External Data & Partnerships Manager

Build external windows that sharpen internal decisions

How do you make our customers happy?

First-party data tells us exactly what’s happening on our platform. But it doesn’t provide insight into developments in the broader market. In this role, you’ll develop our external data capability by acquiring third-party data through partnerships and procurement, unlocking collaboration with sister brands, and ensuring bol’s Retail Media business bases decisions on the whole picture. You’ll connect what we see internally with what’s happening externally, and ensure those connections are reliable, usable, and adopted. In short, you’ll build an operational infrastructure that professionalizes how we advise advertisers and allocate resources.

The biggest challenge

You’re building an advanced capability from scratch and embedding it to optimize its use. That means: identifying which external data will materially improve decisions, building business cases that ‘survive’ procurement and legal scrutiny, negotiating partnerships, and (maybe hardest of all) driving adoption. Datasets that that are never queried are of no use. At the end of the day, success is measured by our ability to demonstrably improve decisions and outcomes. Can you convert goodwill and data assets into repeatable delivery that colleagues eagerly rely on?

What you'll do as the Senior External Data & Partnerships Manager

You’ll join bol’s Retail Media Analytics team, working alongside quantitative analysts and analytics engineers who ensure internal and external data can be synthesized effectively. Your role is part strategist, part dealmaker, part adoption champion. You’ll develop the roadmap, secure the data, and make sure it lands. Your key responsibilities:

• Build and maintain an external data roadmap: what to buy, what to partner on, what activities to stop, and securing stakeholder alignment to make it all happen
• Identify, evaluate, and secure commercial data sources that materially enrich how Retail Media operates – from composing shortlists to writing business cases, securing approval, overseeing procurement, and coordinating with legal, and analytics engineering
• Develop sister-brand data collaborations, including clean room and aggregated-insight use cases, by removing blockers, aligning interests, and converting goodwill into repeatable delivery
• Champion data adoption across strategy, commercial, and operations teams, ensuring external data is included in existing reporting, to better inform processes and executive narratives
• Apply explicit ROI thinking to every data investment: will an initiative create more value than it costs?
• Navigate data licensing, privacy, governance, and data management considerations — you’re the authority on how we can use data
• Collaborate closely with analytics engineering to ensure lightweight, sustainable integration of new data sources into the platform

Why you can make a difference

You have 7 to 10+ years of experience in managing external data, partnerships, and/or making market intelligence operational. You’ve done this before: identified and acquired compelling datasets, developed fruitful partnerships, and ensured the organization benefited from these new opportunities. You understand data procurement, licensing logics, and the difference between nice-to-have insights and decision-grade signals. You’re equally comfortable in a room with legal, procurement, engineers, senior commercial stakeholders, or vendors. And you don’t skip a beat when switching between them. Advertising, ad tech, or retail media experience is preferred. This is your data’s natural habitat.

3 reasons why this is (not) for you

• Scope-dependent You prefer a narrow, clearly fenced remit. The wider the horizon, the more uncomfortable you feel.
• Contract-and-done You consider your job complete once a vendor is selected and a deal is signed.
• Adoption-agnostic Whether people actually use what you build doesn’t interest you.

• Ambiguity architect You get energy from taking something undefined and turning it into a working machine. No playbook, no precedent, just a mandate and sound judgment.
• Adoption obsessed You measure success by the decisions you improve, not by how many artifacts you ship. A dataset nobody uses is a waste of storage space.
• Fluent across the chain Stakeholders, vendors, legal, procurement, and engineers? You switch between them without losing context or patience.

Here's where you'll land

You’ll join bol’s Retail Media department – a rapidly growing strategic business line – and report to the Head of Advertising Analytics. You’ll work alongside quantitative analysts and analytics engineers, and champion data availability through close partnership with strategy, commercial, and operations teams across the advertising business. This is a builder role in every sense: you define what external data bol needs, you’re in charge of acquiring it, and you ensure it reshapes how decisions are made. With Retail Media growing in strategic importance and advertisers demanding increasingly sophisticated insights, the external context you build directly translates into a competitive advantage. Not eventually, but now.

Perks

Flexible working

We bring the best of both worlds together by working 50% at the office and 50% at home. This way, we find a balance between organisational and individual needs.

Travel expenses

Whether you travel by public transport or car, we’ve got you covered with reimbursement and electric car charging facilities.