Head of Data Platform

Head of Data Platform Relay is fundamentally reshaping how goods move in an online era. Backed by Europe’s largest-ever logistics Series A ($35M), led by deep-tech investors Plural (whose portfolio spans fusion energy and space exploration), Relay is scaling faster than 99.98% of venture-backed startups. We're assembling the most talent-dense team the logistics industry has ever seen Relay’s Mission is to free commerce from friction. Today, high delivery costs act as a hidden tax on e-commerce, quietly shaping what can be sold online and limiting who can participate. We envision a world where more goods move more freely between more people, making the online shopping experience seamless and accessible to everyone. THE TEAM • ~110 people, more than half in engineering, product and data • 45+ advanced degrees across computer science, mathematics and operations research • Thousands of data points captured, calculated, analysed and predicted for every single parcel we handle • An intellectually vibrant culture of first‑principles thinking, tight feedback loops and relentless experimentation The Opportunity Relay's network generates data at every touchpoint. Couriers, routes, parcels, sortation, pricing, demand signals. That data is the raw material for every decision the business makes, and increasingly, for the AI systems that make decisions autonomously. As Head of Data Platform, you will own the infrastructure that turns raw data into usable signal. That means the transformation layer (dbt), the semantic layer (Cube), the pipelines that feed them, and the standards that make the output trustworthy. You will be responsible for data being ready for human analysts, for dashboards, for ML models, and for agents that act without human review. This is a foundational leadership role where you will inherit a high-performing engine. The platform already powers critical decision-making across every department, underpinned by a mature dbt architecture, a semantic layer with rigorous naming conventions, and a workflow where the team has successfully leveraged AI to drive exceptional productivity. Your challenge is to take this 'V1' success and scale it into a global-class platform that remains the single source of truth as our complexity grows. You will lead a team of data and analytics engineers who are deeply technical and take immense pride in their craft. They are highly autonomous and possess a clear vision for what 'good' looks like. What they need is someone who can set strategic direction, prioritise across competing demands, and represent the platform's interests at leadership level. You will work closely with Engineering to shape how upstream systems produce data, not reactively cleaning up after them. This role reports to the Director of Data. What You'll Do - Own the data platform roadmap: transformation, semantic layer, orchestration, and the tooling that makes the team fast - Lead and grow a team of senior analytics engineers, setting technical standards and creating space for them to do their best work - Partner with Engineering to define contracts and expectations for how data is produced at source - Set the self-serve strategy: make data accessible to analysts, PMs, and operators without bottlenecking on your team - Extend the platform for automated and AI-driven systems: Ensure data is structured for programmatic action, with an uncompromising focus on accuracy and observability so that agents act on a foundation of absolute trust. - Own strategy for emerging data types: unstructured data, telematics, real-time signals - Represent the platform in leadership discussions, translating technical constraints into business terms Who Will Thrive in This Role? - You've led analytics engineering or data platform teams before, and you're comfortable with both the technical depth and the people leadership - You're a player-coach: you can review a dbt PR, debug a performance issue, and then context-switch to a pri ... (truncated, view full listing at source)