The posting
Location: Westminster, London
Salary: Competitive
Reporting to: Executive Editor
The Role
Reform UK is seeking an exceptional Data & Analytics Lead to build a best-in-class organisation-wide data and insight function from the party's Westminster headquarters. This is a broader opportunity than a conventional web or social analytics role: the successful candidate will help bring together disparate strands of performance, audience, membership, campaign and operational information into a coherent decision-making system.
The Data & Analytics Lead will establish the data stack, reporting definitions, access, dashboards and analytical rhythms that allow senior leaders and teams across Reform UK to see what is happening, understand why and act quickly. Digital channels will be an important part of the role, but the aim is to create a shared source of decision-ready insight across the organisation wherever useful data exists.
What you'll do
- Build the organisation-wide data and insight function
- Map the major data sources, owners, definitions, access rights, reporting rhythms and decision needs across Reform UK, identifying duplication, gaps and areas where information is currently fragmented.
- Design and implement a practical data stack that can bring together appropriate information from digital channels, website, search, email, ReformGo, membership, campaigns and other organisational systems.
- Establish clear definitions, baselines, targets and data-quality standards so senior leaders are not making decisions from conflicting numbers.
- Create a roadmap that moves the organisation from isolated reports and manual extracts towards trusted, timely and increasingly automated decision support.
Key Responsibilities
Build dashboards that drive decisions
Create intuitive dashboards and scorecards for senior leadership and operational teams, focused on decisions rather than data for its own sake.
Develop role-appropriate views so executives can see the organisation-wide picture while teams can drill into the detail they need to manage performance day to day.
Connect output and activity to outcomes wherever attribution is reasonable, helping teams understand movement from attention to owned relationship, repeat behaviour, membership, participation or other useful actions.
Automate recurring reporting and data preparation where practical, reducing manual effort and increasing the frequency and reliability of insight.
Ensure dashboards show trends, targets and context rather than isolated totals that can easily mislead.
Turn raw data into insight and action
Produce concise, decision-ready analysis that explains what changed, why it matters, what is likely driving it and what the organisation should do next.
Identify where audiences, members or supporters stop progressing through journeys and work with relevant teams to test improvements.
Create a disciplined test-and-learn framework with hypotheses, success criteria and post-test analysis so the organisation learns systematically rather than anecdotally.
Use segmentation and cohort analysis to uncover meaningful patterns in behaviour.
Embed data-driven decision-making across Reform UK
Work with the Executive Editor, Director of Operations and other senior stakeholders to establish regular performance and insight reviews that lead to impactful decisions.
Support Website, Video, Social, Communications, Campaigns, Membership, Operations and other teams with practical analysis, helping each function understand its own performance in the wider system.
Challenge weak assumptions and vanity metrics constructively, distinguishing signal from noise and making clear where the evidence is incomplete or attribution is uncertain.
Train colleagues to understand the dashboards and core metrics so data literacy increases throughout the organisation rather than becoming dependent on one analyst.
Own governance, compliance and trust
Be the internal expert on data governance for the analytics function, ensuring work aligns with UK GDPR, the Data Protection Act, ICO guidance and relevant organisational policies.
Work closely with the DPO and system owners on lawful basis, consent, minimisation, retention, access, pseudonymisation, URL/log hygiene and appropriate use of personal data.
Maintain clear data lineage, permissions and documentation so key metrics are reproducible and sensitive information is available only to those who genuinely need it.
Performance and Leadership:
- Build alerting and monitoring for material changes, broken journeys, unusual movements or data-quality failures where rapid intervention is valuable.
- Build trusted relationships with senior leaders, digital teams, campaigns, membership, operations, suppliers and technical partners so the data function is seen as an enabler rather than a reporting bottleneck.
- Communicate complex analysis in clear, plain English, surface new ideas and be confident presenting findings to senior decision-makers.
- Manage external analytics, BI, data or technology suppliers where required, ensuring integrations, costs and deliverables are properly controlled.
- Maintain political awareness and discretion when working with sensitive organisational, membership or campaign data and understand that some insights will be operationally or reputationally sensitive.
THE PERSON
We are looking for a senior data and analytics expert who has built practical insight capability before and can turn fragmented information into a trusted system that improves decisions.
Essential experience and capabilities
- A proven track record of establishing or materially improving a data, analytics, BI or insight operation in a complex organisation.
- Strong experience integrating disparate data sources and designing a practical reporting architecture rather than relying on disconnected manual reports.
- Demonstrable ability to build dashboards that colleagues actually use, with clear metrics, trends, context, drill-downs and decision relevance.
- Excellent analytical judgement: able to distinguish signal from noise, explain uncertainty, avoid misleading attribution and turn numbers into actionable insight.
- Strong technical competence with relevant data, analytics and BI tools, including the ability to work effectively with APIs, structured data, automation and modern dashboarding platforms.
- Experience defining KPIs, baselines, targets, cohorts and measurement frameworks across multiple functions or stages of a user/member journey.
- Outstanding communication skills, including the ability to explain complex analysis to non-technical senior stakeholders and influence decisions without hiding behind jargon.
- Expert understanding of UK GDPR, the Data Protection Act, ICO guidance, consent, minimisation, retention, access controls and good data-governance practice.
- Highly organised, self-sufficient and able to manage multiple stakeholders, systems, dependencies and priorities while maintaining clear documentation and data trust.
- Proactive and pragmatic: willing to build a useful first version quickly, automate what matters and improve iteratively rather than waiting for a perfect enterprise architecture.
- Strong interest in British politics and comfort handling sensitive information within a high-profile, mission-led political organisation where discretion and judgement are essential.
- Willingness to work full-time from Reform UK's Westminster HQ and flex around major political, campaign and reporting moments when rapid analysis is required.
Highly desirable
- Experience in political campaigning, media, membership organisations, subscriptions, CRM, advocacy or another environment where behaviour moves across multiple online and offline touchpoints.
- Strong SQL, Python/R, data-modeling or warehouse experience and the ability to work directly with technical teams when deeper implementation is required.
- Experience setting up experimentation, causal measurement, attribution or structured test-and-learn frameworks while communicating methodological limits clearly.
- A track record of changing organisational behaviour through insight - for example reallocating resource, improving reach/conversion/retention, changing messaging or stopping low-value activity.
Why join Reform UK?
This is a rare opportunity to build the intelligence layer of a fast-growing national political organisation rather than inherit a narrow analytics brief. The successful candidate will bring fragmented information together and shape how senior leaders make decisions across Reform UK.
