Product Owner, Data & Analytics

SunSource is a growing company seeking a highly talented and passionate Product Owner of Data and Analytics to lead the strategy, development, governance, and delivery of enterprise data, reporting, and advanced analytics. This role will work closely with executive, business, and technology leadership to understand enterprise objectives and build an analytics organization that delivers insights, drives growth, improves margin, strengthens operational excellence, and enhances decision-making across SunSource to support Organic and Inorganic Growth.

The Product Owner is responsible for the analytics ecosystem-including Power BI, Databricks, data modeling, data governance, data catalog and master data management practices. The role leads the BI Analysts and partners with the Data Engineering teams, sets direction, prioritizes the roadmap, and ensures enterprise value creation through high-quality analytics solutions.

As a member of the IT Leadership Team, the Product Owner will contribute to IT strategy, governance, prioritization of initiatives, budget planning, and alignment to the business strategy.

To learn more about our exciting culture at SunSource and hear from our associates why they love being a part of our growing company, please visit https://www.sun-source.com/careers

Responsibilities and Qualifications

Key Responsibilities

Analytics & Data Focus Areas

• Enterprise Analytics Strategy & Product Ownership
• Power BI Reporting & Visualization Standards
• Drive Data Governance, Data Quality & Consistency
• Agile Delivery, Scrum Leadership & Backlog Prioritization
• Cross-Functional Business Partnership & Enablement
• Advancing Analytics Maturity across the Enterprise

Enterprise Analytics Strategy & Product Ownership

• Partner with FP&A, Strategy and Business Owners to advance our capabilities to support growth
• Develop and own the enterprise analytics strategy, including a multi-year roadmap.
• Serve as product owner for analytics, prioritizing the backlog and driving adoption.
• Establish standards for reporting, semantic models, data definitions, and data quality.
• Partner with business leaders to align analytics initiatives with strategic programs.
• Define and manage KPIs, dashboards, and insights that support enterprise objectives.
• Own the quality and consistency of enterprise reporting - reports and data
• Lead business teams on new capabilities to advance the business
• Lead a Data & Analytics Steering Committee to prioritize and govern data and analytics investments to meet the enterprise goals

Team Leadership & Delivery

• Lead, develop, and coach the BI Analyst team responsible for reporting, dashboards, UX design, and business insights.
• Ensure strong alignment between reporting, engineering, governance, and business stakeholders.
• Develop team structure, goals, and a high-performance analytics culture.
• Manage and build third party vendor partnerships for analytics delivery
• Manage and optimize the BI & Analytics budget
• Lead Scrum ceremonies including sprint planning, backlog refinement, standups, and retrospectives.
• Manage capacity planning and ensure timely delivery of analytics solutions.
• Drive continuous improvement in development processes, automation, testing, and documentation.

Data Governance & Data Management

• Establish and lead the organization's data governance program.
• Define enterprise data standards, data quality policies, and metadata practices.
• Partner with business units to improve ownership of master data domains.
• Ensure scalable, governed data models that support enterprise-wide reporting.
• Improve trust, lineage, and transparency of enterprise data.

Business Alignment & Industry Expertise

• Understand key aspects of the distribution business model including pricing, margin, inventory, and sales.
• Develop insights that improve growth, margin, customer experience, and operational efficiency.
• Act as a trusted advisor to senior leaders on analytics opportunities and impact.

Leadership Behaviors & SunSource Mindset Requirements

• Must be able to manage a large program or project delivery from a tactical level, and provide guidance where necessary to sponsorship/leadership
• Must handle conflict resolution professionally.
• Must influence without authority in a highly matrixed environment.
• Must be able to work in an environment where things are not always clear and then be able to provide clarity
• Must master different communication methods and pivot quickly according to business needs.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor’s or Master’s Degree in Analytics, Computer Science, MIS, Data Science, Engineering, or related field.
• 5+ years of experience in analytics, BI, or data engineering
• 2+ years leading analytics teams
• Expert experience with Power BI including DAX, semantic models, and visualization.
• Preferred experience with Databricks, SQL, and Lakehouse ETL/ELT pipelines.
• Experience serving as product owner for analytics or data-driven initiatives.
• Strong Agile/Scrum leadership experience.
• Excellent communication and executive presentation skills.
• Experience in Distribution or Manufacturing preferred.
• After hours availability and travel are required.

Key Competencies

Collaboration/Teamwork: Develops cooperation and teamwork while participating in a group of people, working toward solutions that generally benefit all involved parties.

Communication: Creates an atmosphere in which timely and high-quality information flows smoothly both up the organization and down, inside the organization; encourages open expression of ideas and opinions.

Customer Focus: Demonstrates concern for meeting internal and external customers’ needs in a manner that provides satisfaction for the customer. (“Customers” can be co-workers, peers, or management as well as external consumers of a service such as students, parents, or community members.

Energy/Drive for Results: Demonstrates concern for achieving or surpassing results against an internal or external standard of excellence. Shows a passion for improving the delivery of services with a commitment to continuous improvement. Consistently maintaining a high activity or productivity level and potentially sustaining long working hours.

Technical/Functional Expertise: Applies and improves extensive or in-depth specialized knowledge, skills, and judgment to accomplish a result or to serve one’s “customers” effectively. (Customers can be co-workers, peers, or management as well as external consumers of a service.)