VP of Data

About Us Perk (formerly TravelPerk) is the intelligent platform for travel and spend management. Built to tackle the time-consuming, manual work that gets in the way of real work, our tools automate everything from travel bookings to expenses, invoice processing, and more. By eliminating this shadow work that wastes hours, erodes morale, and saps innovation, we're on a mission to power real work, with real impact. We're trusted by more than 12,000 companies worldwide, including Bolt, GoCardless, and Fabletics, and we're tackling the 7 hours of lost productivity per employee each week, a $1.7 trillion problem https://www.perk.com/shadow-work-report. Founded in 2015, Perk has grown into a global company of more than 1,800 people across 12 offices globally, with headquarters in London and Boston. We combine innovation, control, and simplicity to transform how businesses work and how people feel at work. At Perk, we're driven by our values, like being an owner, delivering a 7-star experience, and working as one team. We value curiosity, purpose, and mindset, not just knowledge, to unlock the power in your potential. Our talent team brings together leading minds from the travel, fintech, and SaaS industries, representing over 70 countries. If you're excited about having a real impact and shaping how millions of people experience work, we'd love you on the team. Visit www.perk.com http://www.perk.com to learn more. WHY THIS ROLE, WHY NOW 12,000+ companies trust Perk with their travel and spend, and we've brought both together in one intelligent platform. Every booking, expense and invoice adds to a wealth of data at your fingertips, and now is the moment to enable teams to use this data intelligently to power better decisions, precise reporting, and to create cost and time savings for our customers. Come lead the team that makes all of this possible. THE ROLE Data is at the core of Perk's innovation and the backbone of how we will evolve our products using new technology. As our VP of Data, you'll step into one of the most influential leadership roles in Builders (Data, Product, Design, Engineering) with a direct hand in shaping Perk's strategy and success, and we scale our multi product platform. Reporting to our President of Product and Technology, you'll lead a 40+ person organisation, with a remit that spans our Travel, Spend, and Events products. This role also spans our core functions and drives the business, including Customer Care, Marketing, Finance, Revenue and People. You'll join a strong, talented team with a clear mandate to shape how we create exceptional products at Perk, using our proprietary data. Across travel, spend, and events, Perk holds a wealth of data that touches every booking, expense, invoice and payment. Your opportunity is to reshape it so it powers smarter, more intelligent products that keep us on the cutting edge of what is possible. This is a role for a data leader who thrives in fast-paced environments, scales high-performing organisations through senior leaders, and has the technical credibility to go deep when it matters. You'll join a top-notch leadership team where we elevate each other, build shared strategies and win together. You'll help define how we grow and make decisions, with accountability for data across the whole company. YOUR TEAM You’ll lead a talented, collaborative and innovative team who are excellent at what they do. They span seven crafts: Data Product Partners, Reporting Analytics, Data Analytics, Analytics Engineering, Data Engineering, Data Science and Data Governance. Together they power the work the business relies on every day, and they’re ready to take data to its next stage of scale with you. YOUR MISSIONS 1. Strategy and Roadmap. More than ever data informs everything we do and is core to the AI native products that we build. You’ll own the long term vision and strategy for data architecture, analytics, predictive modeling, and AI product integration. Work hand in hand with Product, Engineering and Platform teams across Perk to turn machine learning and advanced analytics into products customers love. 2. Set the standard for trust. Own data governance, privacy and compliance, so security and regulatory requirements are built in from the start. Partner with our AI leadership to make sure the data behind every AI product is trusted, so everything we build earns customer confidence. 3. Build a data platform we rely on. Run data infrastructure like a flagship product: governed, reliable, built for scale from day one. You own the budget and the build, buy and prioritisation calls. 4. Lead with conviction. Unify the craft, standards and roadmap across teams so data speaks with one voice, and anticipates questions before they're asked. Be the data voice alongside Product, Engineering, Finance, Customer Care, Marketing, Revenue and People. 5. Grow leaders who grow the business. Coach your senior leaders, shape the operating model and org design, attract top talent, and build a culture of ownership, autonomy and measurable results. WHAT SUCCESS LOOKS LIKE - Data is the foundation of products that know our customers and anticipate what they need: personalised experiences, smarter recommendations and proactive insights, so they get answers before they have to ask. - You've built a high-performing, trusted data organisation that delivers measurable value across the business so all functions use and trust the data to shape decisions, inform strategy and change how we work, well beyond reporting. - Your teams operate with clear priorities, solid infrastructure and real ownership, and what they ship is core to our business and our success. - Lead and influence, partner with executive leaders to shape the questions and drive the decisions that matter most. WHAT YOU'LL BRING - Proven scale-up leadership. You've led data organisations in high-growth tech or SaaS, and you've built this muscle before. - Leader of leaders. You've scaled organisations of 40 or more through senior leaders, coached leaders of leaders and hired top talent. - Technical excellence and innovation. A data science background combined with analytics and data engineering, and the depth to push what's possible in any direction. - Executive leadership. You've owned a data strategy and budget at executive level, made the big build, buy and invest calls, and helped set company direction alongside senior leadership. - Modern stack fluency. Fluency across the modern data stack, such as dbt, Snowflake, conversational analytics and Looker or Tableau, plus the instinct to build your own tooling where it gives us an edge. - Trust by design. Deep understanding of data privacy, governance and compliance, including GDPR. - Partnership at every level. Proven trusted partnerships across Product, Engineering, Finance and Operations, and the communication skills to influence at the most senior levels and drive alignment. - Big picture and fine detail. You move comfortably between company-level strategy and hands-on specifics. AI at Perk AI is embedded in how we work across every function. The tools you'll use day-to-day are AI-enabled so you can move faster and spend more time on the work that matters. In practice, that means using AI to research and prioritise accounts, draft and refine outreach, handle customer interactions more effectively, synthesise information, and cut through shadow work - the invisible tasks that pull people away from the work only they can do - so you can focus on relationships and outcomes. How We Work At Perk, we take an IRL-first approach to work, where our team works together in-person 3 days a week. As such, this role requires you to be based within commuting distance of our hubs. We fundamentally believe in the value of meeting in real life to improve connectivity, productivity, creativity and ultimately making us a great place to work. For certain roles, we can help with relocation from anywhere in the world, English is the official language at the office. Please submit your resume in English if you choose to apply. Do not forget to submit an updated portfolio and/or resume. Perk is a global company with a diverse customer base, and we want to make sure the people behind our product reflect that. We’re an equal opportunity employer, which means you’re welcome at Perk regardless of how you look, where you’re from, or anything else that makes you, well, you. Protect Yourself from Recruitment Scams All official communication from Perk will always come from email addresses ending in @perk.com http://perk.com or @externalperk.com http://externalperk.com, our verified social media channels, or recruiters listed on our official LinkedIn page. We will never ask you to pay for equipment, training, or fees, request sensitive personal information such as bank details early in the process, or communicate through unofficial apps like WhatsApp, Telegram, or Signal. If you receive a message claiming to be from Perk that seems suspicious, please do not respond. Forward it to security [at] perk .com, and we will confirm whether it is legitimate. #LI-Hybrid