Data Analytics Business Partner

The opportunity

Our client, an established international financial and professional services group, is looking for a hands-on Data, Analytics, AI & Power BI Manager to join its Data & Analytics function in Belfast.

This is a genuine player-manager role. You will own the day-to-day running of the Power BI environment and the delivery of analytics, AI and dashboard solutions, while staying close to the build yourself: developing semantic models and reports, troubleshooting platform issues, building HTML dashboards and rapidly prototyping AI-enabled solutions. Alongside this you will lead a small team of BI analysts, developers and data engineers, and act as a trusted partner to senior leaders across Finance, Commercial and Operations.

It is not a purely strategic or people-management position, so it suits someone who enjoys getting into the data as much as leading the delivery.

Key responsibilities

Business partnering

• Work with senior leaders to understand commercial and operational challenges and find where data, analytics and AI can add value.
• Turn ambiguous questions into clear requirements, prioritised use cases and evidence-based recommendations, and own a value-led backlog.

Power BI platform and development

• Manage the Power BI environment day to day: workspaces, apps, gateways, refreshes, deployment pipelines, access, row-level security, monitoring and releases.
• Stay hands-on with semantic models, Power Query, DAX, reports and dashboards, and set standards for naming, version control, testing, documentation and performance.
• Work with Technology and Security on capacity, licensing, tenant settings and incidents, and enable governed self-service reporting.

Analytics and insight

• Use SQL and modern tools to analyse financial, client, operational and CRM data, moving the business from descriptive reporting towards diagnostic and predictive analytics.
• Deliver use cases such as revenue and margin, client retention, forecasting, productivity, anomaly detection and data-quality investigation.

HTML dashboards and AI

• Design and build responsive HTML dashboards and lightweight analytical apps (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, visualisation libraries) where they suit better than Power BI.
• Identify and prototype practical uses of generative AI, Copilot, AI agents and automation, such as natural-language data querying and automated management insight.

Delivery and team leadership

• Lead analytics and AI use cases end to end, from discovery and prototype through to production, adoption and benefit tracking.
• Manage, coach and develop BI and analytics colleagues, allocating work and reviewing technical quality.
• Make sure data products are governed, secure and trusted, working closely with Data Governance, Data Engineering and Security.

What you will bring

Essential

• Significant experience in data, analytics or business intelligence, including ownership of end-to-end analytical delivery.
• Advanced, hands-on Power BI: Power BI Service, workspace and app management, semantic modelling, Power Query, DAX, performance tuning, security and deployment.
• Strong SQL and the ability to work independently with large, complex and imperfect datasets.
• Experience managing or coordinating analysts, BI developers or data engineers, including prioritisation and quality review.
• Practical experience building HTML / web-based dashboards using HTML, CSS and JavaScript.
• Practical experience applying generative AI, LLMs, Copilot, AI agents or automation to business problems.
• Experience with modern cloud data platforms, ideally Microsoft Fabric and the wider Microsoft data stack.
• Confident stakeholder management and strong communication and data storytelling skills.

Desirable

• Python, notebooks, dbt or similar transformation tooling.
• Forecasting, predictive modelling or machine learning experience.
• Good understanding of data governance, data quality, master data and enterprise data architecture.
• Background in financial services, professional services or another complex B2B environment.