Practice Lead - Business Intelligence

About Smartly

Smartly, part of Datacom, helps New Zealand businesses manage payroll and people administration with less hassle. Its payroll software and support services are used by more than 20,000 businesses to ensure employees are paid correctly, on time, and in line with current legislation. As a fast-growing fintech business moving into related markets, Smartly offers a dynamic workplace with strong opportunities to grow professionally and personally.

Role overview

Smartly is hiring a Practice Lead for Business Intelligence to establish and guide its BI and analytics engineering function. This is a senior hands-on leadership position for someone who can combine technical depth, product thinking, and people leadership. You will shape the standards, architecture, and operating approach that support reporting, metrics, and self-service analytics across the company.

The role is central to how the business makes decisions. It aims to improve confidence in data, speed up product and commercial decision-making, and deliver a dependable analytics experience that people across the organisation can use with confidence. You will work closely with the Data Engineering and Data Science Practice Leads so governance, quality, and delivery practices stay aligned while still operating as separate disciplines within one data team.

Practice and people leadership

• Develop, guide, coach, and support a high-performing BI and analytics engineering team.
• Set expectations around quality, working methods, and career growth within the practice.
• Take ownership of recruitment, onboarding, and ongoing capability building as the team expands.
• Facilitate practice routines such as technical assessments, metric and semantic reviews, and learning-focused sessions.

BI and analytics engineering leadership

• Be accountable for the overall health of BI assets, including semantic models, curated datasets, dashboards, and important reporting outputs.
• Lead improvements to the self-service analytics environment so it stays usable, governed, and dependable.
• Own the BI platform experience and keep improving tooling, access controls, governance, performance, and uptake.
• Define and apply standards for metrics, dimensions, naming, and modelling so reporting remains consistent as the organisation scales.
• Promote modern analytics engineering practices through active leadership, including version control, testing, CI/CD, and safe release processes.

Analytical and delivery leadership

• Drive clear, shared metric definitions so teams work from the same understanding of performance.
• Improve the quality of insights so they are practical, easy to act on, and linked to business outcomes.
• Work with Product, Engineering, Commercial, and Leadership teams to support informed decision-making.
• Help stakeholders use self-service analytics in a responsible and effective way.

Governance and operational excellence

• Create and maintain governance for BI assets, including ownership, risk classification, and lifecycle control.
• Build strong security and reliability practices around business-critical metrics and dashboards.
• Make sure production BI assets follow clear expectations for monitoring, change control, and operational readiness.

Experience and technical capability

• At least 5 years of experience in business intelligence, analytics engineering, or advanced analytics.
• Demonstrated ability to build and manage a scalable semantic layer with reliable metric definitions.
• Strong SQL capability and practical Python experience in analytics or data environments.
• Experience with modern analytics engineering methods such as source control, code review, testing, and CI/CD.
• Hands-on exposure to cloud data platforms and warehouses, with Azure preferred.
• Experience administering and governing a BI platform such as Metabase or a similar tool.

Leadership and working style

• Background in leading, coaching, or managing BI or analytics professionals.
• Strong stakeholder management skills and the ability to simplify complex ideas for senior audiences.
• A practical, outcomes-focused mindset with high expectations for quality and reliability.
• Comfort working in a fast-paced, evolving environment where priorities can change.

Application note

Applicants should submit a CV and a short cover letter explaining their interest in the role.