Senior Director, Analytics & Data Science

Job Location:

PRIMARY PURPOSE:

Simon Property Group is seeking an experienced and accomplished Sr. Director of Analytics & Data Science to join its recently launched Data & Analytics practice as one of the founding team members. As we continue to transform the role of shopping centers in a digital world, we aim to deliver best-in-class value to both our consumers and retailers through relevant, personalized, data informed and enabled omnichannel experience and marketing.

The Sr. Director of Analytics & Data Science will lead the Applied Data Science and Measurement pillar of the team. This resourceful and adaptable individual will play a critical role in contributing to overall enterprise data strategy and building out and delivering data use cases and capabilities that drive strategic decisions. Contributions and results will also enhance customer experience and effectiveness of our marketing, better monetize our data assets, generate valuable insights in support of key initiatives, measure marketing campaigns, optimize our Loyalty and Affiliate programs. The scope of this key role will influence our websites, mobile apps, eCommerce platforms, and CRM systems. This is both strategic and a hands-on role, with high impact on strategic decisions and necessity to implement and build out foundational analytics and data science capabilities.

The Sr. Director will collaborate with a diverse set of cross-functional teams, partners, and stakeholders. The scope is initially focused on Marketing, Media, Loyalty use cases, eventually expanding over time to other areas of enterprise. The ideal candidate is a seasoned ML/Analytics expert, with track record of leveraging advanced analytics, machine learning, and statistical techniques to solve complex business problems in Marketing measurement, personalization, eCommerce, Loyalty, optimization – to extract actionable insights and drive measurable business value.

This is an exciting opportunity to join the team in early stages, and to significantly contribute to Simon Property Group’s vision of building best-in-class Data & Analytics practice that’s a key value driver for the company.

PRINCIPAL RESPONSIBILITIES:

• Data Strategy: Translate top business objectives into Data & Analytics roam map, consisting of key use cases, capabilities, supported projected. Outline deliverables, timelines, needed resources, milestones, aligned to priorities.
• Project Delivery: Execute data and analytics roadmap, delivering high quality deliverables, within SLAs
• Data Wrangling: Inform architecture and infrastructure of SPG’s Customer360 to support data science, analytics, and reporting use cases.
• Marketing Measurement: Develop Marketing Measurement framework (inclusive, but not limited to: Incrementality DOE, geo-based testing, causal inference, MMM) to enable iROAS (Incremental Return on Ad Spend) measurement for all top marketing channels.
• Modeling: Build, refine, deploy, fine tune, maintain various personalization, recommendation, forecasting, segmentation, LTV, churn, search models and algorithms in support of top Marketing and broader enterprise initiatives.
• BI/Data Viz: Help set up, refine, evolve initial reports/prototypes for Marketing Campaigns, Search, Affiliate, Loyalty reporting until we add internal/external BI resources.
• Ad Hoc Analysis & Insights: Perform exploratory, driver and variance analyses for key Marketing initiatives as needed. Extract clear, actionable insights. Present findings to various non-technical stakeholders, including C-suite.
• Cross-functional Collaboration: Proven experience working closely with stakeholders and partners to align on objectives, resourcing, timelines and deliverables.
• Team Leadership: Build out a top-notch Analytics & Data Science team over time. Help recruit, mentor, develop data scientists. Nurture strong intra- and inter-team dynamics and an inclusive and engaging team culture.
• Innovation: Drive innovation by experimenting with new tools, techniques, and methodologies. Foster a culture of mental curiosity, creative problem-solving and test & learn within the team.
• Culture: Be a passionate advocate of data-driven decision-making and a data literacy agent.

MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS:

• Master’s degree in Statistics, Data Science, Mathematics, Computer Science or a related field
• 10+ years of hands-on Data Science experience, preferably in Retail environment
• 3+ years of complex project leadership experience
• 3+ years of team leadership and management experience
• Demonstrated expertise in Marketing measurement, modeling, testing (incrementality, MMM, causal inference, geo-based experimentation)
• Proven predictive modeling and statistical analysis expertise & framework familiarity (Regression, Decision Trees, SVM, Bayesian; Scikit-Learn, TensorFlow)
• Prior experience with LLMs
• Hands on cloud ML expertise (Azure ML, Vertex AI, Snowflake, Databricks)
• Extensive and diverse data wrangling background (SQL, Python, BigQuery)
• Strong BI/DataViz skill set (PowerBI, Looker)
• Excellent summarization and executive communication skills
• Strong leadership and project management skills
• Experience working in common digital marketing tools like Google Analytics 4 (GA4), Google Tag Manager (GTM), Adobe Analytics & across common marketing channel data sets from email, sms, social and media
• Ability to think strategically and support and align business objectives with data use cases and capabilities.