About Us:

Have you ever had the opportunity to impact the lives of millions of people in a meaningful way and help them enjoy time away with their friends and families building memories? 

That is what we do here at HomeAway.com, an Expedia Inc. company. We are the leading vacation rental website in the world with more than one million online bookable vacation rentals. Our mission is to make every vacation rental in the world available to every traveler in the world through our online marketplace and we're committed to helping families and friends find the perfect vacation rental to create unforgettable travel experiences together. 

As for engineering, we solve problems of scale and work on cutting edge and open-source technologies. Our culture is one that strives on solving difficult problems focusing on product engineering based on hypothesis testing to empower people to come up with ideas.

The sort order algorithm determines in which order properties are displayed on search result pages on all HomeAway sites globally. By showing the right property to the right traveler, we ensure both supplier and traveler satisfaction, while increasing significantly online conversion. This position is a unique opportunity to join a fast growing entity critical to the company’s success, in a leading online company of the attractive vacation rental market.

The marketplace big data analyst will help in analyzing the performance of the sort algorithm, identifying areas of improvement and designing creative solutions to further increase traveler conversion. Given the potential impact of this role on HomeAway conversion, sales and revenue objectives, it will receive significant executive-level attention and support. This position is based in Austin (Texas), joining our Business Intelligence team in the Domain office location. The role will also be highly cross-functional, working with our database, BI, product, development and business teams to resolve any operational issues and develop new tools as required.

Key responsibilities:

• Identify through analysis and data mining opportunities to improve sort algorithm in order to increase traveler conversion
• Define and help organize the upcoming A/B tests to be performed,resulting in constant improvement of our logic
• Specify and help prioritize requirements for coding enhancement of sort algorithm by engineering teams
• Monitor performance of sort system on a daily basis, and quickly identify areas of concern, propose analyses and/or corrective actions
• Define key business operating metrics and design and create related reports that show our success/failure in reaching related success metrics

Candidate profile

Intellectual Skills:

• Passion for number crunching and logical problem solving on intellectual challenges
• Ability to structure / work on exploratory problems, with innovating approach and creative solutions
• Ability to work independently and proactively, identifying issues and raising them to management, as well as offering potential solutions
• Strong business sense and strategy thinking
• Ability to build and present evidence based stories
• Must be comfortable with uncertainty. Flexibility to changing priorities and timelines is key
• Able to work with different business units, across multiple countries, to communicate findings and practices company-wide

Technical Skills:

• Expertise in Excel and SQL is a must
• Tableau and R mastering is a huge plus
• Other data mining tools (BigQuery, Datameer, Hive, Hadoop, Python) and Office suite (PowerPoint, Outlook) knowledge is preferred but not required

Experience/ Education:

• 2-5 years of experience in either web/ travel industry or strategy/ data consulting is required
• Must have proven prior experience with managing complex systems to drive business performance
• Previous experience in Sort order or Revenue Management algorithms would be a definite plus. Knowledge of web industry environment (A/B testing,Conversion funnel, traffic sources…) is preferred but not required
• Education Requirement: Masters Degree preferred in Computer Science, Engineering, or Mathematics and Bachelors Degree in Computer Science, Computer Information Systems, or equivalent technical discipline required

Benefits:

• Competitive health and insurance benefits
• Competitive salary
• Annual target bonus or commission
• Paid vacation and sick time
• Vacation rental on a yearly basis (taxable benefit)
• Employee Stock Purchase Program
• Free snacks and beverages
• Frequent company update talks with our leadership team
• Free listing on HomeAway.com
• Electronic, adjustable stand-up desk
• Discounted Metro & Rail pass