The purpose of this role is to set the strategic direction for the team, taking ownership of the overall vision and outcomes, liaising with other channels to ensure an integrated approach/roadmap.
Job Description:
At Merkle, we help top financial services clients grow through data, analytics, and customer insight. We are hiring a Senior Director to lead customer analytics and modeling for insurance and banking clients, connecting first-party, customer, and call center data to the decisions that move each client’s growth metric.
Role summary
Own the analytics relationship and strategy for senior executives at top-tier financial services clients across banking and lending, payments, wealth and asset management, insurance and protection (excluding health), and FinServ technology. Each engagement is anchored to the growth metric the client owns. The role turns first-party, customer, and call center data into insights that drive investment and customer decisions, sets the multi-year analytics and decisioning roadmap, and owns the modeling standards behind it.
The leader stays close enough to the modeling to challenge it and to build when staffing requires, while partnering on strategic thinking and guiding executive discussion, which is the core of the role rather than just hands-on build. The role is staffed where an account or portfolio needs senior coverage: as primary analytics partner on a large or complex account, or as senior oversight across accounts that share a client world, stepping in as account lead where needed. Reports to VP, Analytics, Financial Services.
Responsibilities
Own senior client relationships as primary analytics partner to C-suite and senior executives across Marketing, Distribution, Customer, Product, and Finance/Actuarial (insurance) or Risk and Finance (banking)
Set the customer analytics vision and multi-year roadmap for each account, aligned to business priorities and long-term objectives
Provide thought leadership on lead management, next best action, incrementality, and customer value, moving clients from point solutions to operating-model answers
Translate customer, call center, and omnichannel data (dispositions, outcomes, QA/CSAT, operational KPIs) into executive-ready recommendations that drive prioritization and investment
Set standards for segmentation, propensity, lead scoring, and CLV, including validation, calibration, and champion/challenger design, and review features and performance before client delivery
Lead next best action and decisioning design, including eligibility rules, business constraints, and offline-to-live validation
Set measurement and test-and-learn standards so investment decisions rest on evidence, not attribution assertions
Orchestrate analytics, data science, and engineering as one delivery model, including ETL/ELT, feature frameworks, and data governance in regulated environments
Partner across operations, marketing, and distribution to turn insight into measurable action
Modernize legacy data and analytics processes, adopting AI-enabled analytics and unstructured data where they create measurable value
Establish frameworks, best practices, and documentation standards across the portfolio, and lead through ambiguity and client transitions with clear ownership
Lead, mentor, and develop Directors, Team Leads, and senior modelers
Contribute to proposals, expansion, and scoping, with commercial discipline on what is in and out of scope
Travel to client sites as account needs require, with a typical cadence of monthly to quarterly depending on the engagement
Requirements
15+ years in analytics, data science, or related fields, including leading modeling delivery for multiple clients or complex portfolios and managing senior leaders
Track record advising C-level or senior executives in insurance or banking, with strong stakeholder management and client-facing communication
Deep understanding of customer lifecycle, acquisition and retention economics, and CLV
Hands-on…