At a Glance
- Tasks: Lead data and innovation strategy, transforming cultural insights into commercial opportunities.
- Company: Join Universal Music, the world's leading music company with a focus on innovation.
- Benefits: Inclusive culture, competitive salary, and opportunities for professional growth.
- Other info: Dynamic role with a focus on collaboration and continuous learning.
- Why this job: Shape the future of data and AI in the music industry while driving real impact.
- Qualifications: Extensive experience in data, analytics, and product innovation required.
The predicted salary is between 70000 - 80000 £ per year.
Music is Universal. It’s the passionate and dedicated team at Universal Music who help make us the world’s leading music company. From A&R to finance, legal to digital, sales to marketing, Universal Music is the place to grow and develop your career within a truly commercial and innovative business that leads in everything it does.
Everyone is welcome to apply for our roles, and we are determined to ensure that no applicant or employee receives less favourable treatment because of gender, race, disability, sexual orientation, religion, belief, age, marital status, background, pregnancy, or caring responsibilities. We also recognise the importance of diversity of thought within our teams and are fully committed to embracing the talents of people with autism, dyslexia, ADHD, and other forms of neurocognitive variation. We will always seek to make appropriate adjustments to recruitment, workplaces, and work processes to be fully inclusive to people with different needs and working styles.
The A Side: A Day in the Life
Universal Music Group for Brands (UMGB) is the dedicated brand agency of Universal Music Group, creating innovative business solutions that connect brands with culture through music. As Senior Director, Data & Innovation, you will shape the future of UMGB's data, insight and AI capabilities, leading the strategy, development and adoption of proprietary platforms that transform cultural intelligence into commercial advantage. You will combine product leadership, analytics, AI, engineering and innovation to build trusted enterprise solutions used by teams and clients globally.
The B Side: Skills & Experience
- Define and lead the global Data & Innovation strategy, aligning product, technology and commercial priorities.
- Own the roadmap for proprietary insight platforms, evolving MVPs into secure, scalable enterprise products.
- Surface data-driven cultural trends from UMG's proprietary datasets and translate them into actionable commercial opportunities.
- Develop category, audience and market insights that underpin strategic planning, client engagement and new business.
- Build intuitive self-service dashboards and workflows that democratise access to insights across global markets.
- Connect internal, partner and licensed datasets through modern APIs and data products to enrich intelligence capabilities.
- Champion data provenance, transparency and explainability through evidence-backed insights, confidence scoring and methodology documentation.
- Lead responsible AI implementation, ensuring generated outputs are source-grounded, explainable, governed and suitable for external use.
- Establish governance frameworks spanning AI, data quality, security, privacy, auditability and enterprise compliance.
- Lead strategic conversations around clean rooms, data partnerships, measurement and emerging technology with brands, agencies and platform partners.
- Drive continuous innovation across AI, creative technology and cultural intelligence, identifying new commercial opportunities.
- Partner with Strategy, Commercial, Engineering, Design and Analytics teams to translate business needs into scalable product solutions.
- Embed best practices across product development, engineering, testing, deployment, monitoring and operational excellence.
- Lead global product adoption, training and change management to maximise business impact.
- Develop and mentor a high-performing multidisciplinary team, fostering a culture of innovation, collaboration and continuous learning.
Personal Specification
- Extensive experience leading data, analytics, digital product or innovation functions.
- Proven track record delivering enterprise data products or SaaS platforms from concept through deployment.
- Strong commercial mindset with the ability to translate technical capability into client value.
- Excellent knowledge of SQL and modern analytics platforms; experience with Python, BigQuery and BI tools (Tableau, Looker, Power BI or Domo) is desirable.
- Experience with AI-enabled products, LLM workflows, explainability, governance and responsible AI.
- Strong understanding of enterprise architecture including APIs, authentication, RBAC, audit logging and cloud platforms.
- Experience establishing data governance, provenance and quality frameworks.
- Exceptional stakeholder management and communication skills, able to influence executive, commercial and technical audiences.
- Highly collaborative, strategically minded and comfortable operating in ambiguity while remaining hands-on when required.
- Demonstrated experience building and developing high-performing teams.
- Bachelor's degree in Business, Computer Science, Data Science, Engineering, Media or related discipline; MBA or postgraduate qualification desirable.
Leadership Attributes
- Visionary product and innovation leader.
- Commercially curious with strong strategic judgement.
- Passionate about music, culture, technology and creativity.
- Balances experimentation with enterprise discipline and governance.
- Trusted collaborator who inspires teams and builds strong stakeholder relationships.
Bonus Tracks: Why This Role Matters
This role sits at the intersection of data, culture, AI and commercial innovation. You will define how Universal Music Group for Brands turns proprietary cultural intelligence into differentiated products, trusted client solutions and new commercial opportunities, helping shape the next generation of data-led marketing.
Just So You Know... The company presents this job description as a guide to the major areas and duties for which the jobholder is accountable. However, the business operates in an environment that demands change and the jobholder's specific responsibilities and activities will vary and develop. Therefore, the job description should be seen as indicative and not as a permanent, definitive, and exhaustive statement.
Senior Director Data & Innovation – Kings Cross, London employer: Universal Music Group
Universal Music Group is an exceptional employer, offering a dynamic work culture that fosters creativity and collaboration within the vibrant music industry. As a Global Finance Assistant, you will not only gain invaluable hands-on experience but also benefit from mentorship by seasoned professionals, ensuring your growth and development in finance. This paid opportunity allows you to contribute to exciting live projects while being part of a globally recognised company that values innovation and employee engagement.
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We think you need these skills to ace Senior Director Data & Innovation – Kings Cross, London
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