Digital Transformation Director at Kantar

About the Role:

We are seeking a visionary and strategic leader to join our global operations team as Digital Transformation Director. This role is pivotal in shaping the future of operational excellence through the application of cutting-edge technologies, including AI, automation, and cloud-native architectures. The ideal candidate will bridge business strategy and technical execution, driving scalable, secure, and privacy-compliant solutions that deliver measurable impact across the organization. A strong technical background is essential to understand and leverage the latest advancements in technology.

Key Responsibilities:

• Design: Develop and document high-quality end-to-end solutions that meet internal requirements, ensuring they are fit for purpose, compliant, scalable, and secure.
• Innovation: Stay abreast of emerging technologies and industry trends, incorporating innovative solutions to drive business growth and operational excellence.
• Strategy: Understand both internal and external expertise, recommend strategy for the best scalable solutions across build, partner, or buy
• Collaboration and stakeholder management (inside and outside operations): Collaborate with stakeholders across the organisation to define areas of highest opportunity and related business / technical requirements. Build strong partnerships with Product, Technology (Dev, Architecture) and Data Science. Ensure that roadmaps are complementary, and transparent / aligned with relevant executives
• Team leadership and management : Leadership and mentoring of your team, movtivate the team to meet and exceed goals and objectives. Create maintain a collaborative culture within the team and across the wider organisation.
• Operational Impact: Identify and implement process improvements to enhance operational efficiency and reduce costs, always ‘proving’ initiatives are prioritised to target highest impact / cost reductions. This includes leveraging automation and new technologies to streamline workflows.
• Coordination within operations: Work closely with project management teams to ensure successful delivery of projects. Provide guidance and mentorship to technical teams across multiple projects, fostering a collaborative and high-performance work environment without direct management responsibilities.
• Technical Governance: Provide technical governance and assurance for proposed solutions throughout the delivery lifecycle, ensuring compliance with industry standards and best practices.
• Data and Analytics Handling: Manage and analyse data to support decision-making processes. Implement data governance frameworks and ensure data integrity, security, and compliance. This should include relational, graph, key-value and streaming data design constraints.
• Infrastructure Expertise: Design, deploy (using GitOps & IaC), and manage solutions on Azure and Kubernetes, ensuring high availability, scalability, and security.
• Risk Management: Identify and mitigate risks associated with solution design and delivery, ensuring robust and resilient architectures.
• Mentor and develop technical talent, promoting a culture of learning and growth.

Requirements:

Proven experience in a senior leadership role driving innovation in complex, data-driven environments. Deep understanding of cloud infrastructure, data orchestration, and AI/ML applications in operational contexts. Strong business acumen with the ability to translate strategic goals into technical execution. Track record of influencing cross-functional teams and executive stakeholders. Passion for building high-performing teams and nurturing talent.

• Educational Background: Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or a related field, or equivalent work experience.
• Professional Experience:
  • Extensive experience in technical programmes/projects and large-scale software implementations, including legacy and green-field scope.
  • Proven experience in guiding cross-functional teams and delivering solutions for projects with multiple dependencies and constraints.
  • Strong competence in Applications, Operability, Integration, Data, Technology, Infrastructure, and Security architecture.
• Technical Skills:
  • Experience of commercial integration of AI into Operational systems, or similar, featuring LLM, Transformer, ML & traditional statistical data driven software components.
  • Proficiency in SaaS, API design, Azure/Kubernetes hosting, and Integration technologies.
  • Experience in developing distributed/scalable systems and high-volume, low latency, transaction/computation applications.
  • Broad understanding of the software development lifecycle, including the application of LLM driven and Data Science DevOps/MLOps/AIOps methodologies.
  • Expertise in data management and analytics, including data structures, data processing, data modelling, and statistical analysis.
  • Knowledge of Python and C# for development and scripting.
• Leadership:
  • Proven from-scratch creative solution development with incomplete requirements and multiple divergent opportunities, based on top-down and bottom-up business objectives.
  • Demonstrated ability to provide guide and mentor technical teams, fostering a collaborative and high-performance work environment.
  • Excellent communication and interpersonal skills, with the ability to engage and influence stakeholders at all levels.
• Operational Expertise:
  • Experience in identifying and implementing operations improvements, including automation and process optimisation.
  • Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, with a focus on continuous improvement and innovation.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Certifications: Relevant certifications such as TOGAF, Any Cloud/Azure Certified Solutions Architect, or similar are highly desirable, but not essential.
• Industry Knowledge: Experience in the media measurement industry and familiarity with its typical operational and compliance requirements.