Director, Analytics and Data Strategy

Company Description

Merkle is a leading data-driven, technology-enabled, global performance marketing agency that specializes in the delivery of unique, personalized customer experiences across platforms and devices. For more than 30 years, Fortune 1000 companies and leading nonprofit organizations have partnered with Merkle to maximize the value of their customer portfolios. The agency’s heritage in data, technology, and analytics forms the foundation for its unmatched skills in understanding consumer insights that drive people-based marketing strategies. Its combined strengths in performance media, customer experience, customer relationship management, loyalty, and enterprise marketing technology drive improved marketing results and competitive advantage. With 9,600+ employees, Merkle is headquartered in Columbia, Maryland, with 50+ additional offices throughout the US, EMEA, and APAC. In 2016, the agency joined the Dentsu Aegis Network. For more information, contact Merkle at 1-877-9-Merkle or visit www.merkleinc.com.

Job Description

Alignment to Data Strategy Vision:

• Senior-level client and team analytics leader and problem-solver.
• Focus on data strategy – aligning data resources and collection and analytics methods to client goals and questions.
• Team leadership – lead and mentor resources to scale team engagement and support small- and large-scale client loyalty engagements from initiation to data-driven loyalty. 
• Build strong client relationships – able to discuss data and analytics in client-accessible ways, empowering the client to socialize findings confidently.
• Successful track record delivering actionable insights and recommendations to clients from user-level, behavioral data. 
• Create client growth by proactively identifying P&LS-addressable opportunities from data, analysis, and client context.
• Orchestrate and delegate analysis efforts to offshore resources, ensuring that the solution addresses the problem/question appropriately and reliably.
• Document and drive data requirements to execute data-driven marketing programs (targeting, personalization, and relevance).
• Experienced to discuss and guide the choice of analytical approaches to achieve objectives and outcomes.
• Support development of new capabilities (AI, Emotion).

Responsibilities:

• Create client growth by proactively identifying and defining data-focused solutions supporting client objectives - build them into blueprints, measurement plans, pitches, and strategy decks.
• Lead analytics and measurement for Strategic accounts, leveraging and integrating the LXM approach.
• Develop and/or oversee measurement plans and strategies to provide program insights, address learning objectives and improve the effectiveness of the program.
• Write and/or review briefs to overseas resources, defining and specifying requirements for Data Science projects (predictive analytics, ML, AI) and lead/oversee the delivery of solutions from the results.
• Partner with external analytics stakeholders to confidently drive scalable solutions to address a client challenges (i.e., defining an approach, shaping the methods to apply to specific use case).
• Provide thought leadership and act as the subject matter expert in the identification and deployment of data-driven solutions.
• Translate unclear “draft” learning objectives into clear, executable data analysis that addresses causality as well as connection. 
• Present findings to clients clearly and cogently, with a focus on delivering understanding that the client can confidently translate to their teams, peers and leadership.
• Where needed, apply statistical concepts and techniques to analyze experiments and predict user behavior and behavioral drivers for accuracy and client alignment.

Qualifications

• 8+ years’ experience in data science or analytics roles delivering reporting, data-driven insights, predictive modeling, and recommendations to internal or external clients.
• Record of excellence developing integrated long-term analytics programs for clients, based on goals and business model.
• Master’s (preferred) degree in a quantitative field (STEM or quantitative social sciences), or STEM Bachelor’s degree with MBA.
• Demonstrated strong presentation and storytelling with data skills.  Be able to deliver clear value from effort while simplifying the complexity for business audience while partnering with other disciplines to deliver on recommendations.
• Ability to confidently query, manipulate, extract and analyze data using Python, R and/or SQL to derive strong, supportable data-driven conclusions.
• Experience with cloud-based big data platforms – e.g., Redshift, Big Query, Teradata.
• Experie