SD Labs is looking for a Data Product Owner to join our Data Platform team. Were seeking people who want to be part of a small team that is continuously rethinking the future of retail while interfacing with our corporate parent - Sports Direct International. You will be an integral part of a team using data to improve and reinvent the operations and practices of a retailer making over £3 billion a year in revenue. You will be on the cutting edge of rolling out new tools, developing valuable insights, and fostering a data-driven culture as Sports Direct undergoes a digital transformation.

You will also work closely with other teams within SD Labs, including our partnerships with promising startups and in-house products in incubation.

The role is focused on managing the roadmap, communication, and day-to-day execution of use cases within the core Data Platform team. You will work closely with the core team and the Head of SD Labs to drive the product vision and strategy. The primary objective of the Data Platform team is to deliver a group-wide platform seriving as a single source of truth that is built up iteratively though well researched greenfield use cases whereby clear value is established and delivered at scale. Inevitably the role will be shaped and crafted to fit each candidates specific skills and experience. That being said, you will be responsible for:

• Partnering with business, internal/external stakeholders, and leadership to understand current operator experiences, identify areas of opportunity, and further develop and manage the vision and roadmap of the data platform
• Documenting our strategy, rationale, feature sets, and general roadmap with a view to building a shared understanding across relevant audiences—the direct team, group management, external stakeholders, internal operators, etc.
• Working with our data engineers to define and prioritize the delivery of the technical requirements of the data platform
• Evaluating and managing 3rd party technologies and integrations on a functional and commercial basis, with ongoing consideration to how 3rd party technologies fit into our short and long term roadmaps
• Overseeing our analysts and providing them with guidance on where to focus their efforts to best drive business value
• Setting quarterly goals for the data team and reporting on the ongoing progress toward those goals
• Helping the team to run smoothly. That may be facilitating physical and virtual meetings between the various teams and functions. It may also be evangelizing communication and collaboration tools that help everyone stay focused on a joint direction
• Growing the team to satisfy the needs of the business as data platform solutions gain traction with Sports Direct
• Establishing best practices in how the data team operates and interacts with other departments as Sports Direct undergoes a digital transformation and help in emphasizing the adoption of a data-driven culture
• Advocating on the platforms behalf with the larger group - acting as a champion to drive interest, engagement, and adoption

We recognize that Data Product Owner is a relatively new position within organizations, and that the agile methodology may not apply perfectly to a data platform product. Success in this role is to make the SD data platform a model example of what product thinking applied to a data platform can achieve in the retail industry.

Our data platform and team are in an intriguing state - the past few years has been spent modernizing SD data and making it accessible. What we do with that data, how we drive a data-driven culture within the organization, and delivering business value via data solutions is now the focus.

If the scale of this challenge excites you and the role sounds like a good fit, drop us a line introducing yourself, your background, and your work.

About You

You have deep knowledge of data systems and current trends in data science and at least five years of experience in the field. You possess a strong technical background in data engineering or data systems and are comfortable with the various technical elements composing a data platform as well as the current state of data science and analytics methodology. You can speak intelligently about the technical aspects of the data platform and solutions built around it, and can discuss different technologies in terms of trade-offs.

You are able to bridge the gap between technical and business concerns. You are able to communicate your technical knowledge at an appropriate level to less technical stakeholders. You are also able to define and collaborate on business objectives and share those objectives with our technical team members. You are comfortable in both the business and technical cultures and see yourself as a translator and diplomat between the two.

You are comfortable working in both a startup and a corporate culture. You are excited by the responsibility, challenge, and lack of red tape that comes with working in a startup-like environment. You are also comfortable interfacing with a corporate culture that is much more focused on operational execution vs change and transformation.

You help make sure the team is running smoothly. You manage the daily workflow of teams of engineers and designers. You do whatever the team needs to help them keep moving - identifying and removing blockers, ensuring communication between teams is clear and frequent, and creating and adjusting processes that ensure consistent delivery against the products requirements.

You love open source. The heart of our platform is our Snowflake data warehouse, but this does not make the platform – the platform as a whole is the data warehouse, the analytical tools and the pipelines and technologies feeding it around the edge many of which are built upon an open source stack. SD Labs is committed to open source technologies and the contribution thereof.

You will have a keen understanding of engineering principals. In order to effectively advocate what the team is working on and towards to internal stakeholders, you must have a sound understanding of engineering principals in order to challenge both internally and externally. You will understand the benefits of source control, infrastructure as code, continuous integration and release pipelines, containers, amongst others...

You are both discerning and open minded. You have experimented with multiple methods of implementation and view different approaches in terms of trade-offs. You have a commitment to high standards, but are flexible to implementation approaches. You don’t believe a single solution or framework is a silver bullet for every problem.

You love to set your own course. You are a self-starter and have the ability to work independently, while also ensuring you work closely with internal and external stakeholders when necessary. You are comfortable understanding current operator experiences, identifying priorities, and translating these into a roadmap that aligns tightly with the data platform vision.

You maintain a shared understanding. You regularly work with engineers and other stakeholders from various disciplines, balancing engineering concerns, such as technical debt, with product concerns. Ideally, you find solutions that address both the team and business needs but if not, you help build a shared understanding around difficult decisions and document these outcomes.

You enjoy working with small teams on large projects. We are a small team with big ambitions. We prefer working in small teams and believe in personal ownership of your work in addition to close collaboration with domain experts with the same mindset. As SD Labs grows, you will interact with peers from other teams to set best practices for the entire group.

You love doing things efficiently. We believe in efficiency with a view toward the horizon. Efficiency is not only about shipping code quickly, but in the balance of establishing a strong foundation that allows agility in the future and the present. Automation and process improvement is valued alongside feature development.

Youre adaptable. No job is beneath you. Youve been in fast growing companies and know how to build, change, and adapt to the needs of a company as it grows. You are comfortable wearing whatever hat is needed of you.

About Us

SD Labs—backed by SportsDirect—is centered around solving complex business problems with a team of talented individuals leveraging innovative technologies to reinvent retail. We do this through a series of internal ventures and external investments in some of the best startups in the space. We are seeking like-minded creators, problem-solvers, and doers.

Our Approach

We believe in empowering individuals and believe personal responsibility is a force multiplier like none other. That means we are looking for team members that have grit, desire, and an overall relentless ambition to execute. Our culture is similar to that of a startup, and we are looking for people who prefer and excel in that environment.

Our Positioning

We are positioned at the intersection of corporates—with their deep pockets, existing infrastructure, broad asset base, distribution channels, expansive networks, and preferential terms; and startups—with their free-wheeling, fast-moving, greenfield environments characterized by the freedom to define new rules, challenge the status quo, discover new things, and iterate quickly. We believe this duality gives us the ability to rapidly iterate and deploy new products into a live environment to nail product-market fit before moving on to the broader market.

Further Information

Our head office is in London off of Oxford Street near Piccadilly Circus. The role is full time. You have a choice between full employment and contract employment. SD Labs is a remote first team and has employees around the world, but the data team is entirely based in London. Most of our data teams stakeholders are in the UK, but also expect to interface with the US around once a week.

Light travel requirements come along with the position. Expect to be traveling about one week a month to our headquarters in Shirebrook.

We are not able to provide a work sponsorship for this position. Applicants must be eligible to work in the UK.

• Competitive Salary
• 20 Days Vacation