Director of Data Products

Job Description

As part of the Business Technology department, this role contributes directly to our company’s strategic ambition of delivering a seamless, data-driven retail experience. We are currently transitioning from a traditional process- and project-based organization to a product-oriented operating model, with technology, data and AI at the heart of this transformation.

Are you passionate about turning raw data into reusable data products, accelerating our growth strategy? Do you love shaping the engineering culture that lets our teams thrive? Then this might be your next adventure!

As Director of Data Products you will be responsible for 8 to 10 multi-disciplinary teams that create and operate the data products for all business domains, from Finance and HR to Supply Chain, Retail and Digital Commerce. As part of the Data, Analytics & AI management team, you will not only drive operational business success but also fuel our global Analytics & Artificial Intelligence products and be involved in key technology choices that sit at the heart of our data architecture.

Leveraging your strong technical background in Data Engineering and Team management, this role requires a blend of technical expertise, strategic vision, and practical execution to drive enterprise-wide impact.

Your accountabilities:

• You'll lead a team of Staff Engineers, Engineering and Product Managers, spanning 8–10 cross-functional squads that drive business solutions in Finance, HR, Product & Pricing, Planning & Forecasting, Supply Chain, Retail & Digital Commerce.
• Drive the Data Product Strategy and embed product-thinking in data. Leading to trusted, discoverable and self-service available datasets, valuable for various types of consumers across business platforms, Analytics and AI Engineering. Partner with business and product leadership to prioritise the data-product portfolio and influence Rituals’ Data & AI roadmap.
• Shape an engineering culture for scale & reliability by championing excellence in CI/CD, automated testing, observability and a “you build it, you run it” mindset. Lead the transition to operational data stores and real-time pipelines serving our customer journey every day.
• Drive the continuous modernization of our tech stack, leveraging disruptive technologies like AI within engineering on our Google Cloud Platform ecosystem (BigQuery, DBT, Pub/Sub, Vertex AI, etc.) whilst partnering with our Head of Technology Platforms on succesfull deployment of Rituals platform components and integration patterns.
• Manage budget and external partnerships, evaluate and negotiate with vendors, systems integrators and SaaS providers. Ensure contracts, budgets and performance KPIs are met.

Qualifications

You have strong business acumen, a people-first mindset, and a proven track record of shaping business needs into actional data solutions. We’re looking for an experienced peoplemanager who thrives in fast-paced environments, accelerates execution without compromising quality, takes full ownership of outcomes, and confidently stands their ground to drive bold, principled decisions. On top of this, you bring: 

• 15+ years in data engineering, 10+ years leading data, platform, analytics or software engineering teams.
• A masters degree in something beta. Entrepreneurship (failed start-ups count) is a plus.
• Proven success shipping data products at scale in a product-led, agile environment (e-commerce, payments or retail a plus).
• Ability to drive measurable improvements across engineering, delivery and performance metrics
• Hands-on experience with concepts like data mesh, data contracts, data governance and team topologies.
• Comfortable navigating both strategic discussions with C-level execs and technical deep dives with staff engineers.
• Excellent communicator in English; Dutch not required.

This role is based at our Amsterdam HQ (city center). A strong on-site presence is expected to build meaningful connections and lead effectively, therefore living within 1 hour's travel time of Amsterdam is a strong preference. 

Why you’ll love this role:

• Impact at scale; your data products touch every Rituals customer and colleague, every day.
• This role sits at the heart of our Rituals growth strategy, empowering our scaling efforts to open a new store every other day.
• You will work together with a variety of leadership roles from across the company to bring Data Products to new heights as a key accelerator, and have the support to make that happen.
• Space to innovate the engineering function by discovering GenAI accelerators.
• Blend of worlds; apply best in class retail engineering excellence to a certified B-Corp brand obsessed with wellbeing.
• Culture th