AVP Business Intelligence

Optimize Search Group; Farmers Branch (TX); On-site; USD 180,000 - 230,000; Full time

Job summary

Optimize Search Group is seeking a strategic AVP of Business Intelligence to lead the enterprise BI program, including strategy, architecture, and governance across Power BI and Fabric. You will translate business needs into scalable analytics solutions, drive delivery excellence, and mentor a high-performing BI team.

Reporting to the VP of BI, you will oversee data modeling, semantic layers, security, and production support while partnering with Security, Risk, Compliance, and Data Governance

Job description

Reporting to the Vice President of Business Intelligence, the Assistant Vice President (AVP) of Business Intelligence provides strategic, technical, and operational leadership for enterprise business intelligence (BI) capabilities, critical initiatives, and cross-functional delivery. This role is accountable for BI strategy execution, technical architecture, portfolio prioritization, delivery quality, platform governance, and the development of high-performing BI professionals.

The AVP leads the design, development, administration, and ongoing support of enterprise reporting solutions, dimensional models, and semantic models, with Microsoft Power BI serving as the primary reporting platform and Microsoft Fabric providing the enterprise data and analytics foundation. The role combines strategic oversight with hands‑on technical leadership to ensure solutions are scalable, secure, reliable, performant, and aligned with business objectives.

This position establishes and enforces BI standards, manages delivery commitments and production support, develops team capabilities, and promotes consistent execution through disciplined project management and operational processes. In partnership with business, technology, Security, Risk, Compliance, and Data Governance stakeholders, the AVP translates business requirements into governed, sustainable analytics solutions that enable operational efficiency and informed strategic decision‑making.

Strong SQL Server and T‑SQL expertise is essential to the role, including the design and optimization of curated, business‑ready views and stored procedures that support Power BI semantic models and reporting solutions.

Core Functions and Responsibilities

Strategic Leadership and Portfolio Management

• Lead the execution of BI strategy, aligning platform capabilities, architecture, resource allocation, and delivery priorities with enterprise objectives and evolving business needs.
• Oversee the BI project portfolio, including demand intake, prioritization, resource capacity planning, cross‑project dependencies, and portfolio‑level performance.
• Establish clear delivery expectations, quality standards, milestones, and accountability for assigned initiatives, ensuring commitments are met and risks are escalated proactively.
• Govern portfolio delivery through executive reporting, architecture and readiness reviews, documented decisions, and timely escalation of material risks, constraints, and dependencies.
• Advise business and technology leaders on BI strategy, solution alternatives, platform capabilities, and opportunities to improve business outcomes through analytics.
• Evaluate emerging Microsoft Power BI and Fabric capabilities and recommend adoption based on business value, technical feasibility, security, and operational readiness.

Delivery Management and Operational Excellence

• Own assigned initiatives and deliverables from initiation through implementation and ongoing support, ensuring alignment with approved scope, schedules, quality standards, and business requirements.
• Manage work through Azure DevOps (ADO) using Agile practices, maintaining accurate work items, estimates, status, dependencies, risks, and due dates while resolving exceptions promptly.
• Lead daily scrum meetings, sprint planning, sprint reviews, and retrospectives to identify blockers, validate commitments, improve delivery predictability, and drive continuous improvement.
• Communicate project status, key decisions, dependencies, issues, risks, and required actions to stakeholders and executive leadership through established governance and reporting channels.
• Establish and enforce standards for requirements management, architecture, development, testing, documentation, source control, continuous integration and deployment (CI/CD), release management, and production support.
• Maintain end‑to‑end requirements traceability and ensure solutions satisfy documented business, technical, testing, quality, security, and deployment‑readiness criteria before release.
• Lead and participate in code reviews to validate technical accuracy, architectural integrity, performance, maintainability, security, and compliance with established development standards.
• Monitor delivery performance, platform health, data quality, service levels, user adoption, and operational effectiveness; lead root‑cause analysis and corrective actions as needed.

BI Architecture, Engineering, and Platform Leadership

• Define and guide the technical architecture and engineering strategy for Microsoft Power BI, paginated reporting, dimensional models, and enterprise semantic models.
• Provide hands‑on leadership in the design, development, testing, deployment, maintenance, and production support of operational and analytical reporting solutions.
• Direct Microsoft Fabric and Power BI administration, governance, security, deployment, monitoring, and support to ensure platform reliability, scalability, and effective utilization.
• Oversee the governed implementation and use of Microsoft Fabric capabilities, including OneLake, Lakehouses, warehouses, notebooks, mirroring, pipelines, dataflows, semantic models, and Direct Lake.
• Provide technical leadership in SQL Server and T‑SQL, including the design, development, optimization, and production support of governed reporting views and stored procedures used by Power BI models and reports.
• Establish and maintain standards for semantic model design, DAX, Power Query/M, data transformation, refresh strategies, storage modes, performance optimization, and reusable reporting components.
• Oversee Power BI and Fabric administration across tenant settings, capacity, workspaces, access controls, gateways, deployment pipelines, Git integration, monitoring, audit, recovery, and application lifecycle management.
• Ensure reporting and analytics solutions are performant, maintainable, accessible, and supportable throughout their lifecycle.
• Lead the development of ad hoc analytics and repeatable, automated data solutions that translate enterprise analytical needs into actionable operational and strategic insights.

Governance, Risk, Security, and Compliance

• Establish and enforce BI governance standards covering data quality, architecture, development, testing, documentation, deployment, production support, and service performance.
• Ensure Power BI and Fabric solutions comply with applicable data classification, access control, segregation‑of‑duties, privacy, retention, and audit requirements.
• Partner with Security, Risk, Compliance, and Data Governance teams to implement appropriate controls, conduct periodic access reviews, and address identified risks.
• Own BI incident, problem, request, and change‑management processes to support service continuity, minimize operational risk, and drive continuous improvement.
• Ensure appropriate change controls, release readiness, production validation, and support procedures are in place for enterprise BI solutions.
• Maintain compliance with company policies, applicable regulatory requirements, and established ethical standards.

People Leadership and Talent Development

• Lead and develop BI professionals through effective work allocation, technical direction, coaching, performance management, and career development.
• Establish clear individual and team expectations for delivery, technical quality, productivity, documentation, collaboration, and professional conduct.
• Provide timely feedback, address performance or conduct concerns, and implement corrective actions when expectations are not met.
• Support workforce planning, recruiting, hiring decisions, succession planning, and the development of technical capabilities aligned with the BI roadmap.
• Foster a culture of accountability, continuous learning, collaboration, innovation, and disciplined execution.
• Promote consistent use of team processes, engineering standards, and documentation practices to improve delivery quality and operational resilience.

Stakeholder Engagement and Business Partnership

• Build and maintain trusted relationships with business, technology, Security, Risk, Compliance, Data Governance, and vendor stakeholders.
• Maintain a strong understanding of organizational business priorities and strategic objectives to anticipate analytical needs and align BI investments with enterprise goals.
• Translate complex business requirements into scalable, secure, and governed technical solutions while balancing business value, delivery timelines, risk, and operational considerations.
• Facilitate cross‑functional decisions, resolve competing priorities, and maintain alignment among stakeholders throughout the solution lifecycle.
• Promote effective adoption of enterprise BI capabilities and communicate best practices for using Power BI and Fabric to generate business value.

Other Responsibilities

• Model the organization's values, operating principles, ethical standards, and code of conduct.
• Perform other duties as assigned.

Qualifications Required

Education and Experience

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Data Analytics, or a related field, or equivalent professional experience.
• Eight or more years of experience delivering BI, analytics, reporting, or data solutions, including significant hands‑on technical responsibility.
• Five or more years of experience with SQL Server and T‑SQL, including view and stored procedure development, execution‑plan analysis, indexing, performance tuning, and production troubleshooting.
• Five or more years of experience gathering requirements, mapping data, estimating effort, designing solutions, and translating business needs into governed technical deliverables.
• Five or more years of experience developing and supporting Microsoft Power BI solutions, including DAX, Power Query/M, Power BI Service, gateways, deployment pipelines, and workspace administration.
• Four or more years of experience leading BI professionals, enterprise projects, or critical initiatives, including work allocation, performance management, coaching, resource planning, delivery commitments, and quality accountability.
• Two or more years of experience delivering production solutions using Microsoft Fabric capabilities, including OneLake, notebooks, mirroring, Lakehouses, warehouses, pipelines, dataflows, semantic models, and Direct Lake.

Technical Expertise

• Extensive experience with Power BI Report Builder, including parameterized reports, datasets, expressions, subscriptions, deployment, and production support.
• Strong expertise in dimensional modeling and Power BI semantic model architecture, including security, storage modes, refresh strategies, model optimization, and performance analysis.
• Extensive experience administering Microsoft Fabric and Power BI environments, including tenant settings, capacity, workspaces, access controls, gateways, deployment, Git integration, monitoring, auditing, governance, recovery, and application lifecycle management.
• Experience with Fabric Data Factory, Fabric pipelines, Azure Data Factory, or comparable data integration and orchestration technologies.
• Demonstrated ability to establish and maintain BI development, testing, release, support, governance, and documentation standards.
• Experience using Azure DevOps for work and portfolio management, source control, CI/CD, estimation, and release coordination.
• Experience with ServiceNow or a comparable platform for incident, request, problem, and change management.
• Strong proficiency in Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.
• Experience delivering governed BI, analytics, or data solutions within financial services or another highly regulated industry.

Leadership and Business Acumen

• Demonstrated ability to lead technical teams and enterprise initiatives while balancing strategic priorities with hands‑on execution.
• Strong executive communication, stakeholder management, and presentation skills, including the ability to communicate technical concepts, delivery risks, and business impacts to diverse audiences.
• Proven judgment in managing competing priorities, resource constraints, governance requirements, and cross‑functional decisions.
• Experience establishing accountability, managing delivery risk, improving execution discipline, and driving measurable operational improvements.
• Ability to lead teams through changing business priorities while maintaining alignment, quality, and delivery commitments.

Preferred Qualifications

• Microsoft certifications in Power BI, Microsoft Fabric, Azure Data, or analytics.
• Experience implementing enterprise‑scale BI governance, platform administration, and analytics operating models.

Skills and Abilities

• Advanced SQL Server and T‑SQL proficiency, coupled with the ability to evaluate and rapidly adopt emerging BI, analytics, and data technologies.
• Strategic thinking, sound executive judgment, analytical rigor, and decisive problem‑solving.
• Excellent written, verbal, interpersonal, and presentation skills.
• Strong stakeholder leadership, facilitation, negotiation, and relationship management capabilities.
• Ability to establish priorities, drive accountability, and deliver results in a fast‑paced, complex environment.
• Proven ability to navigate ambiguity, adapt to changing business needs, and lead teams through organizational and technical change.
• Strong execution discipline, attention to detail, and commitment to quality, security, compliance, and follow‑through.
• Collaborative, adaptable, self‑directed approach with the ability to influence across organizational boundaries.
• Demonstrated ability to lead enterprise initiatives and cross‑functional teams through credibility, governance, and effective communication.