Senior Data Manager

Burford Capital is the leading global finance and asset management firm focused on law. Its businesses include litigation finance and risk management, asset recovery and a wide range of legal finance and advisory activities. Burford is publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE: BUR) and the London Stock Exchange (LSE: BUR), and it works with companies and law firms around the world from its principal offices in New York, London, Chicago, Washington, Singapore, Hong Kong and Dubai.

The firm seeks to hire a Senior Data Manager who will be responsible for overseeing the lifecycle of the firm’s data assets, ensuring cost-effective governance, management, and utilization of data. The role includes implementing a robust and scalable data infrastructure, designing data models, and introducing tools and processes that enable business users to access, analyze, and derive value from data efficiently. The Senior Data Manager will support the development and execution of the organization’s data strategy, including transitioning data from ad hoc tools to governed systems, improving data quality and usability, and driving adoption of analytics tools like Power BI.

The Senior Data Manager will work closely with stakeholders to ensure that data is aligned with business needs and compliance requirements, fostering innovation while minimizing risks. The role will also serve as a center of excellence for reporting and analytics, guiding business users in developing dashboards and analyses, and supporting the evaluation and deployment of back-end tools such as cloud-based platforms and workflow automation systems.
The role will report to the Head of Software Development and Data Management in Texas

www.burfordcapital.com

COMPANY OVERVIEW

Burford Capital is the largest and most experienced provider of commercial finance to the legal sector in the world, with a core expertise in identifying and optimizing the value of legal assets for companies and law firms.  Since its founding in 2009, Burford has worked with hundreds of law firms and corporations, including 94 of the AmLaw 100 and 92 of the Global 100 largest law firms. Our team has grown from five people at the end of 2009 to over 150 people today, including over 45 lawyers.

Burford possesses the resources and expertise of a large company while retaining the flexibility and creativity of a startup.  Team members are smart, creative, collaborative, curious, and confident.  Everyone rolls up their sleeves to perform and engage collectively for the overall success of the business.  Burford values rigorous thinking, clear communication, and efficient execution. Burford is an “always on” environment in which everyone needs to be accessible by email when outside the office, including during evenings and weekends

Burford pays base salaries consistent with the financial services industry and favors incentive compensation to reward performance. Burford Capital is committed to increasing diversity and maintaining an inclusive workplace culture.  We welcome applications from all qualified candidates regardless of their ethnicity, race, gender, religious beliefs, sexual orientation, age, marital status, whether or not they have a disability.

POSITION REQUIREMENTS

Data Strategy and Governance
• Collaborate with stakeholders to identify and prioritize data sources needed to support business objectives, ensuring alignment with organizational strategy.
• Drive data utilization and adoption by collaborating with business units to identify opportunities to leverage data effectively, tracking adoption metrics, and addressing barriers to use.
• Lead efforts to transition data from ad hoc tools like Excel into structured databases, improving data governance, scalability, and reliability while ensuring users can adapt to new processes effectively.
• Ensure compliance with legal, regulatory, and ethical standards in all aspects of data handling, storage, and usage.

Data Architecture and Operations
• Develop and leverage a deep understanding of the firm’s data and data flows to synthesize canonical, consistent “single-source-of-truth” datasets for distribution across the enterprise.
• Formalize and operationalize best practices for great data quality and timely delivery, working closely with various business areas to establish accountability and transparency.
• Create and manage data ingestion pipelines, including setting up and maintaining data feeds from external and internal sources to integrate them into the firm's environment securely and efficiently, in collaboration with the firm’s software engineers and internal applications.
• Design and maintain data models, pipelines and operations with an appropriate degree of flexibility and scalability, i.e., fit and sized for purpose, neither under- nor over-engineered.
• Devise and oversee efficient monitoring and observability in day-to-day operations.
• Evaluate, select, and deploy back-end tools as needed, to work in concert with the software development team to enhance and manage complex dependencies and derived data calculations.

Reporting and Analytics
• Drive reporting and analytics excellence by implementing tools like Power BI, supporting business users in developing dashboards and analyses, fostering data literacy, and ensuring users can effectively leverage data for decision-making.
• Act as a center of excellence for reporting and analytics, providing expertise and guidance to business users in developing dashboards, creating data visualizations, and conducting analyses to meet their needs.
• Develop self-service data access mechanisms, enabling users to independently find and retrieve the data they need while maintaining governance and security protocols.

Innovation and Continuous Improvement
• Drive evaluation and selection of potential vendor or open-source solutions pertaining to data management, driving continuous innovation and improvement in the area.
• Establish and track key data metrics to measure and report on the performance of data systems and to guide ongoing improvements.

SKILLS DESIRED

Qualifications & Experience
• University degree required
• 8+ years of experience in roles related to data management, governance, and analytics, including leadership positions.
• Demonstrated ability to implement data quality programs and governance frameworks.
• Proficiency with data management platforms (e.g., Snowflake, Azure Data Factory) and data visualization tools (e.g., Power BI, Tableau). Ability to write simple scripts (e.g., Python) a plus.
• Strong knowledge of data integration and ETL/ELT processes, both theoretical and applied.
• Experience collaborating across teams to define and meet data requirements.
• Familiarity with compliance frameworks and data privacy regulations (e.g., GDPR, CCPA).
• Experience in financial services or legal industries is preferred but not required.

Core Competencies & Skills / Personal Attributes & Fit
• Strong project management skills.
• Ability to work well under pressure and manage sensitive and confidential information.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills, with strong attention to detail.

• Great interpersonal skills and ability to work well both independently and as part of a team.
• Naturally curious and eager to absorb and relate to the meaning behind data.
• Empathetic toward users’ experience and proactively champion it.
• Self-directed, go-getter willing to roll-up sleeves and make things happen.
• Excellent communication skills, both verbally and in writing
• Ability to assess, describe, and discover reasonable solutions with high business value to complex data scenarios and needs, adequately balancing short- and long-term goals.
• A multi-tasker, capable of actively managing a large and complex portfolio of high-value data projects and people.
• A thoughtful data leader with an intuitive sense of the merit, value, ethics, and risks of all things data
• A team player who can work collegially with team members at multiple levels and business functions to fully leverage data assets and reduce data risks across the organization.
• A good communicator and outgoing, capable of participating in panels, conferences, and other business/data enhancement opportunities on behalf of Burford; and.
• Ambitious and ready to work in a fast-paced environment where data leadership and skills will be fully utilized.

Other Requirements
• Ability to work remotely.

Notice of Collection of Personal Information:
https://www.burfordcapital.com/media/3351/notice-of-collection-of-personal-information.pdf