Head of Data Platform

About the role

Fastmarkets is, at its core, a data business. The prices, indices, and market intelligence we produce are relied upon by participants across global commodity, metals, forest products, agricultural and carbon markets to make investment/risk management decisions. The Head of Data Platform leads the team responsible for the organisation's foundational data capability and for unlocking the commercially strategic opportunities that the platform makes possible. The role exists to ensure that data is ingested, modelled, governed, and served to internal and external customer groups, through a Data Platform that operates as a product rather than a reactive service. This is a strategic leadership role with both technical depth and a product mindset. The Head of Data Platform owns the maturity of the organisation's Snowflake implementation, the data engineering function that staffs the team, the platform roadmap and SLAs, and the governance framework that underpins it. They are accountable for delivering against the needs of internal and external customer groups. The role reports to the Director of Data & AI and has peer leaders in the AI Enablement, Data Insights, and Data Governance practices. Principal Accountabilities Define, own, and deliver the multi-year strategy for the Data Platform, including the maturation of the Snowflake implementation, the curated data product layer, the published service catalogue that customer groups consume, and the strategic capabilities the platform enables. Own the direct monetisation capability for the Data Platform. Define and stand up - in close partnership with Product - the model by which curated data products are delivered to external paying customers via Snowflake-to-Snowflake sharing and equivalent mechanisms. This includes the technical pattern (including security and entitlements), the commercial packaging, the customer onboarding experience, the SLAs, and the operational model. The Head of Data Platform owns what this looks like and how it works; Product owns commercial strategy, pricing, and go-to-market. Build, lead, and develop, a world-class, highly-engaged, high performing team of data engineers and adjacent disciplines. Run the Data Platform as a product. Maintain a roadmap that balances customer-driven demand against foundational investment (governance, lineage, cost optimisation, observability) and the strategic capabilities that unlock new value - and that no single customer group could justify on their own. Own strategic vendor relationships. Represent the Data Platform to senior stakeholders, internal customer groups, and external paying customers. Build and broadcast the narrative that connects platform investment to revenue and to the strategic capabilities it enables. Work as a trusted design partner with neighbouring technology functions to deliver the above, including but not limited to Information Security, Cloud Engineering, Enterprise Architecture, IT, and Engineering. We recruit talented, dynamic people with diverse backgrounds and experiences, all united by a belief in our mission to provide the world's leading and most trusted price reporting, events, and intelligence service for the markets we serve. We're proud to be an equal opportunities employer and are committed to creating a fully inclusive workplace, where everyone feels able to participate and contribute meaningfully. If you are open-minded, curious, resilient, solutions-oriented and committed to promoting equality, then read on. KNOWLEDGE, EXPERIENCE AND SKILLS We are looking for an individual who is highly motivated, driven, and have a passion to be part of a fast-paced, successful team. Being a strong team player is also important as well as someone who is happy to work flexibly. Essential Demonstrable experience leading a data engineering or data platform team at senior level, ideally including a transition from project-based or reactive delivery to a product operating model. Deep technical credibility in modern data platform architecture - cloud data warehousing (Snowflake or Databricks strongly preferred), ELT patterns, dimensional and analytics engineering practice (data build tool or equivalent), semantic modelling, and governance tooling. Practical experience with ultra-modern data sharing patterns, including secure data sharing, reader accounts, and marketplaces. Track record of maturing a fledgling data platform into a strategic capability, with visible improvements in reliability, cost management, and customer adoption. Product mindset with commercial fluency - the ability to articulate a platform roadmap, define services and SLAs, defend foundational investment against demand-led pressure, and engage substantively with Product and Commercial colleagues on data product packaging, pricing, and customer experience. Strong stakeholder leadership across diverse customer types - non-technical business users, embedded technical users, internal analytics teams, engineering peers, and

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