Senior Director, Business Analytics

Wiley • Cary, MA

13d • $160,500 - $236,233 • Hybrid

About The Position

Wiley Research is undergoing a significant transformation, shifting from a traditional publishing model to a data-driven, market-responsive research enterprise. This transformation hinges on establishing a cohesive and rigorous analytics capability that integrates data from across the business, generates competitive and operational insights, and empowers Research leadership with the clarity needed for swift and confident decision-making. The Senior Director, Business Analytics will be responsible for building and leading this critical capability. This senior leadership position operates at the nexus of strategy, data, and performance. The role involves defining the Research analytics agenda by leveraging existing staff expertise, internal data systems, and external intelligence. The goal is to translate this agenda into actionable insights that inform strategy, guide investment decisions, enhance competitive positioning, and improve overall performance. A key focus of this role is commercial analytics, encompassing the measurement and interpretation of revenue performance, renewal health, customer retention, and market penetration. This will provide Research leadership with a clear understanding of business strengths, weaknesses, and investment opportunities. The Senior Director will act as a trusted commercial analytics advisor to the Research EVP and leadership team, translating commercial data into strategic recommendations and ensuring consistent and reliable measurement of commercial performance across all global regions, segments, and product lines. This role will collaborate closely with the Senior Director, Business Analytics & Operations, who is responsible for consolidating and operationalizing data from Wiley's internal and external reporting systems. While the latter focuses on data infrastructure and reporting integrity, this role concentrates on defining the analytical and commercial agenda, posing strategic questions, and ensuring insights are integrated into decision-making processes at the opportune moments. This division of labor is intentional and designed to be complementary. Wiley Research operates within a highly matrixed environment where data ownership is distributed across various functions, teams, and systems. A primary challenge for this role is to bring coherence to this complex landscape by establishing governance, fostering trust with data-generating teams, and creating a consolidated, commercially reliable view of Research performance that is currently lacking. The ideal candidate will possess both analytical rigor and organizational acumen, enabling them to navigate complex stakeholder environments, build influence across functions, and advocate for disciplined data practices within a culture that has historically operated differently.

Requirements

• 12+ years of progressive experience in commercial analytics, business analytics, strategy, or business intelligence, with a demonstrated track record of building decision-support functions and influencing senior commercial leadership.
• Demonstrated experience leading or building a commercial analytics function — establishing KPI frameworks, developing executive dashboards, and providing data-driven strategic insight to senior leadership.
• Demonstrated ability to build or significantly elevate an analytics function — defining strategy, establishing governance, and delivering capability uplift in a complex organizational environment.
• Deep expertise in commercial performance measurement, KPI design, and competitive intelligence; track record of translating analytical output into executive decision-making.
• Experience partnering with Finance to align revenue reporting and forecasting methodologies; comfortable with financial modelling, revenue analysis, and business scenario planning.
• Experience navigating distributed data ownership across functions and driving data governance improvements without formal authority over all contributing teams.
• Exceptional communication and executive presence; ability to produce board-quality commercial insights and adapt analytical narratives to different senior audiences.
• Demonstrated ability to influence and align senior stakeholders across functions without direct authority.
• Proficiency with analytics and reporting tools (e.g., Salesforce, Gainsight, BigQuery, Power BI, or equivalent).
• High tolerance for ambiguity and a bias toward action – comfortable building from scratch in a team still defining its operating model.
• Track record working across multiple geographies and time zones in a global enterprise.

Nice To Haves

• Experience in the scholarly or academic publishing industry, or a comparable information services, media, or technology organization undergoing digital transformation.
• Familiarity with the open access landscape, society publishing models, or research information ecosystems.
• Experience with AI-augmented analytics tools and a track record of improving analytical workflows through technology.
• Experience building an analytics function in an organization without prior data infrastructure – and translating that foundation into a broader commercial operating model.

Responsibilities

• Define and own the analytics strategy for the Wiley Research business — setting priorities, building the capability roadmap, and ensuring the analytics agenda aligns with and anticipates the strategic priorities of the EVP and GM, Research.
• Deliver advanced commercial analysis to provide the foundation for strategic decision-making. Identify growth opportunities, retention risks, and areas of underperformance before they surface in results.
• Establish the Research analytics function as a credible, trusted center of insight — recruiting, developing, or activating existing staff talent to build analytical capacity across the organization.
• Lead the development of a competitive intelligence and market analysis function for the Research business, synthesizing external data (including third-party sources), industry trends, and internal commercial performance data into actionable strategic insight.
• Translate complex analytical findings into clear, concise narratives for senior audiences — the EVP, Research Leadership Team, and board-level stakeholders — ensuring insights drive decisions rather than accumulate in reports.
• Evolve the KPI framework — defining and standardizing metrics that will serve as the definitive measurement standard for the Research business.
• Develop and maintain executive dashboards and performance reporting across regions, teams, products, and customer segments — giving Research leadership a real-time, integrated view of commercial health that supports fast, evidence-based decisions.
• Deliver advanced analysis to identify growth opportunities, diagnose performance drivers, and provide the quantitative foundation for commercial strategy — including scenario modelling and competitive benchmarking.
• Drive adoption of data-driven commercial decision making throughout Research — translating complex data into clear, actionable business recommendations that influence how leaders invest, prioritize, and respond to market conditions.
• Ensure reporting is globally aligned, with consistent definitions, metrics, and performance measurement standards applied across all markets, organizational units, and product lines — from working teams to C-suite.
• Collaborate with stakeholder teams to drive commercial data governance — including data quality standards, reporting integrity, and management of Research's commercial single source of truth — ensuring that leadership can trust the numbers and that analytical output is reliable, consistent, and audit-ready.
• Take ownership of the broader Research analytics data governance agenda: identifying fragmented or duplicated data sources, establishing data ownership standards, and working across Research and enterprise functions to close gaps that currently undermine analytical confidence.
• Partner with the Senior Director, Business Analytics & Operations; the Business Analytics & Enablement team, and Technology & Operations to ensure the data infrastructure required for Research analytics is fit for purpose — influencing roadmap decisions and advocating for data engineering resources where gaps exist.
• Drive efficiency and automation in core reporting workflows, building toward a self-service reporting model that scales across the Research organization.
• Partner with Finance to align revenue reporting, forecasting methodologies, and business performance measurement — ensuring that the analytical and financial views of commercial performance are consistent, mutually reinforcing, and trusted by leadership.
• Collaborate with Publishing, Marketing, Sales, Product, and Strategy teams to surface cross-functional commercial insights that neither function could generate alone — building the analytical connective tissue that supports integrated, enterprise-wide commercial decision-making.
• Serve as a trusted advisor to Research and Executive Leadership on commercial performance trends, strategic opportunities, and operational risks — providing the analytical perspective leadership needs to make consequential decisions with confidence.
• Build productive, trusted partnerships with data-generating teams across Research (Publishing Development, Partner Publishing, Publishing Operations, AI & Data Analytics, Finance, and others) to access, validate, and leverage data that is currently siloed or inconsistently owned.
• Operate as a visible, constructive presence in Research leadership forums — representing the analytics perspective and ensuring analytical rigor is embedded in strategic discussions.
• Mentor and develop analytical talent embedded across the Research organization, elevating overall data fluency and building a community of practice around evidence-based, commercially informed decision-making.

Benefits

• Meeting-free Friday afternoons allowing more time for heads down work and professional development
• Robust body of employee programming facilitating a wide range of opportunities to foster community, learn, and grow
• Competitive compensation
• Comprehensive benefits package

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: No Education Listed