Head of Engineering & Governance

Location: Icon 1, WA15 0AF

About Central Functions

Central Functions is formed of the teams and people that serve the entire business. These people are integral to the smooth running of the business; ensuring everyone is paid on time, that materials are sourced and arrive promptly, that we meet our legal obligations and that our health, safety, and security is safeguarded.

Why be the Head of Engineering and Governance at THG? 

THG is building a world-class data function to power one of the UK's largest e-commerce businesses. As Head of Engineering & Governance, you will own the quality, availability and structure of the data that enables every business-facing team across our Beauty and Nutrition divisions.

This is not a systems infrastructure role. You are not managing foundational platform plumbing — that sits with our technology partner, Ingenuity. Your remit is the layer above that: how data is structured, governed, made available and used across the business. You will set the direction for how THG gets the most from its data ecosystem, ensuring that analytics teams, data scientists, and business leaders can trust and act on the data they see.

You will lead three distinct functions: Engineering (how we build, structure and maintain our data domains), Governance (how we ensure quality, consistency and trust), and Reporting (how we present business performance data consistently across PLC). You will work closely with Ingenuity, who provide the foundational platform and first-layer pipelines, to set requirements and standards that flow through from ingestion to insight.

We are at an early stage of this journey. Our data foundations need significant work — we have talented analysts who have been doing engineering work without the structure or tools to do it well, governance that is essentially non-existent, and reporting that has grown organically without consistency. You will shape and deliver the roadmap that fixes this.

What you'll do:

Strategic Direction

• Set the vision and roadmap for data engineering, governance and reporting across THG PLC
• Define how data domains (Customer, Commercial, Operations) should be structured, stored and made available for analytics, data science and AI use cases
• Own the relationship with Ingenuity on platform and data matters — setting requirements, managing dependencies and ensuring PLC needs are reflected in the Ingen roadmap
• Evaluate where THG should use Ingen capability versus external tooling, and ensure every technology choice is documented and commercially justified
• Drive the business towards a single source of truth — reducing data silos, resolving mastering conflicts, and building confidence in our data across the organisation

Engineering & Data Platform

• Lead the Engineering team in building and maintaining the data pipelines, domain datasets and platform architecture that underpin analytics across Beauty and Nutrition
• Own the evolution of our GCP/BigQuery platform — from how data is ingested and stored, to how it is structured for downstream consumption
• Set engineering standards — version control, testing, error handling, documentation — and ensure they are consistently applied
• Champion the use of AI and automation in data engineering — this is a small team that needs to move fast, and we expect the use of AI-assisted pipeline development and management to be embedded in how we work

Data Governance

• Lead the Data Governance function from a standing start — we have no established governance framework and this is a greenfield opportunity to build it properly
• Own the framework for how THG manages data quality, metadata, data definitions and lineage across PLC
• Work with Ingenuity to ensure governance standards are consistent across both PLC and Ingen data infrastructure
• Build the culture and processes that make governance a positive enabler rather than a compliance burden

Reporting & BI

• Own the consistency and quality of all business performance reporting across THG PLC — dashboards, KPI reports, executive-level views
• Ensure that any regularly used report or dashboard is owned, maintained and built to a consistent standard — no more ad hoc reporting that lives outside a managed framework
• Lead the evolution of our Tableau estate and assess when alternative or complementary tooling should be introduced

Leadership & People

• Lead, develop and retain a high-performing team across three functions — Engineering, Governance and Reporting
• Set clear direction and accountability for each function, developing your direct reports into leaders in their own right
• Build a culture of engineering excellence, curiosity and continuous improvement
• Influence and educate senior stakeholders across the business — building data literacy and trust in data assets

What skills and experience do I need for this role?

Essential

• Significant experience (typically 8+ years) in data engineering, data platform or data leadership roles, with at least 3 years at a senior or head-of level
• Deep hands-on experience with GCP and BigQuery — you must have built and scaled data platforms on this stack
• Experience across multiple data domains — ideally at least two of Customer, Commercial and Operations
• Proven track record of evolving a business's data architecture — you can point to concrete examples of how you changed the way a business ingests, stores and consumes its data
• Strong understanding of data governance principles — data quality, metadata management, mastering and lineage
• Experience working with or alongside a technology partner or platform team (similar to our Ingenuity relationship)
• Demonstrated use of AI in data engineering contexts — AI-assisted pipeline development, automated quality monitoring, or similar
• Strong leadership and stakeholder management skills — able to influence at Director and C-suite level

Desirable

• Experience in e-commerce, retail or consumer goods
• Familiarity with Dataform, dbt or equivalent transformation frameworks
• Experience with data cataloguing or governance tooling (Collibra, Alation, DataHub or equivalent)
• Exposure to ML/AI platform requirements — understanding what good data foundations look like to enable data science and personalisation

What’s in it for me?

Career Development

• Access bespoke development programmes that have been designed and developed by our in-house L&D team.
• Continued development through our upskilling programme that is delivered in partnership with an industry-leading training provider.

Enhanced Leave

• 25 days annual leave plus bank holidays.
• Don’t want to work on your birthday? We don’t either! Enjoy your day off on us!
• Enhanced maternity and paternity pay, depending on length of service.
• Up to 10 days compassionate leave.
• Buy back up to 3 days each year.
• Unlock 2 days volunteer leave after 12-months.

Wellbeing Support

• Access face-to-face and virtual appointments with our in-house GP.
• Access our 247 Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) which is provided by Bupa.
• State-of-the-art on-site gym.
• Access to our on-site physio.

Other Perks

• Save up to 12% on the cost of personal tech through our salary sacrifice scheme.
• Subsidised bus pass from Manchester City Centre to our ICON office.
• Up to 50% staff discount on THG brands.
• On-site staff shop.
• Know someone who would be perfect for THG? Refer them and get up to £1000 when they pass their probation.
• Anniversary gifts when you hit 5 and 10 years of service.