs and objectives.
• Collaborate closely with biologists, business teams, legal teams, data engineers, software developers, and AI engineers to facilitate seamless integration of data systems and processes.
• Oversee the development and implementation of data governance and validation frameworks to ensure data quality, traceability, and compliance with industry regulations, ensuring continuous audit readiness.
• Guide the creation and maintenance of ETL pipelines and data workflows to guarantee efficient data processing and validation.
• Support all departments by ensuring that data is structured, pre-processed, and optimized for model training.
• Implement robust data security and privacy measures, particularly for sensitive and regulated information.
• Continuously assess and incorporate emerging data technologies and tools to keep the infrastructure modern and efficient.
• Serve as a strategic advisor to senior leadership, offering insights and recommendations on data-driven decisions.
• Mentor and support technical teams, fostering a data-centric culture across the organization.
• Work with the legal team during the negotiation and execution of data licensing agreements, ensuring compliance with usage terms and legal conditions.
• Oversee governance processes to ensure data integrity and adherence to regulatory standards

Required Skills:

• Proven experience in defining data governance, quality control, and lifecycle management to support decision-making, research and development, and product innovation.
• Expertise in aligning data initiatives across engineering, platform, and AI teams to ensure collaboration and consistent data strategies.
• Skilled in developing long-term data strategies that integrate enterprise-wide data into a unified framework.
• Demonstrated experience in implementing data governance frameworks to ensure vendor and regulatory compliance, while establishing data quality standards across all teams.
• Proficient in designing scalable and robust data architectures tailored to varied requirements, such as large biological datasets, AI models, and platform integration.
• Experience managing change in data systems, including transitioning to new platforms, adopting new tools, and using agile methodologies to keep pace with a dynamic environment.
• Expertise in leading cloud adoption strategies, focused on building distributed data storage and processing systems to support AI and platform needs.
• Strong background in enforcing data privacy and security measures aligned with industry regulations, including encryption and access controls.

If you are interested in this opportunity, please submit your application for consideration.