Director - Commerce Analytics & Intelligence

Merkle's Commerce Analytics & Intelligence practice helps the world's largest retailers, brands, and marketplaces turn data into decisions across the four Ps — product, price, promotion, and place — and against the competitive market. We are moving from an embedded, staff-augmentation delivery model to a craft-led consultancy: named specialists organized by discipline, US-onshore leadership in front of a global delivery engine, and value measured by the decisions we enable rather than the hours we bill.

The Director, Commerce Analytics is a US-based onshore craft leader accountable for one of our largest enterprise accounts. You pair fluent business acumen with a strong technical foundation — AI and machine learning, Python, SQL, and cloud computation — and you use both to own the analytics craft end to end: consumer decision modeling, pricing and promotion, assortment and space, and competitive intelligence. You lead a blended onshore/offshore pod, sit at the client's table as a trusted advisor, and translate business need into a delivery plan the offshore engine executes. This is a build role: you are shaping how the practice operates as much as running the work.

What you will own

• Client partnership. Be the senior analytics voice the client relies on — present the standard rather than wait for the ask, bring proposals not order-taking, and hold the relationship at the business-decision altitude, not the report altitude.

• The craft. Own the analytics discipline across the account: consumer decision modeling and the semantic/decisioning layer, pricing and promotion, assortment and localization, digital shelf and competitive intelligence — the me-vs-market view of the four Ps.

• A blended pod. Lead a flat, project-based team drawn from a single global Merkle pool — onshore practitioners in front, offshore engineering and data-science engines behind. Assemble teams around projects, not titles; project leadership follows the work.

• Delivery you can prove. Stand up and run a value cadence: weekly delivery status with dated milestones, risks and dependencies; monthly project-based business readouts per area; and a scorecard that shows the client what their investment returns — baselines stated honestly, targets met.

• Documentation and governance. Ensure solutions live visibly in the client's environment with current documentation, clear workflows, and a governance standard any party can pick up — closing the gap between what the team delivers and what the client can see.

• Growth. Convert delivered value into expansion — new decisions, new areas, new scope — and feed the account's forward pipeline in partnership with account and client-success leadership.

What you will bring

• Fluent business acumen. You read a P&L and a merchant's world with equal ease — you can move between the four Ps and the levers behind them (traffic, transaction, units, conversion, margin), translate a business question into an analytical answer and back, and hold your own in a boardroom, not just a data review.

• Strong technical background. Deep, hands-credible expertise across the modern analytics and AI stack — AI and machine learning, Python, SQL, and cloud computation (e.g., GCP, AWS, or Azure and their data/ML services) — plus fluency in the market-leading tooling of the moment: LLMs and agentic/GenAI, semantic and decisioning layers, experimentation and attribution platforms, and modern BI. You do not have to be the builder on every project, but you must be credible enough to architect, challenge, and lead engineers and data scientists.

• 8+ years in commerce, retail, or merchandising analytics, with real functional depth in at least two of: pricing and promotion, assortment and space, consumer decision modeling / CDT, or competitive and digital-shelf intelligence. You have sat on the merchant or business side of these decisions, not just the reporting side.

• Consulting and client leadership. You have led senior client relationships as a trusted advisor, set the analytical standard, and navigated a large, matrixed client organization — comfortable proposing the path rather than executing a spec.

• Onshore/offshore delivery leadership. You have led blended teams across time zones and shores, translated business intent into a technical plan, and held delivery quality and dates without a heavy management layer beneath you.

• A build-and-shepherd temperament. You set standards, raise risks early, escalate rather than absorb, and grow people by the work they lead — not by title.

What sets the strongest candidates apart

• Direct experience inside a big-box or enterprise retailer's merchandising, category management, pricing, or online organization.

• Experience standing up a decisioning or semantic-layer product, business decision engines — taking it from concept to a governed, enterprise-wide capability.

• A track record of converting a delivery relationship into a strategic, consultative partnership — and growing it.

How this role fits

This Director sits within Merkle's DBT-aligned Commerce Analytics practice, reporting into practice leadership, with account P&L owned above the role. You lead the analytics craft for your account and draw talent from — and contribute talent to — the shared global pool that serves Merkle's broader commerce portfolio. Success is a client who sees Merkle as their commerce-intelligence partner, a craft that delivers on a promise made and measured, and a team that grows because the work does.

The annual salary range for this position is $136,000-$190,000. Placement within the salary range is based on a variety of factors, including relevant experience, knowledge, skills, and other factors permitted by law.  

Benefits available with this position include:  

• Medical, vision, and dental insurance, 

• Life insurance,  

• Short-term and long-term disability insurance, 

• 401k, 

• Flexible paid time off, 

• At least 15 paid holidays per year, 

• Paid sick and safe leave, and 

• Paid parental leave. 

Dentsu also complies with applicable state and local laws regarding employee leave benefits, including, but not limited to providing time off pursuant to the Colorado Healthy Families and Workplaces Act, in accordance with its plans and policies.  For further details regarding Dentsu benefits, please visit www.dentsubenefitsplus.com. 

To begin the application process, please click on the “Apply” button at the top of this job posting. Applications will be reviewed on an ongoing basis, and qualified candidates will be contacted for next steps. 

At dentsu, we believe great work happens when we’re connected. Our way of working combines flexibility with in-person collaboration to spark ideas and strengthen our teams. Employees who live within a commutable distance of one of our hub offices, currently located in Chicago, metro Detroit, Los Angeles, and New York City, are required and expected to work from the office three days per week (two days per week for employees based in Los Angeles). Dentsu may designate other Hub offices at any time. Those who live outside a commutable range may be designated as remote, depending on the role and business needs. Regardless of your work location, we expect our employees to be flexible to meet the needs of our Company and clients, which may include attendance in an office.

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Dentsu is committed to providing equal employment opportunities to all applicants and employees. We do this without regard to race, color, national origin, sex , sexual orientation, gender identity, age, pregnancy, childbirth or related medical conditions, ancestry, physical or mental disability, marital status, political affiliation, religious practices and observances, citizenship status, genetic information, veteran status, or any other basis protected under applicable federal, state, or local law.