VP, Business Intelligence & Insights

Rakuten Kobo Inc.; United States; On-site; USD 179,000 - 334,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Discretionary bonus

Health, vision, dental insurance

401k matching

Paid time off (PTO)

Volunteer Time Off (VTO)

Job summary

Rakuten Rewards seeks a proven analytics leader to own the enterprise data and insights strategy, translating complex data into clear executive insights that shape strategy and investments.

You will unify analytics teams into a centralized BI & Insights function, defining metrics and reporting standards and partnering with Product, Engineering, Finance, Marketing, and Sales to deliver decision-grade insights at scale.

Qualifications

• 15+ years of senior leadership experience in analytics, business intelligence, or insights.
• Proven track record influencing C-level decisions through data-driven insight and judgment.
• Experience centralizing or transforming analytics in complex cross-functional organizations.
• Strong understanding of modern analytics and AI-enabled platforms and business intuition.

Responsibilities

• Define and lead the enterprise data & insights strategy for executive decision-making.
• Serve as trusted thought partner to the CEO and executive leadership team to translate data into actionable insights.
• Build a centralized BI & Insights organization with enterprise standards for metrics and interpretation.
• Partner with Product, Engineering, Finance, Marketing, and Sales to ensure relevant, timely insights.

Skills

Senior leadership

Analytics & BI

C-level influence

AI-enabled analytics

Strategic communication

Tools

Analytics platforms

BI tools

Job description

Job Description: Rakuten International is a division of Rakuten Group, Inc., a Japanese global technology leader in services that empower individuals, communities, businesses and society. Headquartered in San Mateo, California with more than 4,000 employees worldwide, the Rakuten International business portfolio includes market leaders in e-commerce, digital marketing, advertising, communications and entertainment. We create products and services that provide exceptional value by aligning members and the businesses that want to engage them in a shared community. Rakuten is the most rewarding way to shop, giving millions of members Cash Back when they buy from their favorite brands. As a leading shopping platform, Rakuten partners with thousands of top brands across apparel, beauty and wellness, grocery, travel, on-demand services, subscriptions, and dining, helping members save on everyday purchases. Since 1999, Rakuten members have earned more than $4.6 billion in Cash Back, making it the largest Cash Back platform of its kind. Learn more at Rakuten.com.

Rakuten Rewards is creating a new VP, Business Intelligence & Insights role to centralize analytics and elevate it into an enterprise-level insight and decision-support function reporting directly to the CEO Office. As analytics platforms and AI increasingly automate reporting, competitive advantage comes from judgment, context, and clarity-not dashboards. This role exists to ensure Rakuten Rewards has a single source of truth for business performance and a senior leader who can translate data into actionable insights that shape strategy, prioritization, and investment decisions.

What You’ll Do

Lead Enterprise Data & Insights Strategy Owns Rewards’ enterprise data and insights strategy for executive and operational decision-making (business-facing): defining how performance is measured, interpreted, and used to drive decisions Establish a single, trusted performance narrative across Product, Marketing, Commercial, and Finance. Define the enterprise analytics roadmap in close partnership with Data Platform and Engineering teams.

Elevate Executive Decision-Making Serve as a trusted thought partner to the CEO and executive leadership team. Translate complex data into clear insights, trade-offs, and recommendations that inform strategic decisions. Surface risks, inconsistencies, and blind spots-bringing intellectual rigor and honesty to leadership discussions.

Build & Lead a Centralized Insights Organization Unify analytics teams currently embedded across functions into a centralized Business Intelligence & Insights organization. Set enterprise standards for metrics, definitions, and performance interpretation. Build a high-performing team known for business acumen, credibility, and influence-not reporting volume. Act as a key partner with Product, Engineering, Finance, Marketing, and Sales to ensure data reporting/forecasts and insights for company, merchants and buyers are relevant, timely, and decision oriented and meet their ongoing business needs.

Examples for Areas of Support

• Marketing & Growth Marketing Mix Modeling (MMM) and incrementality analysis to inform marketing investment allocation
• Customer LTV, cohort, and payback analysis to guide acquisition and retention strategy
• Commercial & Revenue Company-level and merchant-level revenue performance insights and forecasting
• Sales quota and target-setting analytics grounded in historical performance and pipeline dynamics
• Performance insights that inform prioritization across merchants, categories, and partnerships
• AI-Enabled, Human-Led Analytics Define the business requirements, use cases, and success criteria for AI-enabled analytics in close partnership with the Data & AI Platform organization.

Define the business requirements, use cases, and success criteria for AI-enabled analytics in close partnership with the Data & AI Platform organization. Partner with Platform teams to ensure analytics tools and capabilities are aligned to enterprise insight needs and executive decision workflows. Leverage AI and automation to accelerate insight generation, while ensuring human judgment, business context, and leadership perspective guide interpretation. Ensure AI-powered analytics enhance decision quality and consistency -rather than creating parallel systems or fragmented interpretations.

How You’ll Work

You’ll provide embedded functional support with measurable service levels while maintaining a single enterprise standard for metrics, interpretation, and performance truth. You’ll own enterprise clarity: metric definitions, performance interpretation, and decision-grade insights. This role does not own functional execution (marketing spend, product delivery, sales operations). Functional leaders retain accountability for outcomes, informed by insights produced by this organization. In close partnership with the Data & AI Platform and Engineering organizations-who own architecture and delivery-this role defines the enterprise analytics roadmap required to deliver decision-grade insights at scale.

What Success Looks Like

Leadership aligns around a single version of performance truth. Executive decisions are faster, clearer, and more confident. Metrics are consistent, trusted, and directly tied to strategy. Analytics is viewed as a strategic advantage, not a support function.

What We’re Looking For

15+ years of senior leadership experience in analytics, business intelligence, or insights. Proven track record of influencing C-level decisions through data-driven insight and judgment. Experience centralizing or transforming analytics in complex, cross-functional organizations. Strong understanding of modern analytics and AI-enabled platforms, paired with sharp business intuition. Exceptional communicator with the confidence to challenge assumptions and elevate executive thinking. This is an opportunity to define how Rakuten Rewards understands its business, makes decisions, and scales intelligently. If you are energized by turning data into clarity-and clarity into action-this role offers the scope and impact.

#LI-RM14

Five Principles for Success

Our worldwide practices describe specific behaviors that make Rakuten unique and united across the world. We expect Rakuten employees to model these 5 Shugi Principles of Success.

• Always improve, Always Advance - Only be satisfied with complete success - Kaizen
• Passionately Professional - Take an uncompromising approach to your work and be determined to be the best
• Hypothesize - Practice - Validate - Shikumika - Use the Rakuten Cycle to succeed in unknown territory
• Maximize Customer Satisfaction - The greatest satisfaction for our teams is seeing their customers smile
• Speed!! Speed!! Speed!! - Always be conscious of time - take charge, set clear goals, and engage your team

Rakuten provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type. Rakuten considers applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetic information, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state, provincial or local laws.

As part of our Rakuten interview process, we encourage applicants to use their own words, rather than AI-generated content. Tell us your story in a way that's personal and authentic.

At the time of posting, Rakuten expects the base compensation for this role to be within the range shown below. Individual compensation will vary based on job-related factors, including the skills, qualifications, and experience of the successful candidate as well as business need and geographic location.

The successful applicant for this role will be eligible for discretionary bonus, health, vision, dental insurance, 401k matching, PTO, Volunteer Time Off (VTO), and other employee benefits as the company implements.

USD $178,767.00 - $333,720.00 annually

Rakuten International oversees 7 businesses with over 4,000 employees globally. The brand is recognized for its leadership and innovation in e-commerce, digital content, advertising, entertainment, and communications, bringing the joy of discovery and access to more than 1 billion members across the world. Everyday team members deliver on the company’s mission to delight merchants and customers through innovation, optimism, and teamwork.

Rakuten Rewards is a leading e-commerce company that enhances the way people shop by offering Cash Back, deals and rewards from more than 3,500 merchants. Founded in 1999, Rakuten has grown to become the go-to shopping destination for consumers, having paid out nearly $2 billion in Cash Back to its 15 million members. The company also operates ShopStyle, a leading fashion discovery destination, and Cartera Commerce, a top rewards platform for airlines and banks. For more information, visit www.rakuten.com.

The Consolidated Appropriations Act’s Transparency in Coverage Rules require group health plans to disclose on a public website information regarding in-network provider rates and historical out-of-network allowed amounts and billed charges for covered items and services in two separate machine-readable files (MRFs). The MRFs for Rakuten’s Aetna benefit plan are provided in the link below.