Head of Data Science and Analytics – W/M

Lesaffre Digital & Data ambitions 

Lesaffre’s Digital & Data journey started some years’ ago with a strong push to encourage and cross-fertilize initiatives across the organization. Business impact of some of these first actions (Sales efficiency tools, My Lesaffre App for Bakers, digitalization of key operations etc…) have confirmed the importance of accelerating this journey.

Digital & Data are to become a fundamental transformative force for Lesaffre growth. On one hand, as a lever to increase customer centricity and user experience. On the other, to bring operational excellence across the company.

More concretely, some of these opportunities are: 

• Further empower salesforce & leverage digital marketing to capture, convert and keep our future and current clients and consumers  
• Leverage omnichannel strategies to sell, serve and delight our customers
• Turn our industrial operations even more intelligent and efficient (digitalization of processes, automatization of low added value tasks, industrial productivity, supply chain performance …)
• Contribute to unlocking further value and efficiency on R&D processes
• Empowering transversal functions to deliver better user experiences

To accelerate this journey, a substantial additional effort is being put in place. The recent arrival of a Chief Digital & Data Officer (ExCom member) has marked the beginning of this acceleration. With a more structured and results oriented journey, CD&D officer is creating a new organisation. Data and Tech is at the heart of the transformation. A Data and Tech Factory has been created to valorise Lesaffre’s data assets, and deliver use cases, advanced analyses, governance capacities, and innovation. Both embedded in the Business and at a Global level, digital & data talents will be crucial to this transformative journey in the impact to business as well as the development of D&D capabilities.

In this context, Lesaffre is recruiting a Head of Data Science and Analytics

Job position: 

This position, reporting to Data strategy, Data factory and Tech Director, will play a fundamental role in the newly launched acceleration journey. The purpose of the position is to provide guidance, expertise, and strategic leadership in data science and data analytics. It aims at leading the development of data science models, algorithms, and AI in a collaborative environment and with a business-oriented mindset. The Head of Data Science and Analytics will help drive, develop, and deliver a program of transformative, innovative, and business impactful data driven products and services that support the Digital & Data goals of Lesaffre (for instance to drive business growth, innovation, and operational efficiency). She/he will collaborate with other Digital and Data experts, D&D directors and cross-functional stakeholders to identify business opportunities, define data-driven strategies, and develop innovative solutions. This role requires a deep understanding of advanced analytics, machine learning, and statistical modelling, as well as the ability to translate complex data insights into actionable business recommendations.

She/he will have the following responsibilities:  

• Contribute to build, drive, and deliver a program of tailored data-driven solutions embarking state-of-the art analytics or AI
  • Collaborate with stakeholders to understand their data requirements and deliver insights
  • Work as one team with Digital & Data experts (in particular Head of Data Architecture and Engineering, Data product owners, D&D directors, and D&D Leads) to deliver and maintained innovative data products, MVPs, embarking analytics and/or AI
  • Participate to feasibility assessments of data projects and use cases in support of the Chief Digital and Data Officer, the Data strategy, Data factory and Tech Director, and D&D transformation directors
  • Work with the other experts of the Data&Tech Factory establishing agile, product and result-driven ways-of-working

 

• Lead and coordinate efforts on Data Science and Analytics in whole Lesaffre
  • Lead a team in charge of Data Science and Analytics. Recruit, and actively contribute to people growth and development within the team. It may include both internal and external resources (e.g. consultants, start-ups, universities) as the team maturity evolves.
  • Manage the data science team in an agile, fun, collaborative, innovative, and impact driven manner that also feeds on the excitement of the goldmine of data opportunities at Lesaffre.
  • Coordinate the community of data analysts (and eventually data scientists) all across Lesaffre’s group. Ensure continuous improvement and training of the teams

 

• Co-establish, co-lead, and co-animate product development /feature teams.
  • Together with the others leaders of the Data & Tech Factory, you will be establishing Feature Teams (or squads). A Feature Team in a multidisciplinary team assembled to develop or maintain products addressing data use cases. It is composed of diverse internal and/or external data professionals. Depending on the use case, it can include (not exhaustively) Data product owners, Data Scientists, Data Analysts, Data engineers, full stack developers, UX experts or D&D Leads.
  • Empower the Feature Teams; particularly empower your team members detached to a feature team with the right amount of guidance, autonomy, availability, and coaching.
  • Participate to improvement of the ways-of-working

 

• Thought Leader and on data Analytics and Artificial intelligence
  • Research on a prospective basis, cutting-edge algorithmic approaches and (new) data sources, enabling the development of innovative applications with high impact on all or some of the Group’s activities.
  • Perform a continuous watch on industry trends and advancements in data science. Keep up-to-date with industry trends and emerging technologies in data science
  • Represent the company expertise in data science externally, participate to regular community meetup/events
  • Facilitate the internal ecosystem and an external network to foster continuous learning (centres for scientific research, university laboratories, advisory experts, startups, etc.).
  • Act as the algorithmic guru and evangelist, driving education on advanced analytics / artificial intelligence techniques throughout the business.