Interim Head of EIU Data and Forecasting Technologies

Key Skills

Agile methodologies, Analytical and Problem solving, Big Data Technology, Business Strategy, Data Governance, Data science techniques, ETL frameworks, Matrix Factorization

Job Description

The Economist Intelligence Unit, (EIU) is a world leader in global business intelligence. We help businesses, the financial sector and governments to understand how the world is changing and how that creates opportunities to be seized and risks to be managed.

Delivering market leading analysis and insight is in our DNA. At our heart is a 50 year forecast of the majority of the world’s economies. We seek to analyse the future and deliver that insight through multiple channels, allowing our clients to take better trading, investment and policy decisions.

The role

This is an exciting time to be joining Economist Intelligence. We need an interim expert to help us shape the future technology that supports the heart of EIU, our forecasting and economic modelling tools and systems. Our current structures work, but they are legacy and constrain our ability to innovate new business models and improve the existing product sets.

Reporting to the Group VP of Engineering and the EIU Chief Digital Officer, you will be an integral part of our move to cloud native infrastructure for this part of our business, and how we integrate data science, machine learning and other techniques into our core and award-winning econometric expertise.

You will be responsible for defining the data roadmap and architecture design for the EIU’s forecasting platform as well as enabling the existing data engineering and econometric teams to grow their capabilities in modern data technologies, driving best practices and functional excellence.

You will work closely with the Chief Economist, Head of Financial Risk, Head of Economics Unit and Head of Data Engineering to enable us to define and build this new platform capability.

You will have the opportunity to set the technical direction and to make your mark on a global brand's forecasting platform and we’re looking for someone who has not only done this before but is excited to join us and do it again.

Accountabilities

Specific Responsibilities

• Define the architecture and roadmap (including governing the best-practices) for a new forecasting system or tools for Economist Intelligence
• Delivery of a technical forecasting platform roadmap, partnering with key stakeholders and covering all forecast and data lifecycle stages (sourcing, enhancing, persisting and using data), environments, and development operations
• Work collaboratively with our forecast experts, technology delivery leaders and domain architecture specialists to define, implement and deliver a driven forecasting strategy. Ensure this is delivered against P&L goals. 
• Contribute to the communication and adherence of data modelling and engineering guardrails and playbook with the data engineering teams
• Ensure our forecasting platform and ecosystem will support our technology led objectives pertaining to: performance, availability, security, velocity, quality and cost optimisation

Attributes Required for the Role

• Results Oriented
• Motivation to perform and succeed
• High-energy, robust and resilient
• Analytical and driven by insight and understanding
• Able to motivate, influence and empower others within a multidisciplinary and multi-geography team
• Collaborative, supportive, hands-on as required and direct and open in approach (no architecture ivory towers)
• Agile mentality - to achieve high-quality iterative delivery (including deployment automation) as we evolve along the roadmap

Experience, skills and professional attributes

Experience

• Has created and grown an in-house data science capability - it would be a strong advantage if that experience were forecasting or time series related
• Experience in data platform technology through all data lifecycle stages covering: sourcing, enhancing, persisting and using data
• Has defined and delivered a data technology roadmap to achieve the strategic goals of a forecasting organisation
• Has worked effectively in a global, matrix environment and demonstrated experience in satisfying internal customers for their data needs
• Has worked effectively in a global data team with a delivery team located in a different geographical location
• Has worked effectively in an agile, sprint-based delivery model 
• Has automated deployment of data platform technology changes in a cloud-based environment
• Can assess and conduct a cost-benefit examination of various technologies related to this field and ability to assess new ones coming into the market
• In-depth domain experience building high-performing data architectures in the following domains:
• Forecasting and time series data
• Data Governance
• Data Platform
• ETL Tools

Key Internal Relationships

• Chief Digital Officer (UK Based)
• Chief Economist (Singapore Based)
• VP of Engineering (UK Based)
• Economist Intelligence MD (UK Based)
• Chief Technology Officer (UK Based)
• Head of Data Engineering (Gurgaon Based)
• Head of Financial Risk (UK Based)
• Director of Economics Unit (Gurgaon Based)
• Head of Architecture (UK Based)