Director/Head of Data & AI

Skills

About the Role

You will work closely with the Product Director, SVP Engineering, and CEO, owning topics critical to Upvest's product and business success. You'll define and drive a data product strategy that transforms transactional, market, and client data into a competitive differentiator for clients, internal teams, and regulators. You will set the vision for how data creates value through client-facing insights, internal intelligence, and productised data capabilities embedded within the Investment API, partnering closely with engineering and analytics to build the right foundations. You will own the AI product roadmap end-to-end, identifying the highest-impact use cases, prioritising ruthlessly, and driving them through to production, whether that means deploying LLM-powered tooling for internal operations, building intelligent features into the Investment API, or enabling real-time risk and compliance signals. You will translate AI capability into productised value with clear ROI, helping ship world-class AI systems that are operationally robust and commercially meaningful in a regulated environment. You will give the existing data and analytics teams the product leadership, direction, and strategic clarity they need, defining the operating model for the Data & AI product function and setting standards for discovery, delivery, and stakeholder alignment across Engineering, Compliance, Risk, Finance, and Product. You will attract great talent, coach your team, and create a culture of ownership and high standards, acting as the voice of data and AI in product and engineering leadership.

Requirements

• 7+ years in product and data management, with significant experience owning data, analytics, data science or AI products in B2B environments
• Proven track record in a regulated fintech, finance, or banking environment, with a deep understanding of API-first SaaS products
• Ability to quickly absorb complex domains such as data contracts, lakehouse architecture, and MLOps
• Experience translating AI/ML capabilities including LLMs and ML systems into productised value with measurable ROI
• Fluency in modern data stacks such as Kafka, Spark, Flink, Airflow, Dagster, Lakehouse/Warehouse patterns, and MLOps
• Demonstrated ability to define and own a data and AI product roadmap with clear business outcomes
• Strong command of modern product toolkits including continuous discovery, outcome-focused roadmaps, OKRs, and fast validation cycles
• Proven experience creating cross-functional alignment across Engineering, Compliance, Risk, Finance, and senior leadership
• Experience building and scaling inclusive, high-performing product or data teams

Responsibilities

• Define and drive a data product strategy across the organization
• Set strategy and direction for data foundations in partnership with engineering and analytics
• Own the AI product roadmap end-to-end
• Identify and prioritise the highest-impact AI use cases and drive them to production
• Deploy LLM-powered tooling for internal operations and product features
• Enable real-time risk and compliance signals
• Translate AI capability into productised value with clear ROI
• Define the operating model for the Data & AI product function
• Set standards for discovery, delivery, and stakeholder alignment across Engineering, Compliance, Risk, Finance, and Product
• Attract, coach, and develop data and AI product talent
• Represent data and AI in product and engineering leadership discussions

Benefits

• €20,000 per year budget for AI tools
• €1,500 annual budget for personal and professional training
• 30 days of annual leave
• Sports benefits
• Confidential professional coaching
• Flexibility to work remotely abroad for up to 183 days a year
• Competitive salary and employee equity program
• Flexible work environment
• Company-wide events such as UpFest, dinners, offsites and holiday party