Analytics Manager

The organisation

Interfood is a leading global supplier of dairy ingredients, products, and solutions. The company serves over 7,000 clients worldwide, including some of the biggest players in FMCG like Nestlé, Danone, and Unilever. Its milk powders, fats, and associated products form the basis for, e.g., ice creams, beverages, chocolates, and confectionaries. Additionally, Interfood is highly active in the fast-growing dairy derivatives markets across the world, ensuring price risk management solutions for its buyers and suppliers. The trading company makes a difference with its constant strive for quality, up-to-date knowledge, and a profound focus on service.

Last year, Interfood facilitated the distribution of over 1.1 million metric tons of dairy products. The company has built a global market presence with fourteen offices covering six continents. Locations include Eindhoven, Warsaw, Singapore, Montevideo, Melbourne, Dubai, and Miami. Across all its offices, Interfood employs close to 350 people. Sustainability and responsible leadership are an integral part of the company’s DNA. It has made a long-term commitment to funding water management projects in Western Africa and leverages its thought leadership to help its clients create a more sustainable value chain on their road to net-zero carbon.

To strengthen its trading capacity and its services and offerings towards clients and suppliers, Interfood is building strong data and analytics capabilities. A new team of data experts (e.g., scientists and engineers) works with state-of-the-art tooling and a modern tech stack to raise the value of all Interfood’s activities.

The position

Interfood – a global supplier of dairy ingredients – is investing in data and analytics to strengthen its commercial and trading capabilities. The Analytics Manager accelerates the adoption through project delivery, stakeholder management, and team leadership. A great opportunity for impact on a global scale and lots of exposure towards senior management.

Tasks & responsibilities

The Analytics Manager will be responsible for accelerating Interfood’s value creation through data and analytics. They will work on innovative projects closely aligned with the company’s overall corporate strategy. A key part of the role will be collaborating with stakeholders across the global business departments of Trade, Finance, and Freight to ensure successful delivery and drive adoption. The Analytics Manager will coach a talented PMO resource pool including an international team of six experts in data science, data engineering, and market intelligence, and will be reporting to the Global Director of Data & Sustainability.

To execute analytics projects and drive change, the Analytics Manager will work with, lead, and coach project teams consisting of colleagues from BI (responsible for applications, tech delivery, and operational excellence), IT Ops, Data, and Business and Project Management, supplemented with external resources. Together with the project teams, the Analytics Manager will deliver industry-leading innovation and successful adoption of advanced analytics techniques such as time series forecasting, segmentation analyses, and statistical learning.

“Value-add in our industry is dynamic and very complex. There are, for example, lots of different product/market combinations and many global players. An Analytics Manager who has the intellectual curiosity to delve into the intricate correlations at play could make a tremendous impact.” – Kevin Duisters, Global Director of Data & Sustainability

Stakeholder management will be one of the core competencies of the Analytics Manager. Their primary focus will be on the commercial part of the organization, which involves bringing together commercially incentivized functions (e.g., Derivatives Traders, Position Holders, and Account Managers) and departments like Finance and Risk. Additionally, the Analytics Manager will have periodic interactions with the Commercial Leadership and the Executive Committee to report progress and pitch new ideas.  

The projects the Analytics Manager will engage in address Interfood’s key strategic challenges. For example, by enhancing derivative strategies with technology, by applying market intelligence insights to identify optimal product/market combinations and new accounts; and by improving the risk/reward tradeoff through, e.g., synthetic pricing models.   

The main objective for the Analytics Manager will be to ensure Interfood leverages its data and analytics capabilities to boost its business results. That will put a strong emphasis on their ability to leverage and synthesize large volumes and varieties of data to enhance the business’ understanding of customer and market behavior, price volatility, product valorization, and many more. Additionally, the Analytics Manager will need to be able to relate to the business and understand the dynamics of Interfood’s high speed, high intensity trading activities to drive (local) adoption and culture change. These qualities will enable them to shape the success of a multinational, multibillion-dollar company.

Candidate profile*

• Over 7 years of experience
• MSc or Ph.D. in a quantitative discipline
• Data science
• Financial background
• Commercial mindset
• Project management

* Research shows that while male candidates feel confident enough to apply when they meet about 60% of the requirements, female candidates only apply when they tick every box. So if this role has your name on it, but you’re not sure about the criteria, we still want to hear from you.