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. THE ROLE As our VP of Data, you'll step into one of the most critical leadership roles in Builders, where you will have a direct influence on Perk’s strategy and success. You will lead data into its next stage of scale, where data isn't just something the business relies on but something Perk builds its products on. Reporting to our President of Builders, you'll lead a 40+ person organisation spanning seven crafts and a business remit that covers Customer Care, Marketing, Finance, Revenue and People. You'll inherit a strong team and a real mandate: stop running data as a reactive service desk, and start running it as core infrastructure, engineered, scaled and trusted the same way we treat any product-critical system. Perk is at an inflection point. For years, data has served the business: powering dashboards, answering questions, keeping the lights on. The next era is defined by a different premise. Data isn't a support function, it's the raw material our products are built on, and increasingly the thing that separates us from everyone else chasing the same market. You'll be the executive who leads that shift, turning data from an operational necessity into Perk's strategic moat. This is a role for a data leader who thrives in fast-paced environments, knows how to scale high-performing organisations through senior leaders, and is credible enough technically to go deep when it matters. You'll sit at the leadership table, help define how we grow and make decisions, and be accountable for data across the whole company. WHAT YOU'LL DO Set the direction for data at Perk You'll own the company-wide data strategy and keep it in step with company priorities and product expansion. You'll translate the vision into core priorities and product needs, get leaders at every level bought in, and define and track the KPIs that show the quality, effectiveness and impact of data work across all crafts and domains. Treat data infrastructure as a core product The platforms this organisation builds and runs are things the rest of the company relies on daily. You'll invest in them with the same rigour a product team applies to a customer-facing feature: governed, reliable, and designed for scale from the start, not retrofitted after the fact. You'll own the data budget and make the build, buy and prioritisation calls that go with it. Move from reporting to insight, and from siloed support to strategic partnership Today's organisation answers questions. Tomorrow's anticipates them. You'll unify the craft, the standards and the roadmap across embedded teams so data speaks with one voice and sits at the table when the business makes its biggest calls. Raise the bar on governance, quality and scale You'll drive maturity across data tooling, documentation and governance as volume and complexity grow. You'll provide executive ownership of data architecture, governance, GDPR compliance and the ethical use of data. Lead through leaders You'll build a culture where craft leads and their teams take real ownership of outcomes, with clarity, autonomy and measurable results. You'll coach and grow your senior leaders, shape the operating model and org design as the function evolves, hire and retain top talent, and hold a high performance bar. Champion AI adoption, inside the organisation and beyond it The team already builds and ships AI-powered tooling. You'll push that further, make sure the wins get shared, and partner with our AI and data science teams to bring machine learning and advanced analytics into the product and the business where they create real leverage. Build genuine partnership across the business You'll be the data voice in the room alongside Product, Engineering, Finance, Customer Care, Marketing, Revenue and People leadership. You'll understand what your stakeholders need, articulate it, and close the gaps, shaping how they make decisions rather than just supporting the ones already made. WHAT SUCCESS LOOKS LIKE - You've built a high-performing, trusted data organisation that delivers measurable value across the business. - Perk uses data not just for reporting but to shape decisions, inform strategy and improve how we work. - The organisation operates with clear priorities, solid infrastructure and a strong sense of ownership, with a track record of shipping things the business actually uses. - Core data infrastructure is something our products are built on. - You're seen as a strategic partner by Builders and executive leadership, someone who shows up with a point of view, not just status updates. WHAT YOU'LL BRING - Experience leading data organisations in high-growth tech or SaaS scale-ups. You've built this muscle before. - A track record of leading and scaling organisations of 40 or more through senior leaders, including coaching leaders of leaders and hiring high-performing talent. - A data science background combined with data analytics and data engineering, with the technical credibility to go deep in any direction. - Experience owning a data strategy and budget at executive level, and presenting it to senior leadership. - A strong record of building trusted partnerships across Product, Engineering, Finance and Operations. - Technical fluency with modern data stacks and tools such as dbt, Snowflake, Airflow, and Looker or Tableau. - Deep understanding of data privacy, governance and compliance, including GDPR. - Excellent communication skills, with the ability to influence at the most senior levels and drive alignment across teams. - A strategic mindset, with the ability to move between company-level thinking and hands-on detail. 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