Senior Director Analyst - AI-Ready Finance Data & Analytics- This is an individual contributor role, based remotely in North America.
About the role: Gartner Analysts are industry thought leaders who create must-have insights, market predictions and best practices for a broad range of world-leading organizations. A Senior Director serves as a leader within Gartner's Business and Technology Insights (BTI) group, establishing themselves as a trusted authority within their research domain.
This Senior Director will help lead Gartner's research at the intersection of Finance, Data & Analytics, AI and enterprise transformation. The role focuses on helping organizations establish AI-ready data foundations, modern governance practices and contextual data architectures that enable better decisions and scalable AI adoption.
The analyst will engage regularly with CFOs, Finance Transformation and other Finance leaders (less frequently with CDAOs, other CxOs and Data & Analytics leaders), helping them navigate emerging challenges related to AI-ready data, governance, metadata, semantics, data products and enterprise decision-making.
What We're Looking For We're looking for a highly curious and forward-thinking leader who has a strong, informed perspective on how trusted, contextualized data accelerates the scaling of AI across enterprises.
You understand how data governance, metadata, semantics, data products, knowledge management and modern data architectures work together to enable analytics, ML, determinative AI, generative AI and agentic AI at scale.
You enjoy developing new ideas, challenging assumptions and helping executive leaders address difficult and ambiguous strategic questions.
What You'll Do - Contribute to Gartner's research agenda on AI-ready data within finance and adjacent business functions.
- Develop thought leadership on AI-ready data architectures, data quality, semantic layers, knowledge graphs, metadata management and data products.
- Advise CFOs, other finance leaders, other CxOs and transformation leaders on building trusted data ecosystems and quality that support AI and analytics.
- Research emerging trends including active metadata, semantic architectures, multimodal data, data observability and agentic AI enablement.
- Create practical frameworks, maturity models, toolkits and benchmarks that help organizations assess and improve AI readiness.
- Deliver compelling conference presentations, webinars, workshops and executive client interactions.
- Support Gartner clients through inquiry, advisory engagements and strategic discussions.
- Collaborate with analysts across Finance, Data & Analytics, AI, PBF (planning, budgeting and forecasting) and Technology practices.
- Help shape Gartner's long-term point of view on how organizations operationalize AI-ready data.
What You Will Need - 12+ years of experience in data management, data governance, analytics, AI strategy, enterprise architecture, finance transformation, consulting or related leadership roles.
- Deep expertise in multiple areas including data governance, metadata management, data products, knowledge management, semantic architectures and AI-ready data practices.
- Strong understanding of modern data management architectures, including data fabrics, data mesh, data products, semantic layers and data ecosystems.
- Ability to translate complex technology concepts into clear business guidance.
- Demonstrated thought leadership in emerging data, analytics or AI disciplines.
- Demonstrate executive presence; can immediately establish credibility with executives and additional stakeholders.
- Strong organizational skills; ability to work under tight deadlines and produce high quality deliverables.
- Demonstrate excellence in research and writing ability.
- Strong written and verbal proficiency, analytical and presentation skills; ability to engage clients and respond effectively to questions.
- Proficient in analyzing and synthesizing data; can effectively apply patterns and frameworks while drawing and defending conclusions to client challenges.
- Strong communication skills - able to explain complex concepts concisely and simply.
- Subject matter expertise; comfortable presenting at large and small-scale speaking engagements.
- Strong business and financial acumen.
- Deep knowledge of the global and competitive landscape within subject area as well as the interplay in that market.
- Ability to work independently, while also being intrinsically motivated to collaborate across teams and support the workflow of others, in a multicultural global team.
- Learning agile and adept with navigating highly matrixed environments.
- Ability to represent Gartner's research methodology and strategies effectively at all levels.
- Ability and willingness to travel up to 25% (where applicable).
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