Clients often ask me to help define their job description for a business intelligence (BI) leader, executive, or manager. Here’s what I typically provide:

• Our research on Agile BI organizational structures is a good starting point.
• Because that report doesn’t include a deep dive into individual job descriptions or salaries, you can refer to some great external resources from TDWI and  Robert Half International.

Finally, here’s a description of a senior BI architect/manager/executive that I’ve used in the past. I would love to hear from everyone on what’s missing, what can be added, changed, etc.

Job title: Director/manager/VP of business intelligence

Reports to: Chief operations officer, chief strategy officer, chief information officer, chief financial officer (more popular in the past than the present) or some of the newer titles such as chief customer officer, chief data officer, or chief analytics officer.

Job description: The director/manager/VP of BI has primary responsibility for setting the strategy and vision and for managing the day-to-day tactical operations of the BI teams. He/she will be responsible for all strategic, tactical, operational, financial, human, and technical resource managerial responsibilities associated with the following BI and BI-related functional areas:

• Data preparation (sourcing, acquisition, integration)
• Data warehousing (we often recommend that the first two functional areas are managed separately by “data preparation” team(s))
• Reporting, analytics, data exploration
• Information delivery (portals, mobile)
• BI competency center or center of excellence (BICC or BI COE)

The director/manager/VP of BI will lead his/her teams by establishing and executing a vision for the delivery of information and analytics platforms and solutions to the business’s  key stakeholders, including, internal staff, partners and clients. This position will be ultimately responsible for helping transform the company into a business that truly differentiates and competes on analytics.

Job requirements:

• A degree in computer science, mathematics, operations, management, or a related field is required.
• A minimum of X years of progressively responsible experience in a directly related area, during which both professional and management capabilities have been clearly demonstrated.
• Industry/domain skills:
  • Extensive expertise in [insert industry- and domain- (finance, HR, sales, marketing, etc) specific verbiage].
• Technical skills:
  • Extensive expertise in [insert specific BI and related technical platforms].
  • Extensive expertise in data modeling, both logical and physical.
  • Extensive experience in multidimensional data modeling, such as star schemas, snowflakes, denormalized models, handling “slow-changing” dimensions/attributes.
  • Experience in and understanding of a wide variety of analytical processes (governance, measurement, etc.).
  • Experience with agile software development.
  • A solid understanding of key BI trends.
• General business skills:
  • Extensive experience interacting with C-level executives.
  • Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
  • Excellent presentation skills.
  • Experience managing large [global] complex BI projects and teams.
  • Proven ability to complete projects and achieve results in an ambiguous work environment.
  • Proven strong leadership skills within the project team and in the business community.
  • Proven ability to establish and articulate a vision, set goals, develop and execute strategies, and track and measure results.
  • Proven ability to build and motivate a team to achieve well communicated expectations.
  • Proven strong negotiating and consensus building abilities.
  • Proven skills to work effectively across internal functional areas in ambiguous situations.