Data & Intelligence Discovery Lead (6 Month Secondment)

Job Description

About the Secondment

Taylor & Francis is building toward a world-class AI and data intelligence platform (Marketplace). Before we hire permanently into the Head of Data & Intelligence role and begin that build in earnest, we need to understand clearly what we already have and what we do not.

This secondment is an investigative mandate. The person who takes it will spend six months mapping T&F's current data and intelligence landscape with rigour and curiosity, auditing existing capability, identifying gaps, and producing the baseline that the permanent Head of Data and Intelligence will build from. It is foundational work, and it matters.

This is not a Data Analyst role - data analysis sits entirely in the RAD function, and the current RAD team will be a key stakeholder in this secondment.

The successful individual requires a data and intelligence product development mindset to assess the data and intelligence capabilities that exist across T&F today: in product teams, in engineering, in commercial, and in pockets of the business that have built their own approaches to data and intelligence. Some of it is sophisticated. Some of it is inconsistent. Some of it is not visible to the people who could benefit from it most. We do not yet have a complete picture of what we have, where it is, or how well it is working.

The Data & Intelligence Discovery Lead will create that picture.

This is an investigative role—part internal audit, part stakeholder research, part strategic synthesis. You will move across the business with the mandate to ask the questions that nobody has yet asked systematically:

• What data assets do we hold and how well are they used?
• Where are AI or ML capabilities already in operation, formally or informally?
• What does each part of the business need from a data and intelligence function that it is not currently getting?
• What would it take to build something genuinely excellent?

At the end of six months, you will have produced the baseline that the permanent Head of Data & Intelligence will inherit: a clear, honest, and well-evidenced account of where T&F stands today and a set of strategic recommendations for what should be our next steps in strategy formulation. The quality of that baseline will directly determine how fast the permanent role can move.

What You'll Be Doing

Audit & Map Existing Capability

Your starting point is understanding what platform intelligence exists, without assumptions.

• Conduct a structured audit of all data assets currently held—their source, format, quality, accessibility, and how actively they are being used to inform product or commercial decisions
• Map every instance of AI, machine learning, or algorithmic decision-making currently in operation—including informal or team-built tools, not just officially commissioned capabilities
• Understand our current AEO/GEO and SEO positioning to inform UC growth

What Success Looks Like

At the end of six months, success is not a presentation. It is a genuine foundation. The permanent Head of Data & Intelligence should be able to walk into the role, read the baseline report, and understand clearly—without having to re-discover it themselves—what T&F has, what it needs, and where to start.

Success means delivering:

• A complete and honest inventory of our current data assets, tools, and intelligence capabilities
• A clear gap analysis between current state and the AI platform ambition—prioritised by commercial and product impact
• A set of strategic recommendations for the permanent Head of Intelligence that are specific, evidenced, and actionable
• A network of relationships across the business that the permanent Head of Intelligence inherits and can build from
• Foundational documentation that reduces the permanent hire's time to impact from months to weeks

The Six Months

The secondment is structured across five overlapping phases:

Month 1–2: Discovery & Mapping

• Complete a structured audit of all value-driven existing data assets including traffic analysis across our platforms to inform the growth of UC, models in use, and intelligence capabilities across the business
• Map what exists, where it lives, and who owns it

Month 2–3: Assessment & Gap Analysis

• Evaluate the maturity, quality, and commercial relevance of what has been discovered
• Identify the gaps between current capability and what our UC/Marketplace ambition requires

Month 3–4: Stakeholder Intelligence

• Conduct structured conversations across Product, Engineering, Commercial, and Data teams to understand how data and intelligence are being used, where the frustrations are, and what the organisation needs

Month 4–5: Synthesis & Recommendations

• Develop the baseline report—a clear, evidenced picture of where we stand today and what it needs to build
• Draft the strategic recommendations that will inform the permanent Head of D&I mandate

Month 5–6: Handover & Foundation

• Present findings to VP Product and the P&T leadership team
• Create the foundational documentation, frameworks, and relationships that set the permanent Head of D&I up to move at pace from day one

These phases are designed to overlap—stakeholder conversations will continue throughout, and synthesis will begin before discovery is complete. The phases describe emphasis, not hard boundaries.

Qualifications

What we're looking for

You are:

• Analytically strong – you are comfortable working with data, assessing quality and coverage, and forming well-reasoned conclusions from incomplete information
• Investigative by nature – you ask the next question, not just the obvious one, and you are not satisfied with the first answer you are given
• A strong interviewer and listener – you can conduct structured stakeholder conversations that surface what people think, not just what they think you want to hear
• Comfortable with ambiguity – you can begin work without a complete brief, create your own structure, and produce clear outputs from a messy starting point
• Credible across functions – you can engage with engineering on data infrastructure, with product on intelligence needs, and with commercial on data-driven decision-making, and be taken seriously in each conversation
• A clear and direct communicator – your written and verbal outputs are accessible to non-specialist audiences without sacrificing accuracy
• Familiar with how data and AI/ML capabilities work in a product context – not as a practitioner, but as someone who understands what these capabilities can and cannot do and can assess them with informed judgement
• Aware of T&F's ambition – you understand how the marketplace works, what drives commercial performance, and why data and intelligence matter at our scale

Additional Information

Closing date 24th July 2026

Location: The successful candidate will be able to utilise our balanced working model. We ask that candidates live within a commutable distance of our offices in Milton Park, Oxfordshire, or London, Blackfriars to ensure that as a balanced worker they can make it to our office location 3 days per week. 

You must have the right to work and live in the UK. 

What we offer in return: 

• A competitive salary + bonus
• An excellent work/life balance with a fantastic, flexible working culture
• 25 days annual leave
• 3 additional discretionary days off during the holiday season at the end of the year
• 4 volunteering days annually
• Day off for your birthday
• Company funded single cover private medical insurance  
• Employee assistance programme – offering 24/7 well-being support 
• Share Match – Plan that matches every share purchased with two free shares. 
• Pension scheme 
• Life assurance, plus optical and medical care

If you’re excited about working with Taylor & Francis to foster human progress through knowledge, we invite you to apply even if your existing skills and experience don’t fit every item listed above. At Taylor & Francis, we are at our best and most successful when colleagues can be themselves and make a contribution regardless of their identity or background. As a colleague, you will have the opportunity to further innovate and develop in areas that you are passionate about. Our goal is to empower you with the resources, incentives, and flexibility you need to enjoy success at work and to live a healthy, balanced life. 

Taylor & Francis is proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer. We believe in and value diversity of people and thought, fostering a supportive and inclusive environment where all colleagues can learn and succeed as their true selves. Taylor & Francis recruits, develops, and retains colleagues without regard to any protected personal characteristics or other non-merit based factor. 

We want all our candidates to shine in our recruitment process. Please let us know if there is anything we can do to ensure you are able to show us your best self. This could include having the application form in a different format, more time for questions, or anything else – please ask us, we are happy to be flexible! Please contact recruitment@tandf.co.uk

Company Description

Informa is a leading academic publishing, business intelligence, knowledge, and events business, creating unique content and connectivity for customers all over the world. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a member of the FTSE 100.  

Taylor & Francis is one of the world’s largest publishers of high-quality, peer reviewed scholarly journals, books, e-books and reference works. We empower learners, thinkers and doers with trusted knowledge that advances research and enriches lives. We bring together diverse people, ideas and opinions to validate and publish the experts, theories and truths that matter. And we’ve been doing this in an unbroken arc since 1798.  

Our purpose is to foster human progress through knowledge.  We strongly believe that this requires us to encourage and examine different ideas and voices, so that any work that meets our exacting levels of quality deserves to be included in our publications. This requires open minds, the opportunity for robust debate, and the courage to defend perspectives that stand up to scrutiny, even if they conflict with our personal beliefs or values. Because that’s the only way to find the best obtainable version of the truth and, ultimately, foster human progress. If you agree, then we’d love to hear from you.