Head of Data in London

About Lawhive

Our mission is to make the law accessible to everyone. The legal industry is built on technology and processes that haven’t been updated in hundreds of years - that's why we've reinvented the entire model from the ground up with our own bespoke AI operating system at the core. Lawhive is a regulated law firm with an AI-native platform built to amplify expertise and revolutionise the way people practice law, leading to exceptional outcomes for clients and lawyers. Lawhive Labs is how we bring this vision to life. It's our frontier lab that combines top engineering, design, AI and legal talent from around the world, joining forces to build the future of law. We’re backed by top-tier investors, including Google Ventures, Balderton Capital and TQ Ventures, and in December 2025, we secured $60M Series B funding round to facilitate international expansion and to grow our team. We’re headquartered in London and in 2025 successfully launched in the US…and we’re just getting started.

Data at Lawhive

We are building the world's first AI-native consumer law firm, and the data foundations underneath it have to match that ambition. Over the next 12 months, the data function will:

• Transform our internal data stack so that anyone in the business can explore, dig into, and act on data without filing a ticket, using the latest AI tooling.
• Build the data integration playbook for acquired firms as we expand our firm portfolio. Each firm runs different systems and we need a canonical Lawhive data model that scales.
• Drive self-serve adoption so business teams move faster and the data team is no longer the bottleneck for routine questions.

The data team today is four people: a Senior Data Engineer, an Analytics Engineer, and two Data Analysts. The Head of Data will lead this team, report directly to the CTO, and work closely with Strategy, Finance, and business functions. Our current stack: BigQuery, dbt, Hex, Dagster, K8s, Claude Code, GCP and AWS infrastructure. We expect the Head of Data to be hands-on technical as well as strategic, and have strong opinions on what stays, what goes, and what comes next.

The Role

As Head of Data, you'll lead Lawhive's data function through a step-change in capability. Reporting directly to our CTO, Jaime, you'll own the data stack, build the data integration capability for acquired firms, and run a small high-quality team that partners with every function in the business. This role is for someone who has done it before. You've migrated a scaleup's data stack end-to-end. You've integrated acquired-company data into a canonical model. You're AI-native in how you work and in what you build. And you're comfortable telling a CTO 'this stack is wrong, and here's what we do instead.'

What You'll Do

• Diagnose and improve our data stack in your first 12 months. Propose a target architecture against our goals of AI-native self-serve-first analytics (warehouse, modelling, semantic layer, BI, exploration). Replace tools where needed.
• Design and own the acquisition data integration playbook. Build a canonical Lawhive data model that future systems map to. Make firm onboarding a repeatable weeks-not-months process.
• Make Lawhive self-serve on data. Build the platform, modelling, and semantic layer that lets business users explore, drill in, and answer their own questions.
• Define and enforce data quality SLAs. Freshness, accuracy, ownership coverage, end-to-end lineage.
• Lead and grow the data team. Coach analysts into stronger cross-functional partners. Hire and onboard a data integration engineer in year 1.
• Partner with Strategy on metric definition. You own instrumentation, semantic layer, and accuracy. They own the metric tree. Together you run the metric council.
• Drive AI-native practices inside the data function. Use LLMs for entity resolution, schema mapping, data quality, and exploration. Set the bar for how a data team works in 2026.
• Be a key cross-functional partner to Product, Engineering, Finance, Strategy, and the operational teams within acquired firms.

What you'll bring

You'll be a great fit for this role if:

• You've owned a data stack end-to-end at a B2B SaaS scaleup. You can walk us through what you built, changed, why, and what you'd do differently.
• You've built repeatable data integration patterns at an M&A-heavy company or rollup. Ideally a B2B SaaS context. You know how to handle messy legacy systems and conflicting schemas.
• You have strong opinions on the modern data stack and data modelling best practices: warehouse, modelling, semantic layer, BI tooling, exploration. You can defend trade-offs.
• You're AI-native in your craft. You use Cursor, Claude, dbt AI, agentic notebooks daily. You've shipped AI features inside a data team (LLMs for entity resolution, schema mapping, data quality, exploration). You think LLMs change how data work gets done structurally, not just incrementally.
• You're commercially literate. You can partner with functional heads as a peer and translate business questions into data infrastructure.

Nice-to-haves:

• Experience standing up a semantic layer (LookML, Cube, dbt semantic layer).
• Background at a PE-backed software rollup or M&A-heavy SaaS.
• Familiarity with legal services, legal tech, or regulated marketplaces.

Interview process

• Introductory call with our Talent team.
• 1:1 with our CTO.
• Practical assessment: stack diagnosis and migration approach on an anonymised Lawhive context.
• 1:1 with our Head of Strategy, Planning, and Performance.
• Values interview with our Founders.

We offer!

Benefits:

• Meaningful early-stage equity at one of Europe’s fastest growing startups.
• 33 days’ annual leave (25 + bank holidays) plus your birthday off.
• Pension contribution via Nest.
• 20% off legal fees through Lawhive.
• Top-spec Macbook.
• Regular team building activities and socials!

Diversity at Lawhive

At Lawhive we know that diversity of thought is critical to delivering outlier outcomes. As such, we’re always working hard to ensure we build a diverse, inclusive team. We’re not yet where we want to be but as we scale we’ll only ever increase the focus we apply to this.