Director of Data

About Us

What if your work could drive change in a globally established industry, shaping processes that touch every corner of the world? At Forto, we are at the forefront of change, harnessing the power of AI to revolutionise logistics. We want to reinvent digital supply chains to be transparent, frictionless and sustainable. From day one, our mission has been to simplify global trade – creating a seamless and efficient logistics process.

Your role & Mission

As Data Director here at Forto, you will be responsible for creating a unified data organisation consisting of Data Science, Data Analytics and Data Engineering. You will dramatically raise the profile of data across the business, partnering with stakeholders in a number of domains to assess and support their data needs. You will own and implement a company wide data strategy, prioritizing competing demands into one cohesive and well understood approach.

What you will do

Be responsible for the teams (each with their own manager/technical lead) that own the 3 “pillars” of data at Forto: Data Engineering, Data Analytics and Data Science, bringing them into a unified org whilst also encouraging and respecting their specialised skills

Ensure that the Data org operates a Centre of Excellence, supporting and educating the “customers” of data across the business.

Break down siloes and form strong working relationships with stakeholders.

Define and shape a data strategy fit for purpose across our analytical and agentic business needs.

Own data governance and quality. Establish the policies, standards, ownership model, and forums that make data trustworthy. Manage day-to-day compliance with GDPR and emerging AI regulation, and set practical guardrails for data and AI use.

Sponsor the data platform. Work with engineering and architecture to maintain a reliable, performant, cost-aware platform across ingestion, storage, transformation, BI, and ML. Make build/buy/partner recommendations and manage key vendor relationships.

Scale analytics and AI capability. Define how use cases are sourced, prioritised, productionised, and governed. Curate a portfolio that balances quick wins, strategic bets, and long-term capability building. Champion self-service BI without losing control of metrics and a single source of truth.

Partner across the business. Build strong working relationships with leaders in every function. Translate technical choices into commercial language, resolve cross-functional disputes over data ownership and priorities, and make sure the function is genuinely useful to the people it serves.

Required Skills and Experience

• Data leadership track record. 7+ years in data, analytics, or related disciplines, including 3+ years leading teams that span more than one sub-discipline (e.g. engineering and analytics, or analytics and science).

• Strategy and roadmap experience. Has shaped and delivered a data strategy for a business

• Centre of Excellence or shared-services exposure. Has worked inside, built, or substantially evolved a CoE-style function: service model, hub-and-spoke design, intake and prioritisation.

• Modern data architecture. Strong working knowledge of warehouse/lakehouse patterns, streaming, orchestration, BI, and the basics of GenAI. Cloud platform fluency (AWS / GCP / Azure) sufficient to challenge decisions.

• Governance and compliance. Hands-on accountability for data governance, quality, and regulatory compliance (GDPR at minimum). Comfortable owning data risk at a working level.

• AI and ML operating experience. Has experience supporting GenAI usecases and setting a strategy that supports productisation

• Senior stakeholder management. Proven ability to partner with department heads and VP-level leaders across functions. Comfortable in difficult conversations and resetting expectations without burning relationships.

• Commercial fluency. Owns and defends a budget; builds business cases with realistic benefits and ranges of uncertainty; manages vendor relationships pragmatically.

• People leadership. Hires, develops, and retains managers and senior ICs.

• Strong written and verbal communication. Can move between a strategy document, a leadership update, and a working session with engineers without losing credibility in any of them.

Preferred Skills and Experience

• Experience in a high-growth or scale-up environment where the data function had to be built or significantly reshaped, not just maintained.

• Background in industries with operational complexity, real-time data needs, or supply chain / logistics / marketplace dynamics.

• Hands-on past as a data engineer, analytics engineer, or data scientist — enough to retain technical credibility with the team.

• Experience implementing a data mesh or federated data product model.

• Familiarity with EU AI Act and emerging AI governance frameworks.

• Experience evaluating, procuring, and rolling out AI tooling (LLMs, coding assistants, analytics copilots) at organisational scale, including licensing and policy.

• Track record of contributing to public technical discourse — conference talks, writing, open source, or community involvement.

• Graduate qualification in a quantitative, computer science, or related discipline.

• Multi-language working environments and experience operating across European or global teams.

Don’t fit all of our criteria? That’s okay! We know that you might be hesitant to apply if you don’t meet all our requirements, but here at Forto, we pride ourselves on embracing diverse perspectives and celebrating potential. If you are passionate about this position and the Forto values, please apply anyway. There could be a place for you in this role - or another one that’s a perfect fit!

Why work with us?

Our team is hard-working, constantly seeking to maximise the impact of their work, but we put our people first, always winning with care. We value efficient systems and swift, direct communication. We want everyone to have their time to speak, so that we can embrace diverse perspectives to help drive towards solutions always.