Who are we?

The future of energy is digitised, decarbonised, and localised. At SmartestEnergy Australia, we need revolutionary thinkers to help our customers make the most of this new landscape, thinking differently to find smart solutions to complex problems. Formed in 2020, we’re an agile business driven by entrepreneurial thinking. As a subsidiary of the Marubeni Corporation and SmartestEnergy Limited UK, we also have strong investment and infrastructure behind us.

We have our corporate office in Sydney CBD and another office in Melbourne. Further expansion is planned for 2025 and beyond which means global career opportunities for you, with plenty of potential to explore new markets.

Flexibility is vital to success in our business and many of our staff work flexibly in many ways, including part-time, remotely or a mix of remote/office. Please talk to us about what flexibility means to you and don’t let anything stop you from applying. When you join our Team, you will have the opportunity to contribute and make an impact every single day.

This role is based in our Sydney or Melbourne office with Hybrid working arrangement.

Role Purpose

Reporting to the VP IT, Change & Data, the Data and AI Manager will be responsible for developing the strategy and leading the execution of Smartest Energy’s data activities including maintaining data integrity, making data easy to find and use, making it clear who is accountable for data.

Key Responsibilities:

Data Strategy & Roadmap

• Proactive leadership and accountability for all data activity
• Stay up to date with latest industry developments in big data, analytics, and machine learning (AI)
• Define a long-term vision/strategy for data and translate into a roadmap, defining OKR’s to clearly measure progress.
• Make recommendations for the use of Data Science and AI to solve business problems (as part of the data strategy or otherwise)
• Work across Smartest group (UK, USA) to Identify global synergies opportunities
• Develop business cases for ExCo approval
• Act as a Change Lead for some data centric initiatives gathering requirements and providing direction to developers

Maintain data Integrity

• Develop processes and tools to monitor and analyze data accuracy and data asset utilisation.
• Drives the resolution of cross functional data quality issues eg Retail contract data quality issues and representing IT at OpCo
• Ensure data issues, once they are identified, are tracked, proiritised, and managed through to resolution (through the change management process) and that measures are implemented to prevent recurrence.

Make data easy to find and Use

• Support citizen developers (technical business users) to develop, deploy and maintain advanced analytical models by guiding them as to the preferred datasets to use for development.
• Oversee Citizen Developer activity in the Explore zone ensuring any datasets they create have the minimal level of documentation to ensure recuse across the business
• Build a deep understanding of SmartestEnergys data including what is available in the Synapse data warehouse and what additional source system and market data may need to be ingested to support Citizen Developers
• Champion and drive business-wide use of data products
• Maintain the Purview Data Catalogue over the Synapse Data Warehouse and drive end user adoption of Purview ensuring it meets the needs IT and citizen developers
• Maintain data definition and data processes / flows documentation in the Wiki
• Train and support Citizen Developers and business users in PowerBI & provide overall governance of the PowerBI environment

Make it clear who is accountable for data

• Document and maintain data ownership, custodianship, and stewardship across the business
• Build credible relationships with Citizen Developers, Data Owners and their Data Stewards

Performance Indicators:

Data Strategy & Roadmap

• Robust data strategy and roadmap in place with associated KPIs

Maintain data Integrity

• Data accuracy measured and improved eg Finance Variance on Delivery, Forecasting performance, EOT data quality, NMI reconciliation

Make data easy to find and Use

• Shortens new analysts onboarding by reducing the time to be effective in creating business insights
• Drives Purview adoption and ensures metadata better than 90% complete

Make it clear who is accountable for data

• All staff are clear on who are the accountable data owners, custodians, and stewards for key datasets

Experience:

• Educated to degree level or relevant management experience.
• Experience in Data position in Utilities, managing both Data Engineering and Business Intelligence Teams preferably in the Energy Market
• Experience leading a team and upskilling others.
• Experience setting Data strategy and roadmaps.
• Demonstrated hands-on experience with AI, Data Science and data engineering
• Previous experience of working with the business to influence decisions and make recommendations.
• Developed and presented data centric business cases

Knowledge:

• In-depth knowledge of data governance practices
• In depth knowledge of the DMBOK
• Knowledge of the Australian electricity retail and wholesale markets
• Knowledge of big data, data engineering, and cloud infrastructure concepts
• Proficiency with PowerBI, Python, SQL and Excel required
• Accreditation in data management such as DAMA – CDMP an advantage.

Personal Attributes:

• Great organizational skills
• Ability to converse with technical and non-technical audiences on complex issues/solutions.
• Must be a team player and can work with multi-functional areas and influence success.
• Must be passionate about developing Data standards and processes to drive forward and implement tangible and sustainable improvements.

• Trusted and respected as a thought leader who can influence and persuade business and leaders.
• Comfortable, experienced, and accomplished at working with business executives, and able to push back in a professional and diplomatic way
• Highly collaborative and supportive of business and of its ideals and strategies
• Unflappable in the face of opposition to change ideals.
• Practical in approach to decision making and problem solving that is principle-based.
• Organised, analytical and detail driven with strong written and presentation skills.
• Strong Business Acumen
• Excellent communication skills

What we offer:

• A genuine commitment to smarter working – we recognise your work/life balance matters
• Competitive base salary & yearly bonuses
• Leave Benefits - Paid Parental, Service, Wellbeing & Birthday leave
• Employee Assistance Program - SONDER
• Employee Health and Wellbeing Platform - WHEREFIT
• Personal development and coaching opportunities.

Diversity:

Celebrating our inclusive and diverse culture is core to what we do. We value everybody irrespective of background, disability, religion, gender identity, sexuality, or ethnicity.

We know that for our business to thrive we need diverse talent with a range of backgrounds, skills, and capabilities in each of the countries in which we operate. We view diversity as one of the key enablers that helps our business to grow.