VP, Business Intelligence & Insights

Job Description:

Rakuten International is a division of Rakuten Group Inc. a Japanese global technology leader in services that empower individuals communities businesses and society. Headquartered in San Mateo California with more than 4000 employees worldwide the Rakuten International business portfolio includes market leaders in e-commerce digital marketing advertising communications and entertainment. We create products and services that provide exceptional value by aligning members and the businesses that want to engage them in a shared community.

Rakuten is the most rewarding way to shop giving millions of members Cash Back when they buy from their favorite brands. As a leading shopping platform Rakuten partners with thousands of top brands across apparel beauty and wellness grocery travel on-demand services subscriptions and dining helping members save on everyday purchases. Since 1999 Rakuten members have earned more than $4.6 billion in Cash Back making it the largest Cash Back platform of its kind. Learn more at .

Rakuten Rewards is creating a newVP Business Intelligence & Insightsrole to centralize analytics and elevate it into an enterprise-levelinsight and decision-support functionreporting directly to the CEO Office.

As analytics platforms and AI increasingly automate reporting competitive advantage comes fromjudgment context and clarity-not dashboards. This role exists to ensure Rakuten Rewards has asingle source of truthfor business performance and a senior leader who can translate data intoactionable insights that shape strategy prioritization and investment decisions.

What Youll Do

Lead Enterprise Data & Insights Strategy

• Owns Rewards enterprise data and insights strategy for executive and operational decision-making (business-facing): defining how performance is measured interpreted and used to drive decisions
• Establish asingle trusted performance narrativeacross Product Marketing Commercial and Finance.
• Define the enterprise analytics roadmap in close partnership with Data Platform and Engineering teams.

Elevate Executive Decision-Making

• Serve as a trusted thought partner to the CEO and executive leadership team.
• Translate complex data intoclear insights trade-offs and recommendationsthat inform strategic decisions.
• Surface risks inconsistencies and blind spots-bringing intellectual rigor and honesty to leadership discussions.

Build & Lead a Centralized Insights Organization

• Unify analytics teams currently embedded across functions into acentralized Business Intelligence & Insights organization.
• Set enterprise standards for metrics definitions and performance interpretation.
• Build a high-performing team known for business acumen credibility and influence-not reporting volume.
• Act as a key partner with Product Engineering Finance Marketing and Sales to ensure data reporting/forecasts and insights for company merchants and buyers are relevant timely and decision oriented and meet their ongoing business needs
• Examples for Areas of Support: While this role is enterprise in scope examples of the types of decisions and analyses this organization supports include but not exhaustive:

Marketing & Growth

• Marketing Mix Modeling (MMM) and incrementality analysis to inform marketing investment allocation
• Customer LTV cohort and payback analysis to guide acquisition and retention strategy

Commercial & Revenue

• Company-level and merchant-level revenue performance insights and forecasting
• Sales quota and target-setting analytics grounded in historical performance and pipeline dynamics
• Performance insights that inform prioritization across merchants categories and partnerships

AI-Enabled Human-Led Analytics

• Define the business requirements use cases and success criteria for AI-enabled analytics in close partnership with the Data & AI Platform organization.
• Partner with Platform teams to ensure analytics tools and capabilities are aligned to enterprise insight needs and executive decision workflows.
• Leverage AI and automation to accelerate insight generation while ensuring human judgment business context and leadership perspective guide interpretation.
• Ensure AI-powered analytics enhance decision quality and consistencyrather than creating parallel systems or fragmented interpretations.

How Youll Work

• Youll provide embedded functional support with measurable service levels while maintaining a single enterprise standard for metrics interpretation and performance truth.
• Youll own enterprise clarity: metric definitions performance interpretation and decision-grade insights.
• This roledoes not own functional execution(marketing spend product delivery sales operations).
• Functional leaders retain accountability for outcomes informed by insights produced by this organization.
• In close partnership with the Data & AI Platform and Engineering organizations-who own architecture and delivery-this role defines the enterprise analytics roadmap required to deliver decision-grade insights at scale.

What Success Looks Like

• Leadership aligns around asingle version of performance truth.
• Executive decisions are faster clearer and more confident.
• Metrics are consistent trusted and directly tied to strategy.
• Analytics is viewed as astrategic advantage not a support function.

What Were Looking For

• 15 years of senior leadership experience in analytics business intelligence or insights.
• Proven track record of influencingC-level decisionsthrough data-driven insight and judgment.
• Experience centralizing or transforming analytics in complex cross-functional organizations.
• Strong understanding of modern analytics and AI-enabled platforms paired with sharp business intuition.
• Exceptional communicator with the confidence to challenge assumptions and elevate executive thinking.

This is an opportunityto define how Rakuten Rewards understands its business makes decisions and scales intelligently. If you are energized by turning data into clarity-and clarity into action-this role offers the scope and impact.

Five Principles for Success
Our worldwide practices describe specific behaviors that make Rakuten unique and united across the world. We expect Rakuten employees to model these 5 Shugi Principles of Success.

Always improve Always Advance - Only be satisfied with complete success - Kaizen
Passionately Professional - Take an uncompromising approach to your work and be determined to be the best
Hypothesize - Practice - Validate Shikumika - Use the Rakuten Cycle to succeed in unknown territory
Maximize Customer Satisfaction - The greatest satisfaction for our teams is seeing their customers smile
Speed!! Speed!! Speed!! - Always be conscious of time - take charge set clear goals and engage your team

At the time of posting Rakuten expects the base compensation for this role to be within the range shown below. Individual compensation will vary based on job-related factors including the skills qualifications and experience of the successful candidate as well as business need and geographic location. The successful applicant for this role will be eligible for discretionary bonus health vision dental insurance 401k matching PTO Volunteer Time Off (VTO) and other employee benefits as the company implements.