Head, Data

Job Description

AirAsia Next is looking for a Head of Data to lead our data engineering, analytics, and governance functions. You will be responsible for turning one of Southeast Asia's largest datasets into a competitive advantage. Your primary objective is to build a modern, high-performance data platform that provides a 360-degree view of our customers and powers real-time decision-making across the ecosystem.

Key Responsibilities

1. Architecting the Composable CDP

• Data Warehouse-Centricity: Build the CDP on top of our central warehouse (e.g., BigQuery), ensuring no data is duplicated or trapped in proprietary third-party clouds.

• Modular Integration: Select and manage best-of-breed tools for the unbundled CDP stack:

  • Data Collection: (e.g., from our licensees)

  • Warehouse/Transformation: (e.g., dbt)

  • Identity Resolution: Building logic to unify guest profiles within the warehouse.

  • Reverse ETL: to sync warehouse data back into marketing tools.

• Real-time Activation: Balance the batch nature of the warehouse with low-latency streaming for real-time personalization on the AirAsia MOVE app and other licensees app.

2. Data Engineering & Governance

• Model-First Approach: Ensure all customer traits and segments are defined in code (SQL/dbt) to maintain a single definition of Customer across the entire organization.

• Team Leadership: Lead a team of Data Engineers and Analytics Engineers who treat Data-as-a-Product, ensuring high uptime and data freshness.

• Privacy by Design: Implement Privacy-safe data sharing, ensuring PII is handled according to PDPA/GDPR within the warehouse before being activated to downstream tools.

Required Skills & Qualifications

• Experience: 10+ years in Data, with specific experience moving away from monolithic platforms (like Adobe or Salesforce CDP) toward Composable/Unbundled architectures.

• Technical Mastery: . Strong opinion and experience with the Modern Data Stack (dbt, Airflow, Reverse ETL).

  • Expert-level understanding of Identity Resolution (probabilistic vs. deterministic matching) within a SQL environment.

• Vendor Management: Ability to evaluate Build vs. Buy for modular components of the data stack.

• Communication: Ability to explain the cost and agility benefits of a Composable CDP to non-technical C-suite executives.

Why This Role is Unique

You won't just be administering a software-as-a-service. You will be engineering a proprietary competitive advantage. By building a Composable CDP, you will give AirAsia Next the agility to swap tools, reduce vendor lock-in, and maintain total ownership of our most valuable asset: Guest Data.

We are all different - one talent to another - that is how we rely on our differences. At AirAsia, you will be treated fairly and given all chances to be your best.We are committed to creating a diverse work environment and are proud to be an equal opportunity employer.

Search Firm Representatives - AirAsia does not accept unsolicited assistance from search firms for employment opportunities. All CVs / resumes submitted by search firms to any employee at our company without a valid written search agreement in place will be deemed the sole property of our company. No fee will be paid in the event a candidate is hired by our company as a result of an agency referral where no pre-existing agreement is in place.