Head of Data & Analytics

Our everyday digital experiences are in the midst of a realtime revolution. Whether attending an event in a virtual venue, receiving realtime financial information, or monitoring live car performance data – consumers simply expect realtime digital experiences as standard. Ably provides a suite of APIs to build, extend, and deliver powerful digital experiences in realtime for more than 265 million devices across 80 countries each month, supporting organizations like Toyota, Bloomberg, Hubspot and Split.

Working at Ably means helping to build the infrastructure and technology that will power and shape the future of the internet. The opportunity in front of us is immense. But we can’t rest yet. And we’d like your help. As Ably enters its next stage of growth, we’re looking for talented and curious individuals to help us build and deliver the platform to power synchronized digital experiences in realtime for one billion devices every week by 2024.

What’s it like to work at Ably?

Ably is entering a new phase of growth led by an experienced senior team. You’ll be part of a successful, highly motivated, and extremely collaborative team. We want to work in a company of inclusive people who treat each other well.

To see what life’s like at Ably, check out our careers page at ably.com/careers and read the story of how Ably's core values came to be.

Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging at Ably

We believe our differences as individuals is what makes us great. Our people are at the heart of what we do, and we encourage everyone to be their most authentic self at Ably: we see inclusivity and openness as fundamental to creating long-term success as an organization. We encourage applications from all backgrounds regardless of age, disability, gender, sexual orientation, parental status, race, religion, educational background or neurodiversity. Ably has an amazing opportunity ahead of us, and we want anyone to be able to contribute to that opportunity.

About this role

We are looking for a Head of Data & Analytics who will lead a team that play an integral part of building the foundations of Ably’s internal data processing pipelines, working closely with our website, realtime, product, operations, marketing and support teams to unlock our data and empower your fellow Ablyans to make informed decisions every day. This is a new capability we’re developing at Ably, so you’ll have an opportunity to work on the platform from the earliest moment, and build experience at every stage of the project’s lifecycle and on each technology that is part of it.

Day to day you will

• As a Head of Data & Analytics, whilst reporting to our COO, you will lead a team of data engineers and analysts that enables the organization to make informed decisions by providing accessible and actionable data.
• Working across multiple functions (engineering, commercial, finance, etc.) to extract and leverage insights from our various data sources.
• Collaborating with multiple functions (engineering, commercial, finance, etc.) to ensure data is synchronized and enriched across our various data sources.
• Ensure our data reaches data warehouses/lakes and is surfaced in our BI, decision making and reporting tools.
• Coordinate with all internal teams, implementing tools and processes to ensure high quality of data in the platform across governance, lineage, and testing.
• Work with the Operations team to extract useful information from our existing databases and feed it into decision making/reporting tools.
• Consider UX of dashboards to optimize for ease of use and data discovery.
• Build out metrics and reports for organizational consumption, using analytical acumen, Tableau & SQL code.
• Perform code reviews to help the team ship quality data and BI products, and monitor the health of the various data processing pipelines.
• Conduct regular stand-ups with your team to help everyone stay aligned.
• Take ownership for all systems in the BI tech stack, including integrations, renewals, and liaising with vendor CSMs where necessary.

We’d love to hear from you if you have

• A degree in a relevant discipline e.g. Computer Science, Maths, Engineering, Data Science.
• Solid experience leading a data and analytics team, are comfortable employing different approaches to a variety of situations including mentoring, coaching, etc., coupled with proven experience of helping your team grow and progress.
• Excellent interpersonal and communication skills, with the ability to build strong relationships with both internal stakeholders and external vendors.
• Outstanding business acumen, analytics knowledge and problem solving skills that can be applied across multiple domains and contexts.
• Demonstrated the delivery of high-quality BI and data products designed for broad consumption, ranging from C-level to daily operations.
• Proven experience with modern data tech stack, and principles therein, such as: data modeling (dbt), data warehousing (snowflake), data pipelines (fivetran, hightouch), and data visualization (tableau).
• Comfort with data engineering concepts like version control, latency, optimisation and scalability.
• Some knowledge of code-based data frameworks like Airflow, Prefect, dbt, Spark or similar.

It would be nice, but not essential if you have

• Experience gathering data from HTTP APIs, handling errors, networking issues and unpredictable responses without impacting the data pipelines.
• Some understanding/exposure to streaming data tools and processes.
• Good grasp of Agile, Kanban and SCRUM.

What’s in it for you?

• A great company culture where every individual is valued and supported
• Share options. We believe that all Ablyans should share in our success and growth
• We’ll support your professional development with a £1000 annual learning budget and up to 10% learning and development time
• We’re remote first, so you can work flexibly in a way that fits your lifestyle. You’re also welcome to pop into our communal office space in Shoreditch, London if you want to collaborate in-person or socialise with the team.
• Fully-paid quarterly summits, where we take a few days to step back as a team and a company, to have some fun together and work on things we might not have time for day-to-day
• Your choice of high quality tech kit to work on
• Home workstation set up budget of £500, plus an annual top-up of £150
• Regular company away days and social events
• Weekly individual drinks and snacks budget
• Private healthcare, 24/7 Employee Assistance Programme and life assurance
• Access to private and confidential coaching with Sanctus
• A monthly wellbeing budget with Juno
• A matching pension contribution of 5%
• Life Assurance and Income Protection with Canada Life
• Financial Coaching with Octopus MoneyCoach 
• A Cash Plan with SimplyHealth
• 27 days of paid annual leave plus a day off on your birthday (36 days including bank holidays)
• 10 days of paid sick leave (including mental health days) per year
• Dog friendly office for when you’re in the office!

If you enjoy working as part of a technology company, value open source, and love solving hard problems - then we’d love to hear from you, regardless of whether you fit the job description exactly or not. If in doubt, drop us an email; we’d be more than happy to give you some advice on your application.