Senior BI Developer at WPP

Why we're hiring:

We are seeking a highly skilled and experienced Expert BI Developer to join our dynamic Customer Success team in WPP Open. This pivotal role is responsible for designing, developing, and maintaining cutting-edge business intelligence solutions that empower our global business stakeholders with reliable, insightful, and user-friendly data. You will be the technical lead and go-to expert for Power BI development, ensuring new products are fit for purpose, built to best practice standards, and efficiently leverage our company's data assets in BigQuery or Snowflake. The ideal candidate will possess expert-level proficiency in Power BI (including Power Apps, Power Automate), exceptional data modelling and SQL skills, and a strategic mindset to drive continuous improvement and foster a data-driven culture.

What you'll be doing:

• Technical Leadership & Solution Design:
  • Act as the technical lead and subject matter expert for the development of new global BI Reporting solutions, primarily using Microsoft Power BI.
  • Ensure all new products are fit for customer purpose, adhere to best practice standards, and efficiently utilize company resources and data assets.
  • Apply in-depth knowledge of business and specialized areas to creatively and strategically solve problems, understand integration challenges, and assess long-term impact.
• Customer Engagement & Requirements Management:
  • Work directly with global business customers to deeply understand their requirements, design innovative solutions, and troubleshoot complex issues.
  • Prioritize work based on a profound understanding of customer needs and business value.
  • Communicate effectively with users, peers, and senior management across the globe, managing stakeholders effectively within a matrixed virtual organization.
• Platform Governance & Optimization:
  • Advise the wider team and introduce industry best practice techniques to ensure our BI platforms are well-governed, maintained, secure, and optimized for our customers.
  • This includes staying abreast of and implementing advancements in AI in BI (e.g., Power BI Copilot, LLM integrations) across design, testing, end-to-end rollout, and continuous improvement.
• Self-Service Enablement & Training:
  • Enable business users to self-serve their BI demands through the provision and ongoing management of appropriate tools.
  • Lead relevant training sessions for the business to foster data literacy and independent data exploration.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration:
  • Proactively partner with key areas within Global Technology, Transformation & Change Delivery, Group, and other teams for both project-based and Business-as-Usual deliverables.
• Customer-First Culture:
  • Instill and champion a customer-first culture, prioritizing service for our business stakeholders above all else.

• Key Responsibilities & Technical Expertise:

• Power BI Development & Design:
  • Design, develop, test, and deploy highly interactive and visually appealing Power BI dashboards, reports, and visualizations that align with complex business needs.
  • Create custom visualizations and implement robust row-level security (RLS) on data.
  • Build and optimize semantic data models within Power BI Desktop, leveraging advanced DAX functions for complex calculations.
  • Ensure dashboards are fast, scalable, and user-friendly, optimizing performance for large datasets.
• Data Integration & Transformation:
  • Connect Power BI to diverse data sources, including but not limited to our primary data warehouses: BigQuery or Snowflake.
  • Perform efficient and robust data transformations via Power Query (M language).
  • Develop tabular and multidimensional models compatible with data warehouse standards.
• Data Warehousing & ETL/ELT (BigQuery/Snowflake Focus):
  • Write highly optimized and complex SQL queries to extract, transform, and load (ETL/ELT) data from Google BigQuery or Snowflake.
  • Design, build, and optimize solutions using Azure Synapse Analytics and Azure Data Factory (or similar tools for BigQuery/Snowflake environments), including data ingestion and transformation.
  • Develop and manage data pipelines for data movement and transformation.
  • Integrate structured and unstructured data from various sources into BigQuery/Snowflake.
  • Build and maintain data warehouses, data lakes, and analytics solutions using relevant cloud services (e.g., Azure Synapse Studio, SQL Data Warehouse, Spark pools, or equivalent for GCP/Snowflake).
• Reporting & Analytics:
  • Translate complex business requirements into technical specifications for BI solutions, reports, and dashboards.
  • Perform in-depth data analysis to identify trends, patterns, and insights, particularly related to financial and workforce data.
  • Ensure the accuracy, consistency, and reliability of all reported data.
  • Provide ad-hoc data analysis and reporting support to various business units.
• Data Troubleshooting & Governance:
  • Resolve data quality issues and uphold reporting integrity.
  • Adhere to strict data governance and security protocols.
  • Maintenance & Enhancement:
  • Update and continuously improve existing dashboards and BI solutions to accommodate evolving requirements.
  • Document solutions thoroughly and provide training to end-users, fostering BI self-service.

What you'll need:

We’re looking for someone who has these abilities and skills:

• Required Skills and Abilities:
  • Expert-level technical proficiency in the use, development, and solution design within Microsoft Power BI (including Power Apps, Power Automate, DAX, Power Query), with extensive experience in large, global, and complex organizations.
  • Expertise in data modelling best practices, data engineering, and data management (including advanced SQL). Able to articulate these concepts effectively to both technical and non-technical users.
  • Strong hands-on experience extracting, transforming, and querying large datasets from Google BigQuery or Snowflake using advanced SQL (CTEs, window functions, aggregate functions, subqueries).
  • Exceptional communication and interpersonal skills, with the ability to communicate effectively directly with users, peers, senior management, and teams across the globe.
  • Proven ability to manage stakeholders effectively and navigate a matrixed virtual global organization.
  • Brings a collaborative spirit, a can-do attitude, and a Customer First mindset to everything they undertake.
  • Passion for digital, data, and AI, with experience working within a digital and data-driven organization.
  • A minimum of a bachelor’s or master's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Data Analytics, or a related quantitative field.
  • A self-starter who can operate independently and lead others in the team in strategic thinking and solution design.
• Desired Skills and Abilities (Nice-to-Haves):
  • Experience with the use and development of AI in BI, specifically Power BI Copilot, and connections with LLMs/models.
  • Proficiency in other programming languages (e.g., R, Python, PowerShell) for data manipulation or scripting.
  • Ability to operate and thrive in an agile team working environment (including use of Jira and other workflow tools).
  • Experience in the Insurance industry, with a strong understanding of both financial and non-financial metrics.
  • Experience with version control systems (e.g., Git/GitHub) for Power BI development.
  • Understanding of A/B testing methodologies and measurement.

Who you are:

You're open: We are inclusive and collaborative; we encourage the free exchange of ideas; we respect and celebrate diverse views. We are open-minded: to new ideas, new partnerships, new ways of working.

You're optimistic: We believe in the power of creativity, technology and talent to create brighter futures or our people, our clients and our communities. We approach all that we do with conviction: to try the new and to seek the unexpected.

You're extraordinary: we are stronger together: through collaboration we achieve the amazing. We are creative leaders and pioneers of our industry; we provide extraordinary every day.

What we'll give you:

Passionate, inspired people – We aim to create a culture in which people can do extraordinary work.

Scale and opportunity – We offer the opportunity to create, influence and complete projects at a scale that is unparalleled in the industry.

Challenging and stimulating work – Unique work and the opportunity to join a group of creative problem solvers. Are you up for the challenge?

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