VP, Customer Data Strategist (Hybrid)

About the role

THE ROLE: VP, Customer Data Strategist
In this pivotal role, you will define how A+E turns its rapidly growing first-party audience data into a strategic business asset — designing the audience frameworks, use cases, and measurement models that connect our data to marketing, product, and revenue outcomes across the company.

Responsibilities

• Define the strategic roadmap for our composable CDP and identity resolution capabilities, prioritizing use cases that drive measurable business value as new data sources come online
• Design and activate Audience Customer Journeys that increase engagement and revenue per user, defining the logic behind lifecycle stages, churn risk, and high-value customer segmentation
• Oversee our Analytics Engineering team, directing the build of activation pipelines that flow into Iterable, Adobe, and other downstream marketing and personalization tools
• Partner with our media agency's data platform (e.g., BLU) to connect owned audience signals with paid media performance, strengthening measurement of paid-plus-owned impact
• Champion first-party data as a starting point for strategy, not a downstream add-on — embedding it early into how Digital, Marketing, and New Business teams plan campaigns, product decisions, and growth initiatives
• Act as the senior voice in strategic planning conversations with Digital, Marketing, and New Business leadership, pushing toward decisions grounded in first-party data rather than assumptions or third-party proxies
• Define the KPIs and ROI frameworks — including lifts in engagement, retention, and conversion — that prove first-party data investments are driving business outcomes, sharing findings with leadership across the enterprise
• Apply AI and advanced analytics judgment to identify new opportunities from expanding first-party data, directing Analytics Engineering to bring them to life
• Maintain a strategic view of the identity, CDP, and data activation landscape, evaluating new AI-driven platforms and approaches relevant to A+E's data strategy
• Enact strategies that grow A+E's first-party data footprint
• Design identity resolution and data architecture to accommodate new customer data sources as the business evolves — including potential new business lines, products, or organizational combinations
• Build governance and onboarding frameworks that allow new first-party data sets to be integrated into the existing CDP and identity infrastructure without re-architecting from scratch
• Provide periodic updates to Media Solutions on first-party data infrastructure and identity resolution capabilities as they evolve
• Share relevant success stories from first-party data-driven marketing targeting that may inform future Media Solutions product thinking
• Work with Legal and Media Solutions to understand data usage rights and restrictions across distribution partners, informing what's realistically activatable
• Participate in regular working sessions with Media Solutions to explore potential first-party data applications as infrastructure matures
• Participate in regular working sessions with Media Solutions to explore potential first-party data applications as infrastructure matures

Requirements

• At least 10 years of experience leading and managing technical teams (e.g., analytics engineers), even if not hands-on with the code personally
• At least 7 years of experience in customer data strategy, CDP/MarTech, or marketing analytics
• At least 5 years of direct people management experience
• Working knowledge of composable CDP platforms (e.g., Hightouch), identity resolution concepts (deterministic vs. probabilistic matching), and applied AI/ML — enough to direct and evaluate technical work, without requiring hands-on coding
• At least 5 years of directing data engineering work on cloud data warehouses (e.g., Snowflake) and visualization tools (e.g., DOMO) to bring strategy to life
• At least 5 years integrating first-party data strategy with activation platforms such as Iterable and Adobe

Qualifications

• Master communicator and change agent who can shift how leaders think about data — from reactive reporting to proactive, first-party-data-led strategy
• Executive presence with the ability to advise and influence Digital, Marketing, and New Business leaders as a peer, not a support function
• Strong point of view on applying AI and machine learning to audience data, with the judgment to separate genuine opportunity from hype

Skills

• Master communicator and change agent who can shift how leaders think about data — from reactive reporting to proactive, first-party-data-led strategy
• Executive presence with the ability to advise and influence Digital, Marketing, and New Business leaders as a peer, not a support function
• Strong point of view on applying AI and machine learning to audience data, with the judgment to separate genuine opportunity from hype

Benefits

• Compensation Annual Pay Range: $234,216 - $274,033
• Annual Incentive Target: 25.00%

Pay

Annual Pay Range: $234,216 - $274,033

Schedule

N/A