Head of Analytics or Director/VP of Analytics (San Francisco)

Head of Analytics or Director/VP of Analytics

• Full-time

The League is a pre-series A mobile social dating app startup backed by IDG Ventures, xSeed Capital, Cowboy Ventures, Structure Capital, Sherpa Ventures, and many notable angels. The Founder is a Stanford MBA (ex-Google, ex-Salesforce) with a strong product sense (engineering degree from Carnegie Mellon) and a fierce determination to change the dating space for the better. The League’s director of engineering, Tim Zaitsev, has a masters from Carnegie Mellon and is incredibly hands-on and is building out a lean team of world-class, senior engineers. The League is live in six cities, brings in healthy revenue each month, and has hundreds of thousands of people in other metros waiting for its launch in their city.

This candidate leads the analytics department and oversees the activities of the junior departments and personnel. In this role, the Head of Analytics ensures that the business in its various departments understands its own health, finds growth levers, and identifies opportunities for optimization. The Head of Analytics leads the business through all efforts that drive business performance and potential by using the existent and new data sources and techniques. He/she leads the data analytics department in the development of a departmental culture, policies, and strategy. The role will involve the Head of Analytics getting his or her hands dirty and solving hard analytical problems for the business, taking a seat at the table alongside Engineering, Product, and Marketing, often representing both Analytics and Product Operations.

1) Build the team

Determine what roles are most needed for the business

Attract and source candidates

Select candidates who will be the best fit for the company's needs and culture

Close candidates, often against competitive offers

2) Manage the team

Ensure a bright, enthusiastic and capable team is aligned to and deployed against projects with the highest business impact

Help analysts and business intelligence engineers achieve their career goals. Make sure that team members understand how to have an impact and make sure they are aware of that impact when they've made it. Explain complicated stats or data technology concepts.

3) Guide the work (and do some of it yourself as well!) across a wide area of responsibilities

Marketing

Television, radio and other point in time attribution

Billboards and possibly other geo-lift attribution

Brand awareness/affinity metrics

Tracking across different products, properties and platforms

Ops

Operational metrics for queue/back office tasks

Understanding how service speed and quality affect business metrics

Product

Continuing to dig deeper into the drivers for performance

Best practices for AB testing, consistent analysis of results and cataloguing of what we learn

Making sure that we have a really solid understanding of and control over our core financial engine

4) Drive technology requirements and investments that make analytics a strategic weapon for the company

Business intelligence tooling

ETL infrastructure

Client-side tracking instrumentation

Unified view of customer data across tools and services used by the business

5) Interface with other groups

Leadership to be sure that decisions are informed and analysis is in service of company goals

User research to understand the emotions and motivations behind user behavior

FP&A to make sure that the entire company is aligned on goals and how to drive towards them

Data engineering to be sure that analytics has access to data and tools needed

Data science to be sure that work isn't being duplicated and everyone understands our business in the same way

OTHER THINGS

Leadership/Supervisory/Support Role: The Head of Analytics is first and foremost a leader within the department overseeing all activities of the data analytics and data warehousing departments. He leads initiatives relating to the optimization of existing departmental policies and leads initiatives that relate to individual department optimization leading to performance improvement across the business.

The Head of Analytics drives performance of analytics solutions to impact overall business results while keeping costs in check and ensuring the department remains within the planned budget. The Head of Analytics is also responsible for setting the departmental vision and culture and championing for the use of data in making key business decisions. The Head of Analytics is in charge of driving the day-to-day analytical approaches and exploring solutions to particular problems. He is also tasked with the management and long-term prioritization of the business’s overall analytical needs and opportunities.

The Head of Analytics additionally defines the business questions that need be answered and defines appropriate analytics models in addition to identifying and readying relevant data sources for analysis. In his leadership capacity, the Head of Analytics takes initiative in developing a training programs meant for improving the departmental heads’ understanding of the use of data, which improves decision-making across the business. In this capacity, the Head of Analytics will also play a mentorship role to key data analytics and warehousing personnel, constantly honing their professional skills, and preparing them for the occupation of his position in future.

Strategy: The Head of Analytics plays a leading strategic role where he leads the data analytics and data warehousing departments in strategy development with regard to the collection, manipulation, and analysis of data for various business functions/departments such as marketing, sales, operations, among others. The Head of Analytics also endeavors to create new data-driven approaches for the purpose of generating business insights through data analytics, information visualization, and addressing unanswered business issues in a proactive manner.

Analytics: The Head of Analytics will play an analytical role where he develops and applies analytical algorithms and methods where possible with a view of driving and enhancing data systems and streamlining business processes. In this capacity, the Head of Analytics strives to improve the quality of analytics solutions on a consistent basis. He leads the analytics and warehousing departments in the creation of high quality analyses for all functions of the business and in the definition of metrics that track the business’s performance at different fronts. It is also the duty of the Head of Analytics to validate, interpret, and create reports and presentations for senior data analytics management, departmental heads/management, and relevant stakeholders.

Collaboration: The role of the Head of Analytics is a highly collaborative role and, as such, the Head of Analytics facilitates joint brainstorming and team collaboration. The Head of Analytics works closely with management in establishing departmental goals and strategies and works with junior data analytics and engineers in defining the data collection needs of the business for the purpose of future work and also for guaranteeing that there is high data-quality and reliability across the business. The Head of Analytics further collaborates with numerous departments across the business, aiding them in the proper use of data, hence, ensuring the delivery of desired operational results.

Operations Duties: Operational tasks that require detailed data analysis will often fall under both Analytics & Operations.

• This role supports the needs of marketing, product, and finance. This leader is responsible for producing marketing analytics, product analytics, and business/financial analytics as well as insights.
• Education: The Head of Analytics has to have a master’s degree (Phd preferred) in Data Science, Computer Science, Information Technology, Economics, Information Systems, Statistics, Applied Math, Business Administration, or any other related field. An equivalent of this requirement in working experience is also acceptable for the position.
• Experience: Experience managing a P&L and/or reporting to a CEO a plus. A candidate for this position must have had at least 7 years of working experience in a data analyst or data warehousing position, preferably working as a Senior Data Analyst in a fast-paced and complex business setting. The candidate will also have had a proven and successful experience in the execution of data analytics initiatives, leading to the development of useful insights and the improvement of a business’s performance and driving top-line growth.
• The candidate will also demonstrate success leading analytics and a large analytical team as well as vast experience working with a wide range of data in order to predict financial metrics for a business. A suitable candidate will additionally have demonstrated experience building and leading quantitative analyses as well experience building response and risk models for a business. As a bonus, the candidate will have gathered experience working with large data-sets and computing systems such as Hadoop.
• Communication Skills: Excellent communication skills in both written and verbal form are a must have for the Head of Analytics. The Head of Analytics will be meant to interact with numerous departments’ personnel and departmental heads/management aiding them in the proper application of data, leading to functional improvement. As a departmental lead