Head of Data (PE backed SaaS)

Company

SaaS platform, operating across 9 European countries with strong recent expansion through M&A.  A top performing company within the PE firms portfolio, achieving substantial organic growth $hundreds of millions in Revenue.

The Role

As the company scales its European footprint, a broad data leadership role is being created in the firm that will be responsible for architecture & platforms, governance & quality, analytics & BI, finance and RevOps enablement, product & payments data integration, and longer‑term data‑driven products/monetisation. The role will be tasked with unifying the current decentralised data analytics teams, building a modern data function, and be the single point of accountability for trusted, consistent, well‑governed data across the company.

Reporting Line

You’ll report to a modern & data literate CFO who views Data as a strategic asset.  This feels like the best logical reporting line in the early stages while the function is maturing.  High exposure to CEO, CFO, CRO, CTO and investors.

Location

Flexible within Europe. Hybrid/remote with periodic travel.

Responsibilities

– Build a unified, company-wide data function: set the mission, structure and ways of working; bring together decentralised teams; hire and develop where needed.
– Own data governance and quality: establish an enterprise data model.
– Develop the core data platform: consolidate and standardise warehouses and pipelines . Define clear standards for ingestion, modelling, testing, CI/CD and cost control.
– Enable Finance: deliver a reliable, automated KPI and FP&A stack (covering revenue drivers, cohorts, take rates, commissions, cost-to-serve), with trusted BI that feeds directly into monthly and quarterly reporting.
– Support Commercial/RevOps: provide clean, consistent datasets for pipeline, pricing, churn/retention, win-loss, cross-sell/upsell, and performance by country and product. Partner on dashboards but retain ownership of the data.
– Lead data integration for M&A: design playbooks for discovery, mapping and cutover, including identity resolution and historical backfills, to shorten time-to-value.
– Lead and grow the team: coach a mixed group of engineers and analysts (currently 6–8 people), set high technical standards, and foster collaboration with finance, commercial and tech.
– Unlock future value: once the foundations are in place, explore opportunities to turn data into new products and revenue streams.

Candidate Profile

• Experience building or scaling a centralised data function in a multi-country SaaS business; private equity experience is a plus.
• Strong background in data governance and modelling: setting clear definitions, building data quality frameworks, and putting the right controls in place.
• Proven track record delivering finance and commercial analytics: automated KPI reporting, cohort and usage analysis, pricing and retention insights.
• Hands-on knowledge of modern data platforms (e.g. Databricks, cloud warehouses, ELT, orchestration/testing). You don’t need to code every day, but you know what “good” looks like.
• Experience integrating data after acquisitions, including aligning different products, countries and systems.
• Skilled at leading distributed teams; credible with engineers and analysts, while also comfortable with executive stakeholders.

Key Competencies
– Owner mindset: accountable for data across “all galaxies” — consistent definitions everywhere.
– Pragmatic builder: delivers business outcomes fast; avoids ivory‑tower architectures.
– High EQ & change leadership: aligns decentralised teams and wins trust.
– Right/left‑brain balance: rigorous with numbers and compelling with executives.