Director, Data Delivery

Position Title: DirectorData Delivery

Location: London

Reports to: Senior Director Corporate Functionsand Head of Data &Analytics

Department: IT/Technology

ABOUT THE WELLA COMPANY

TogetherWEenable individuals to look feel and be their true selves.

Wella Company is one of the worlds leading beauty companies comprised of a family of iconic brands such as Wella Professionals Clairol OPI Nioxin and ghd. With 6000 employees globally presence in over 100 countries Wella Company and its brands enable consumers to look feel and be their true selves. As innovators in the hair and nail industry Wella Company empowers its people to delight consumers inspire beauty professionals engage communities and deliver sustainable growth to its stakeholders. For additional information about the Wella Company please visit .

THE ROLE

The Director Data Delivery is a strategic and execution-focused leader responsible for enabling Wellas data-driven transformation through scalable high-quality and AI-ready data platforms. This role leads the delivery and operationalization of modern data solutions ensuring that enterprise data is accessible governed and optimized for advanced analytics and AI use cases.

Working in close partnership with the Dataarchitecture and Enterprise Architecture teams this position translates architectural designs into high-quality production-ready data products. The role is accountable for executing against defined architectures ensuring adherence to standards while delivering reliable and scalable solutions.

As a key partner to business and technology stakeholders this role is responsible for delivering robust data pipelines platforms and products that power analytics reporting and machine learning initiatives. It has deep expertise in Databricks and modern data engineering practices including environment setup ingestion frameworks ML lifecycle management (MLflow) and scalable coding practices.

This role leads delivery throughinternal andexternal vendor squads and is accountable for ensuring high performance quality and timeliness of delivery. It plays a critical role in driving vendor accountability enforcing engineering standards and ensuring outcomes aligned with business and technical expectations.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

Data PlatformArchitectureDelivery & Engineering Execution& Operations

• Own the end-to-end delivery of data solutions on platforms(Databricks& SAP) ensuring alignment withenterprise architecture principles.

• Oversee setup configuration and optimization of data environments to ensure performance scalability and reliability.

• Drive implementation of scalable ingestion processes (batch and real-time) transformation pipelines and curated data layers.

• Establish and enforce standards for coding CI/CD testing and deployment across alldatadelivery teams.

• Ensure consistent implementation ofMLOps&MLflowfor model lifecycle management and reproducibility.

• Establish & LeadDataSolutionArchitecturepracticeto ensure design integrity and proper execution of data architecture patterns.

• Vendor Delivery Management & Governance

• Lead delivery through third-party vendor squads ensuring high-quality timely and cost-effective execution.

• Define clear delivery expectations SLAs KPIs and acceptance criteria for all vendor teams.

• Hold vendors accountable for performance quality and adherence to engineering and governance standards.

• Establish robust governance frameworks including sprint reviews delivery checkpoints and performance tracking.

• Proactively manage delivery risks issues and dependencies ensuring rapid resolution and minimal business impact.

• Drive continuous improvement in vendor performance productivity and delivery outcomes.

• Solution Delivery Operations & Lifecycle Management

• Ensure end-to-end accountability for the lifecycle of data productsfrom ingestion to consumption.

• Establish & managedisciplined release management testing and deployment practices.

• Ensure platform reliability stability and scalability across all data workloads.

• Optimize data processing performance and cost efficiency.

• Act as the escalation point for delivery and operational issues related to data pipelines and platforms.

Data Governance Quality & AI Readiness

• Establish and Implement enterprise data governance standards and policies

• Implement and enforce data classification standards aligned with enterprise data governance policies.

• Drive data quality frameworks including monitoring validation and issue remediation.

• Ensure data is structured cataloged and accessible for analytics and AI use cases.

• Champion the creation of AI-ready datasets through standardization cleansing and enrichment.

• Collaborate with governance security and compliance teams to meet regulatory and privacy requirements.

Business Engagement & Value Delivery

• Partner with business stakeholders and analytics teams to translate requirements into scalable data solutions.

• Enable advanced analytics reporting and AI initiatives through high-quality reliable data delivery.

• Drive prioritization of data initiatives aligned with business value and outcomes.

• Define and track delivery metrics ensuring transparency into progress and value realization.

• Vendor & Partner Ecosystem Management

• Manage relationships with external delivery partners and data platform vendors (e.g. Databricks).

• Ensure alignment between vendor capabilities and Wellas delivery and quality expectations.

• Collaborate with Procurement and IT leadership on contract management performance reviews and cost optimization.

• Ensure compliance with InfoSec data privacy and enterprise technology standards across all vendor-delivered solutions.

• Leadership & Organizational Development

• Provide leadership across multiple vendor squads ensuring alignment coordination and delivery excellence.

• Establish clear delivery governance operating models and ways of working for external teams.

• Act as the internal point of accountability for all data delivery outcomes.

• Foster a culture of accountability quality and continuous improvement across internal and external teams.

• Develop internal capabilities to effectively manage and govern vendor-led delivery models.

ESSENTIAL SKILLS EXPERIENCE & QUALIFICATIONS

• Very strong technical & management expertise in modern data architecture engineering and operational efficiencies.

• Proven experience architecting and developingof AI enabled accelerators for various data management use cases (ingestion DQ data mapping ETL/ELTs etc.)

• Databricks Platform Expertise Deep experience with Databricks including environment setuparchitecture tooling engineeringoptimization and operational delivery.

• Data Engineering Delivery Strong expertise in implementing ingestion pipelines transformations and scalable data products.

• ML Lifecycle Enablement Hands-on experience with MLflow and operationalizing machine learning workflows.

• Vendor & Delivery Management Proven ability to manage third-party vendors enforce accountability and deliver through external squads.

• Governance & Accountability Strong experience establishing delivery governance KPIs and performance management frameworks.

• Data Governance & Quality Experience implementing data classification quality controls and governance processes.

• AI Data Enablement Proven ability to prepare and deliver AI-ready datasets for advanced analytics.

• Technical Depth & Coding Strong programming skills (Python SQL Spark) with focus on quality and maintainability.

• Stakeholder Management Ability to translate business needs into actionable data delivery outcomes.

Qualifications & Experience:

Education:

• Bachelors or masters degree in computer science data engineering information systems or a related field

• Advanced certifications in data platforms cloud technologies or AI/ML are a plus

Experience:

• 1015 years of experience in data engineering data platforms or analytics delivery roles.

• Proven hands-on experience with Databricks including environment setup ingestion frameworks and optimization.

• Strong experience implementing MLflow and supporting machine learning lifecycle management.

• Demonstrated experience managing delivery through third-party vendors or system integrators.

• Proven leadership in overseeing multiple delivery squads (vendor or hybrid models).

• Strong experience in data governance data classification and data quality implementation

• Proven ability to deliver AI-ready data solutions at scale.

• Strong coding experience in Python SQL and Spark-based processing.

• Experience with SAP data ecosystems including SAP BDC Datasphere and SAP data integration.

• Familiarity with enterprise ERP data models and business process data domains.

WHAT WE OFFER

• 25 days holiday additional day off for your birthday (not including bank holidays)
• 3 days personal leave for your own signification life events
• 2 paid days off for volunteering/charity work
• Optional Wella Pension Scheme (8% employer contribution 3% employee contribution)
• Optional Family Private Medical Insurance Cover
• Income Protection
• Life Insurance (8x base salary up to 2 million payable in the event of your death in service of Wella)
• Staff Discount (80% of all hair products 40% OPI 1 x 50% ghd)
• EAP (Employee Assistance Program)
• Enhanced maternity paternity and adoption leave
• Gym Benefits
• Eye Tests
• WOW Program (Bonus following exit from KKR eligible after successful probation. For permanent employees only)
• Workplace/Nursery Benefits
• 4 weeks working remotely abroad
• Early Friday Finish during Summer

EEO OPPORTUNITIES

The Wella Companywants to meet the aims and commitments set out in its equality policy. This includes not discriminating under the Equality Act 2010 and building an accurate picture of the make-up of the workforce in encouraging equality and diversity.

We offer equal employment opportunity to qualified individuals without regard to race religion or belief color national origin age genderdisability sexual orientation gender identity gender expression marital or civil partnership pregnancy and maternity veteran status or any other characteristic protected by law. Wella Company with federal and state disability laws and makes reasonable accommodations for applicants and employees with disabilities. If reasonable accommodation is needed to participate in the job application or interview process to perform essential job functions and/or to receive other benefits and privileges of employment please contact us at: strongly believe that cultivating a diverse workplace gives a company strength. The combination of unique skills abilities experiences and backgrounds creates an environment that produces extraordinary results. EOE Minorities/Females/Protected Veterans/Disabled.

English - Please click on thislinkto review the Notification of Equal Opportunity Rights poster