Head of Data Analytics

Cornerstone is the UK's leading mobile and digital infrastructure provider, managing over 15,700 sites and holding 35% of the market. Our Mission is to be famous for excellence in delivery, embracing transformation with our people and our customers at its heart.

Key Roles and Responsibilities

Scope: The role leads all enterprise data governance, BI and reporting, data quality, data platform operations, and data engineering workflows. It manages the day-to-day performance and evolution of the Power BI environment, enterprise data warehouse/lakehouse, and Azure data services.

It interacts extensively with Finance, Operations & Delivery, Property & Estates, Commercial, Business Change, Information Security, and technology partners such as Microsoft. The role chairs or co‑chairs the Data Governance Committee and oversees data stewards across business domains. It supports and leads strategic initiatives including the transformation programme, corporate pillar insight frameworks, and AI data foundations.

Delivery

• An enterprise data governance framework with clear ownership, quality standards, metadata management, GDPR compliance, and domain stewardship.
• High‑quality business intelligence, executive dashboards, and board‑ready insights.
• A secure, scalable, modern data platform with reliable ETL/ELT pipelines and strong SLAs.
• Domain‑specific data products that support Cornerstone's strategic pillars.
• Governed, AI‑ready data supporting RAG pipelines, machine learning, and analytics.
• Self‑serve analytics adoption within governed guardrails across the business.

Good performance includes:

• Rapid, reliable access to trusted data.
• Strong and improving data quality metrics.
• Reduced time to insight for business users.
• Accuracy and consistency of reporting.
• Full data governance compliance and alignment with GDPR.
• Stable, modernised data infrastructure with incident and SLA performance tracked.

The role independently makes decisions on data strategy execution, platform architecture, governance enforcement, technical standards, vendor selection recommendations, and team direction. It actively drives continuous improvement, resolves data‑related issues, and leads change to embed a data‑driven culture.

Role Expertise

The role requires deep expertise in data governance, BI/reporting, data engineering, data architecture, and Azure data services. Strong leadership, communication, and stakeholder management skills are essential to influence senior leaders and drive cross‑functional accountability.

It involves significant autonomy in setting data strategy, governing data quality, designing data architectures, and prioritising the data roadmap. The role requires strong analytical thinking, problem solving, decision making, and the ability to translate complex data concepts for non‑technical stakeholders.

Experience leading multi‑disciplinary data teams is critical, as is knowledge of the role data plays in AI/ML, feature engineering, and RAG pipelines. Previous roles such as Head of Data, Head of BI, Data Governance Lead, or Senior Data Architect would prepare someone well for success.

Knowledge, Skills and Experience

• 8+ years in a senior data leadership role (Head of Data/BI/Analytics).
• Experience in infrastructure, telecoms, or asset‑intensive industries strongly preferred.
• Proven track record establishing or transforming a Data & Analytics function.
• Deep expertise in data governance, data quality, metadata management, and GDPR compliance.
• Strong Power BI expertise (semantic models, DAX, dashboards, self‑serve analytics).
• Experience with data warehouse/lakehouse architecture and Azure data services (Data Factory, Synapse, Data Lake, SQL).
• Leadership of multi‑disciplinary data teams across governance, reporting and engineering.
• Executive level stakeholder engagement and communication skills.
• Budget management, ROI analysis, and strong financial acumen.
• Understanding of data requirements for AI/ML and RAG pipelines.

Benefits

• Reward & Recognition: Competitive salary and an excellent bonus structure.
• Time to Recharge: 30 days' annual leave.
• Long Term Security: Competitive pension scheme and life insurance.
• Flexibility: Hybrid working to help you balance work and home life.
• Health & Wellbeing: Private medical insurance including dental and optical cover.
• Lifestyle Perks: Cycle to Work scheme, Electric Car scheme, and retail discounts.
• Community & Growth: A generous referral a friend scheme.

Our commitment to Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) is fundamental to our success. We strive to cultivate an inclusive environment where every employee feels valued, respected, and empowered. By embracing unique perspectives and experiences, we drive innovation and grow our organisation forward, therefore, we recognise the importance of welcoming applications from candidates of all backgrounds.

We want to ensure everyone is able to present their best self throughout the recruitment process so if you require any adjustments, please let us know.

Cornerstone Values: Operate and uphold Cornerstone's values of Everyone Matters, Innovate to Elevate, Do the Right Thing and Customer First by being Professional, Respectful and Open.

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