| Detail | For this role |
|---|---|
| Department | Leadership and Senior Management |
| Level | Leadership |
| Reports to | Chief Executive Officer |
| Direct reports | Head of Data Engineering, Head of Analytics, Data Governance Lead |
| Experience | 12+ years in data and analytics, with 4 years leading data teams |
Chief Data Officer job description template
Copy this job description, replace the text in square brackets and post it on your careers page or a job portal.
Job title: Chief Data Officer
Department: Leadership and Senior Management
Reports to: Chief Executive Officer
Location: [City], [office, branch or site]
About the role
A Chief Data Officer makes the company's data usable, trusted and safe. They set the data strategy, own the data platform and analytics teams, and decide how data is collected, defined, stored and shared. The role sits on the leadership team and turns scattered reports into one version of the truth that leaders act on. A good CDO raises data quality, gives teams self-serve analytics, protects personal data, and shortens the time from a business question to a reliable answer.
Key responsibilities
- Set the data strategy and roadmap, and align it with the priorities of sales, finance, operations and product.
- Own the data platform and pipelines that feed dashboards, and keep them reliable and documented.
- Define common metrics and master data so every team measures revenue, customers and orders the same way.
- Set data governance rules for access, quality, retention and privacy, and enforce them across departments.
- Build and lead the data engineering and analytics teams, and prioritise their work against business value.
- Protect personal and sensitive data, and keep the company aligned with applicable data protection rules.
- Give business teams self-serve dashboards and train them to read the numbers correctly.
- Run the analytics that answer the leadership's biggest questions on growth, cost and risk.
- Set standards for any models the company builds, and check they are fair, explainable and monitored.
- Report data quality, adoption and platform reliability to the CEO and board each quarter.
Requirements
- Degree in computer science, statistics, engineering or a related field
- Strong grounding in data platforms, analytics and governance
- A postgraduate degree in data or analytics is an advantage
- 12+ years in data and analytics, with 4 years leading data teams
KRAs and KPIs for a Chief Data Officer
Key result areas for the appraisal form, each with a KPI you can measure every month or quarter.
| Key result area | How to measure it |
|---|---|
| Data quality | Critical data sets meet the defined quality threshold on completeness and accuracy |
| Single source of truth | Core metrics reconcile across finance and operations reports with zero unexplained gaps |
| Analytics adoption | Active use of self-serve dashboards grows to the target across departments |
| Platform reliability | Data pipelines and dashboards refresh on schedule to the agreed uptime |
| Data governance | Access reviews and privacy controls completed on time with no major audit findings |
| Time to insight | Priority business questions answered within the committed turnaround |
Skills and tools
Tools used day to day: SQL, Data warehouse, Power BI or Tableau, Python, ETL tools.
Reporting line and career path
Next roles: Chief Information Officer, Chief Technology Officer
Interview questions for a Chief Data Officer
- How would you build one trusted source of truth when three departments report different revenue numbers?
- Walk me through how you would set up data governance in a company that has none today.
- How do you decide which analytics projects to fund when every team wants a dashboard?
- How do you protect personal data while still letting teams run useful analytics?
- Tell me about a data platform you built and how you kept it reliable.
- How do you get business teams to trust and actually use the dashboards you deliver?
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What does a Chief Data Officer do?
A Chief Data Officer owns the company's data strategy, platform and governance. They make data reliable and consistent, define common metrics, protect personal data and lead the data engineering and analytics teams. Their job is to turn scattered reports into one trusted source of truth that leaders use to make decisions.
What is the difference between a CDO and a CIO?
A Chief Information Officer runs the company's technology systems and infrastructure. A Chief Data Officer focuses on the data inside those systems: its quality, meaning, governance and use for analytics. The CIO keeps applications running, while the CDO makes the data in them trustworthy and useful for decisions.
What qualifications does a Chief Data Officer need?
Most Chief Data Officers hold a degree in computer science, statistics, engineering or a related field, with deep experience in data platforms, analytics and governance. A postgraduate qualification in data science or analytics helps. What matters most is a long record of building data teams and delivering trusted reporting.