Head of Data

About FairMoney

FairMoney is a credit-led mobile bank for emerging markets. The company was launched in 2017, operates in Nigeria & India, and raised close to €50m from global investors like Tiger Global, DST & Flourish Ventures. The company has offices in France, Nigeria, and India.

About the Role

This candidate leads the Data & Analytics department and oversees the activities of the data and analytics department and is responsible for the overall data and analytics delivery and strategic agenda. In this role, the Head of Data ensures that the business in its various departments understands its own health, finds growth levers, and identifies opportunities for optimization. Data and analytics are at the epicenter of all we do, we need on-demand accurate data and insightful analytics to take our business forward. The Head of Data leads the business through all efforts that drive business performance and potential by critically analyzing performance and continually introducing new data sources and techniques. He/she leads the data analytics department in the development of a department's culture, policies, and strategy. The role will involve the Head of Data getting his or her hands dirty and solving hard analytical problems for the business, taking a seat at the table alongside Data & Analytics, Engineering, Product, and Marketing, often representing both Analytics and Product Operations, and being a critical member of the lending exco.

Below are typically the roles and responsibilities, but not limited to:-

Build the team

• Determine what roles are most needed for the business.
• Attract and source candidates.
• Select candidates who will be the best fit for the company's needs and culture.
• Close candidates, often against competitive offers.

Manage the team

• Ensure a bright, enthusiastic, and capable team is aligned to and deployed against projects with the highest business impact.
• Help analysts and business intelligence engineers achieve their career goals. Make sure that team members understand how to have an impact and make sure they are aware of that impact when they've made it. Explain complicated stats or data technology concepts.

Guide the work (and do some of it yourself as well!) across a wide area of responsibilities

• Tracking across different products, properties, and platforms.
• Ops.
• Operational metrics for customer support (ticket times, agent productivity, etc.).
• Understanding how service speed and quality affect business metrics.
• Product.
• Continuing to dig deeper into the drivers for performance.
• User segmentation.
• Best practices for AB testing, consistent analysis of results, and cataloging of what we learn.
• Making sure that we have a really solid understanding of and control over our core financial engine.

Drive technology requirements and investments that make data & analytics a strategic weapon for the company

• Business intelligence tooling.
• Driving self-service analytics initiatives.
• ETL infrastructure.
• Unified view of customer data across tools and services used by the business.
• Data Engineering.

Interface with other groups

• Leadership to be sure that decisions are informed and analysis is in service of company goals.
• User research to understand the emotions and motivations behind user behavior.
• FP&A to make sure that the entire company is aligned on goals and how to drive toward them.
• Data engineering to be sure that analytics has access to data and tools needed.
• Data science to be sure that work isn't being duplicated and everyone understands our business in the same way.

OTHER THINGS

Leadership/Supervisory/Support Role: The Head of Data is first and foremost a leader within the department overseeing all activities of the data analytics and data warehousing departments. He/She leads initiatives relating to the optimization of existing departmental policies and leads initiatives that relate to individual department optimization leading to performance improvement across the business.

The Head of Data drives the performance of analytics solutions to impact overall business results while keeping costs in check and ensuring the department remains within the planned budget. The Head of Data is also responsible for setting the departmental vision and culture and championing the use of data in making key business decisions. The Head of Data is in charge of driving the day-to-day analytical approaches and exploring solutions to particular problems. He is also tasked with the management and long-term prioritization of the business’s overall data, analytical needs, and opportunities.

The Head of Data additionally defines the business questions that need to be answered and defines appropriate analytics models in addition to identifying and readying relevant data sources for analysis. In his/her’s leadership capacity, the Head of Data takes initiative in developing training programs meant for improving the departmental heads’ understanding of the use of data, which improves decision-making across the business. In this capacity, the Head of Data will also play a mentorship role to key data analytics and warehousing personnel, constantly honing their professional skills, and preparing them for the occupation of his position in the future.

Strategy: The Head of Data plays a leading strategic role where he/she leads the data analytics and data warehousing departments in strategy development with regard to the collection, manipulation, and analysis of data for various business functions/departments such as Growth marketing, sales, operations, finance, credit risk among others. The Head of Data also endeavors to create new data-driven approaches for the purpose of generating business insights through data analytics, information visualization, and addressing unanswered business issues in a proactive manner.

Analytics: The Head of Data will play an analytical role where he/she develops and applies analytical algorithms and methods where possible with a view to driving and enhancing data systems and streamlining business processes. In this capacity, the Head of Data strives to improve the quality of analytics solutions on a consistent basis. He/she leads the analytics and warehousing departments in the creation of high-quality analyses for all functions of the business and in the definition of metrics that track the business’s performance on different fronts. It is also the duty of the Head of Data to validate, interpret, and create reports and presentations for senior data analytics management, departmental heads/management, and relevant stakeholders.

Collaboration: The role of the Head of Data is highly collaborative role and, as such, the Head of Data facilitates joint brainstorming and team collaboration. The Head of Data works closely with management in establishing departmental goals and strategies and works with junior data analytics, and engineers in defining the data collection needs of the business for the purpose of future work and also for guaranteeing that there is high-data quality and reliability across the business. The Head of Data further collaborates with numerous departments across the business, aiding them in the proper use of data, hence, ensuring the delivery of desired operational results.

Operations Duties: Operational tasks that require detailed data analysis will often fall under both Analytics & Operations.

Requirements

This role supports the needs of growth marketing, product, credit risk, operations, and finance. This leader is responsible for producing marketing analytics, product analytics, and business/financial analytics as well as insights.

• Education: The Head of Data has to have a master’s degree (preferred) in Data Science, Computer Science, Information Technology, Economics, Information Systems, Statistics, Applied Math, Business Administration, or any other related field. An equivalent of this requirement in working experience is also acceptable for the position.
• Experience: Experience managing a P&L and/or reporting to a CEO is a plus. A candidate for this position must have had at least 7 years of working experience in a data analyst or data warehousing position, The candidate will also have had a proven and successful experience in the execution of data analytics initiatives, leading to the development of useful insights and the improvement of a business’s performance and driving top-line growth.
• The candidate will also demonstrate success leading analytics and a large analytical team as well as vast experience working with a wide range of data in order to predict financial metrics for a business. A suitable candidate will additionally have demonstrated experience building and leading quantitative analyses as well as experience building response and risk models for a business.
• Communication Skills: Excellent communication skills in both written and verbal form are a must-have for the Head of Data. The Head of Data will be meant to interact with numerous departments’ personnel and departmental heads/management aiding them in the proper application of data, leading to functional improvement. As a departmental leader, the clarity of his communications down the line will be a major contributing factor to the performance and effectiveness of the junior data analytics personnel.
• More so, communication skills will be necessary for the creation of engaging reports and presentations for senior data analytics management and key stakeholders. These reports must be engaging, clear, concise, and convincing, having been tailored in such a manner that will suit and appeal to the audience at hand.
• Computer Skills/GSuite/Software: The Head of Data must also have excellent computer skills and be highly proficient in the use of Google Docs, Google Sheets, and Google Slides, which will all be necessary for the creation of visually and verbally engaging reports, for departmental heads/management, senior data analytics management, and key stakeholders. The Head of Data will further demonstrate skills in Tableau, SQL server reporting services, Tableau, analysis services, or any other data visualization tools. The Head of Data must have an experience with Python (Pandas/SciPy), R, or equivalent.

• Analytics: A candidate for this position must demonstrate a passion for research and data and be highly skilled in performing quantitative analyses on various business functions, for example, consumer behavior and trends. The candidate must also be highly skilled in the use of SQL, being able to draw complex queries that ultimately lead to improvements in business performance. The candidate for this position will additionally have an understanding of A/B testing as well as vast knowledge in the identification of key metrics that measure and drive the long-term health of the business.
• Interpersonal Skills: The candidate for this position will be self-motivated, proactive taking initiative and going beyond his call of duty, be helpful and service-oriented, have exceptional problem-solving skills, work comfortably in a cross-functional setting, work comfortably with business senior executives, take accountability for the business’s performance, and have the ability to remain calm and composed under stress and uncertainty, inspiring the same in his team.
• People Skills: The Head of Data must also have a natural ability to make strong, lasting, and meaningful connections with others, which will aid him in the execution of his duties in this highly collaborative role. He will be a likable and relatable individual who is easily approachable, hence, inspiring trust in departmental heads, senior data analytics management, stakeholders, and junior data analytics personnel, who will all trust and follow his insights, directives, and judgments.

Our tool stack

• Programming language: Python, SQL
• Streaming Applications: Flink, Kafka
• Databases: MySQL, DynamoDB
• DWH: BigQuery, Snowflake
• BI: Tableau, Metabase, dbt
• ETL: Hevo, Airflow
• Production Environment: Python API deployed on Amazon EKS (Docker, Kubernetes, Flask)
• ML: Scikit-Learn, LightGBM, XGBoost, shap
• Cloud: AWS, GCP

Benefits

• Training & Development
• Work from Home
• Family Leave (Maternity, Paternity)
• Paid Time Off (Vacation, Sick & Public Holidays)

Recruitment Process

• A screening interview with one of the members of the Talent Acquisition team for 30-45 minutes.
• Core Business interview with the Chief Lending Officer for 60 minutes.
• Technical Interview with Data & Risk Head for 60-90 minutes.
• Management interview for 60 minutes.
• Additional interviews/presentation round (case-to-case basis).