Martin Aylward, Head of Data and Tech, EDF

Please describe your career to date

After a few interesting early roles at the Lord Chancellor’s Office, the Medical Research Council, and American Express, I moved to Royal & Sun Alliance. At RSA I managed to get onto its global digital leadership initiative at the peak of the dot.com boom, which led to me getting a job in the fledgling ecommerce team and a lead role in the creation of More Th>n.

It was in this role that I cut my teeth on all things digital and data and set up the rest of my career. A love of all things French led me to EDF Energy, where I headed up the acquisition and then the customer marketing teams, taking a lead role in relaunching the brand and building the digital marketing capability.

I then led EDF’s smart-metering programme which spanned digital, tech, data, operations, and marketing. EDF installed over two million smart meters during this time, building a key part of the UK’s net zero infrastructure. I then landed the role of leading EDF retail’s data teams in a newly set up data centre of excellence, which transformed EDF’s data capability, and the value delivered by data.

This led to my current role as Head of Data and Tech in EDF’s wholesale markets business, which is at the forefront of the decarbonisation of the UK’s energy industry.