Director of Analytics
Confirmed on the employer's own hiring board on Oct 20, 2026. First seen by Alion on Oct 14, 2026. Focal Systems scores A on the Alion truth index.
Type: Full-time, salaried employment
Location: Remote in the UK only.
Salary Range: £121,000 - £137,000 dependant on experience + stock options
Focal Systems is the industry leader in retail AI solutions. We are headquartered in San Francisco, California with operations in Canada and the UK, and a tech-hub in Poland. We are a Deep Learning first company. Our mission is to automate and optimize brick and mortar retail using deep learning computer vision. Focal Systems has been deployed at scale with some of the top retailers in the world.
We seek smart, creative and passionate people who want to help build a great and enduring company and deploy Deep Learning to the world!
About the Role
As Director of Analytics, you will own the full path from raw data to decision: the data warehouse, the transformation layer, and the BI tooling analysts and the business actually touch. You will set the technical direction for the analytics stack, lead a small team of analysts and analytics engineers, and be the person executive stakeholders come to for a straight answer backed by solid numbers.
This is a hands-on leadership role. You will manage the team, but you are also expected to review models, dig into the warehouse yourself, and make the tooling calls, not just delegate them.
What We Are Looking For
- You are a rigorous thinker who treats data as evidence, not decoration, and holds your team to that same standard
- You have strong technical chops in SQL and the modern data stack (warehouse, transformation layer, BI layer), and you can go deep on any of them
- You have led or grown a team of analysts or analytics engineers, and you know how to hire, mentor, and set a bar
- You are comfortable owning ambiguous, open-ended problems, from "what should we even be measuring" through to a shipped dashboard
- You communicate findings crisply to technical and non-technical audiences, including at the executive level
- You have opinions on BI tooling grounded in experience, not just familiarity, and can make a real build-vs-buy or migrate-vs-stay case
What You Will Be Doing
- Own the analytics architecture end to end, from the Snowflake warehouse and dbt transformation layer through to the BI/reporting layer used across the business
- Set and evolve BI tooling strategy, including evaluating whether our current tool, Sigma, remains the right fit versus alternatives like Looker, Tableau, Power BI, Hex, or Mode as the team and data volume grow
- Lead, hire, and develop a team of analysts and analytics engineers
- Partner with Product, Customer Success, and Engineering to define key metrics, build self-serve reporting, and translate business questions into well-scoped analytical work
- Establish data modeling standards, testing, and governance across dbt models so the numbers hold up under scrutiny
- Own data security and access controls across the warehouse and BI layer, ensuring sensitive retail, store, and operational data is properly governed, access is scoped by role, and we meet our customers' data handling requirements
- Build and own executive-facing reporting on core business metrics such as product availability, store performance, and inventory accuracy
Requirements
- 8+ years of experience in analytics, with at least 3 years directly managing or leading a team
- Deep hands-on SQL, including complex CTEs, window functions, and query optimization
- Real experience running a cloud data warehouse, Snowflake strongly preferred
- Hands-on experience with dbt or a comparable transformation layer
- Track record evaluating, migrating, or scaling BI tools, with the ability to speak concretely to tradeoffs between tools like Sigma, Looker, Tableau, and Power BI
- Experience translating messy operational data into decisions executives act on
- Excellent written and verbal communication, with the ability to influence cross-functional partners without authority
- Comfortable operating remote-first, across a distributed team
Nice to Have
- Experience with IoT, sensor, or computer-vision-derived data (high-volume, noisy, real-time)
- Python for analytics engineering or pipeline work
- Experience scaling an analytics function inside a growth-stage startup
- Background in retail, grocery, logistics, or other operationally complex environments
- Experience mentoring managers, not just individual contributors
Why Focal Systems
Strong Values and Mission - We are a tightly-knit team with an ambitious mission and a strong set of core values, which define our approach to business and have successfully guided us since inception.
Exceptional Team - We are a team of hard-working, fun-loving professionals from some of the most eminent universities, research labs, and tech companies of our time. We pride ourselves on recruiting exceptional individuals to help us redefine the state-of-the-art.
Outstanding Partners - We work with 10+ of the largest retailers in the world and have a world-class roster of investors, advisors and partners to support & advise us in our endeavors.
What we offer
We care deeply about the health, happiness, and wellbeing of all of our employees. We offer:
- Competitive Salary & Attractive Stock
- Generous Paid Time Off
- Pension
- Sick Leave
- Parental Leave
- Learning and Development Budget