Director of Data and AI

Company Description

Fastmarkets is an industry-leading price-reporting agency (PRA) and information provider for global commodities, providing price data, news, analytics and events for the agriculture, forest products, metals and mining and new-generation energy markets.

Fastmarkets' data is critical for customers seeking to understand and predict dynamic, sometimes opaque markets, enabling trading and risk management. Fastmarkets is a global business with a history dating back to 1865 and is built on trust and deep market knowledge. It has more than 600 employees spread across global locations in the UK, US, China, India, Singapore, Brazil, Belgium, Finland and beyond. 

Job Description

Fastmarkets is seeking an experienced and visionary Director of Data and AI to lead the transformation and strategic execution of our data and AI capabilities. This role is critical to unlocking value from our vast data assets and ensuring AI technologies are responsibly and effectively integrated into our business. 

This is an exciting and high-profile role within a data services business that combines responsibility for our data needs to enable our clients to make decisions based on the pricing insights we provide them, our senior management team to make decisions based on the management insights we provide them and our AI strategy and execution to enable deeper insights and realise automation opportunities.

You will be accountable for delivering Fastmarkets’ enterprise data vision and AI innovation roadmap, ensuring alignment with Fastmarkets’ business roadmap and goals. You will drive the data platform development, data governance, and intelligent automation use cases and lead the data product management to deliver data products across Fastmarkets' functions.

Reporting to the CTIO you will work closely with Commercial, Product, Finance, Editorial, Marketing and Technology leadership to deliver data products, drive data governance, accelerate AI adoption, and embed analytics across Fastmarkets.

The ideal candidate brings deep expertise in data strategy, AI/ML applications, and cross-functional leadership in a high-growth, data-driven organisation. Experience in a B2B Information or Technology subscription services business is highly desirable.  Experience in Private Equity-backed or fast-scaling companies is preferred.

Key Responsibilities 

Data Strategy and Governance 

• Develop and implement a comprehensive enterprise data strategy aligned with business goals. 

• Establish data governance frameworks, ensuring data quality, integrity, and compliance across the organisation. 

• Partner with security and compliance teams to manage data privacy and ethical AI use. 

AI Innovation and Enablement 

• Lead the design, development, and deployment of AI/ML models that enhance product capabilities and internal efficiencies. 

• Help identify and deliver opportunities for automation, personalization, and predictive analytics across business functions acting as an expert advisor to the Senior Leadership Team 

• Collaborate with product and technology teams to embed AI into existing and new product offerings. 

Leadership and Team Development 

• Build and lead a high-performing team of data scientists, data product managers, data analysts, data architects, data engineers, and AI specialists. 

• Increase employee engagement scores across the team through clearly defined actions leading to material improvements 

• Drive a culture of experimentation, continuous learning, and ethical innovation. 

• Foster collaboration across all business function teams to drive a data culture and governance across the business and embed data and AI in decision-making. 

Cross-Functional Collaboration 

• Partner with product, editorial and commercial leaders to inform pricing, forecasting, and market analysis using data insights. 

• Work closely with the CTIO, CPO, and other senior executives to ensure technology investments align with data priorities. 

• Support M&A activity through data capability assessments and integration planning. 

Analytics and Insight Generation 

• Establish a unified analytics platform to enable self-service reporting and real-time insights. 

• Drive adoption of advanced analytics tools and dashboards to support performance tracking and optimization. 

• Ensure that data insights are leveraged for customer segmentation, retention strategies, and operational efficiency. 

Stakeholder Reporting and Strategic Alignment 

• Present data and AI roadmaps, milestones, and impact assessments to senior leadership and shareholders. 

• Define KPIs and performance metrics to demonstrate the business value of data and AI initiatives. 

• Contribute to long-term strategic planning with a focus on data-driven growth. 

Qualifications

We recruit talented, dynamic people with diverse backgrounds and experiences, all united by a belief in our mission to provide the world’s leading and most trusted price reporting, events, and intelligence service for the markets we serve. We’re proud to be an equal opportunities employer and are committed to creating a fully inclusive workplace, where everyone feels able to participate and contribute meaningfully.

If you are open-minded, curious, resilient, solutions-oriented and committed to promoting equality, then read on.

KNOWLEDGE, EXPERIENCE AND SKILLS

We are looking for an individual who is highly motivated, driven, and have a passion to be part of a fast-paced, successful team. Being a strong team player is also important as well as someone who is happy to work flexibly.

We are looking for a leader with the passion and capability to drive data-led transformation in a fast-paced and evolving industry. 

Qualifications & Experience: 

• Proven success in data leadership roles spanning data product management, architecture, engineering, analytics and AI, preferably in a B2B subscription business and with strong knowledge of product usage, sales and finance customer behaviour, sales and revenue insights. 

• Strong leadership, communication, and stakeholder engagement skills 

• Demonstrated ability to deliver business impact through data strategy and AI initiatives. 

• Proven record of delivering enterprise-grade data platforms (Snowflake & Azure preferred) 

• Strong understanding of modern ML/AI frameworks and practices (GenAI, LLMs, MLOps) 

• Experience implementing CI/CD pipelines, testing frameworks, and DataOps automation 

• Experience working in Private Equity environments and/or fast-scaling growth businesses is a plus. 

Core Competencies: 

• Strategic thinking and the ability to translate vision into executable plans. 

• Excellent leadership, communication, and stakeholder management skills. 

• Strong commercial acumen with a focus on measurable outcomes. 

• High adaptability and resilience in a high-growth environment. 

If you're excited about the role but your experience, skills or qualifications don't perfectly align, we encourage you to apply anyway.

Additional Information

Our Values

Fastmarkets people come from all different walks of life. It’s this mix of brilliant personalities, experiences and insights that gives us that warm, open, and friendly culture you can feel as soon as you meet us. But however wonderfully different we all are, there are six things we all have in common – and they form our Fastmarkets values.

Created by our own employees to reflect some of the personal traits that Fastmarkets people have, our values are key to what makes our culture unique. They reflect who each of us are and they're embedded in everything we do. Our values are:

• METRICS DRIVEN. We use insights to improve our customers’ experience and our business performance
   
• ACCOUNTABLE. We are accountable to ourselves and those we work with: we keep our promises and get things done
   
• GROWTH MINDSET. This value enables us to be nimble to the changing realities and operate with a sense of urgency
   
• INCLUSIVE. We are inclusive and respectful, celebrating each of us and giving everyone a deep sense of belonging with the desire to bring their best self to work every day.
   
• CUSTOMER CENTRIC. We are customer-centric in all that we do
   
• COLLABORATIVE. We are collaborative, able to work across teams and capitalise on the diversity of intellect, perspectives, and experiences.

You’ve read a little about us – now it’s over to you!

If you like what you’ve read so far and think you can see yourself as a Fastmarkets person, it’s time to fill in your application form. This form is an important part of the selection process: it’s used to determine whether or not you’ll be chosen to have an interview and acts as a basis for the questions we’ll ask you on the day.

It’s vital that you try to capture all the relevant information we have asked for on the form so we can get a good feel for who you are and why you’re great.