The posting
Company Overview
We are the better way to work in finance. As private equity’s value creation partner, we sit at the heart of PE—where sponsors and CFOs meet. Through financial consulting rooted in data, technology, and AI, we help clients drive value—supporting the office of the CFO to drive end-to-end value creation.
If you crave challenging work and are looking to grow, come solve complex problems alongside a team of finance and technology professionals in a supportive, collaborative environment.
Backed by leading private equity investors, we are a high-growth, entrepreneurial firm with a global presence. We are looking for people who want to help build something great and make a lasting impact.
About the role
Accordion’s Data & AI team in London designs the data foundations that private equity-backed businesses use to run their value creation plans. As Director, Data Solutions, you’ll own the architecture, data operating model and client relationship. You’ll work out what the business needs and why, shape the design, define how data is owned, governed and managed, and lead delivery with our engineering teams in India. Every platform is tied to measured value. You’ll work alongside our finance transformation teams and colleagues who have been CFOs and operators, so you’re always leading delivery based on the decisions the data serves.
This role will be based in our London office. Ideal candidates should be local to the desired location, with the flexibility to work remotely 1-2 days a week, blending the best of both worlds for efficiency and collaboration.
What You'll Do:
- Lead data assessments and diagnostics for private equity sponsors and portfolio companies. Evaluate existing platforms, data flows, engineering practices, analytics capabilities and governance, identifying root causes and priorities for improvement.
- Translate business needs and assessment findings into a clear data strategy and delivery roadmap, with defined investment requirements, dependencies and measurable outcomes.
- Advise clients on target data architecture and technology selection. Recommend solutions that fit their business needs, existing systems and internal capabilities, balancing performance, security, cost and future growth.
- Lead the design and delivery of data engineering and analytics solutions, from source integration and data pipelines through to analytical models, reporting and adoption. Connect delivery to decisions across finance, operations and commercial teams.
- Shape semantic layers that establish consistent business definitions, metrics and relationships across data. Enable reporting, analytics, AI applications and agents to work from a shared understanding of the business.
- Make structured and unstructured data ready for AI and agents. Establish the metadata, lineage, quality and security controls needed for reliable retrieval and use, including permissions, sensitive data handling and auditable access.
- Design and embed data operating models and governance frameworks. Define ownership, stewardship, decision rights and responsibilities across business and technology teams, including how data initiatives are prioritised, funded and supported.
- Guide master data management (MDM), establishing trusted records for core entities such as customers, products and suppliers, with clear rules for matching, maintaining and sharing data across systems.
- Establish data quality frameworks covering profiling, business rules, quality thresholds, monitoring and remediation. Agree accountability with data owners and address issues at source.
- Act as a senior client adviser throughout delivery. Lead teams across the UK and India, review critical design decisions, manage engagement scope and quality, and develop managers and technical leads.
- Shape proposals and commercial estimates, explain recommendations to senior stakeholders and identify opportunities to extend client relationships through useful, well-delivered work.
- Regularly and extensively travel across Europe to work with clients in the relevant jurisdictions
What You'll Bring:
- Strong consulting skills, developed in a consulting firm or an industry role, with the ability to understand business problems, challenge assumptions and guide stakeholders towards practical decisions.
- Confidence working through ambiguity: asking incisive questions, testing hypotheses and bringing structure to incomplete or conflicting information.
- The ability to shape solutions from an initial business need, define scope, assess options and explain recommendations, trade-offs and delivery priorities.
- Strong advisory and communication skills, including facilitating workshops, building trust with senior clients or internal stakeholders and presenting technical recommendations in clear business terms.
- Strong architecture judgement across modern data platforms, integration patterns and analytical systems. Depth in platforms such as Snowflake, Databricks or Microsoft Fabric/Azure, with the ability to assess alternatives against business requirements.
- A grounding in data engineering, including ingestion, transformation, data modelling and pipeline reliability. Sufficient technical depth to challenge designs, review engineering decisions and guide delivery teams.
- Experience delivering analytics solutions that business teams use, including semantic models, consistent KPI definitions and reporting that supports financial and operational decisions.
- A practical understanding of the data foundations required for AI and agents, including structured and unstructured data, business context, metadata, lineage and secure, permission-aware access.
- Experience designing and implementing data operating models, governance, MDM and data quality frameworks, with clear accountability and processes that organisations can sustain.
- Experience leading teams and complex data initiatives, within an organisation or across client engagements, with sound judgement on scope, resources, costs and delivery risks.
- A depth of experience typically developed over 10+ years in consulting, data and technology leadership, or a related industry role, with a track record of shaping and delivering complex initiatives.
- An understanding of private equity and the needs of portfolio company CFOs, or experience working in environments where investment decisions and delivery must demonstrate clear business value.
Accordion is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We are committed to building a team that represents a variety of backgrounds, perspectives, and skills. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, colour, religion, marital status, age, national origin, ancestry, physical or mental disability, medical condition, pregnancy, genetic information, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, military status, or any other status protected under law.
Please note that as per Accordion policy, we do not accept unsolicited resumes from third-party recruiters unless such recruiters are engaged to provide candidates for a specified opening and in alignment with our inclusive diversity values. Any employment agency, person or entity that submits an unsolicited resume does so with the understanding that Accordion will have the right to hire that applicant at its discretion without any fee owed to the submitting employment agency, person or entity.
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