About Us:

HomeAway, based in Austin, Texas, is the world leader in vacation rentals with more than 2 million unique places to stay in 190 countries, and is a part of the Expedia, Inc. family of brands.

HomeAway offers an extensive selection of vacation rental homes that provide travelers with memorable experiences and benefits, especially more room to relax, for less than the cost of traditional hotel accommodations. The company also makes it easy for vacation rental owners and property managers to advertise their properties and manage bookings online. 

The Opportunity:

HomeAway is looking for a proactive, analytical and technically skilled leader to join our Global Customer Experience Operations team in Austin, Texas. The mission of the team is to enable stakeholders with strategic and operational insights that allow them to make better decisions. Our culture is one that strives to solve difficult problems through rigorous hypothesis-based testing, empowering people to come up with ideas and data-driven solutions quickly. Our team is passionate about learning the drivers of the business and leveraging data, technology and analytics to provide valuable data insights that drive the company's critical business decisions. We are looking for an Analytics and Planning Director to support our global customer experience operations and workforce planning teams. In this role, you will work with all of our geographies and organizational departments. 

Key responsibilities of this team includes helping our regional operations teams understand and adapt to changing customer behaviors; provide clear understanding of contact propensities in anticipation of forecasting needs; ensure accurate capacity planning and forecasting for both internal and offshore resources, and define and monitor KPIs across the organization in search of opportunities for us to improve the service experience for our Partners and Travelers. This role reports to the Sr. Director of Global Customer Experience Operations Program Management, and requires an individual with excellent analytical and technical abilities, combined with strong presentation and communication skills. 

Team Responsibilities

• Provide data-driven recommendations to our regional operations management teams on how to improve processes, address contact drivers, and plan for product changes. 
• Implement new and innovative analyses to inform and help prioritize our operational enhancements. 
• Drive the strategic direction of global capacity planning strategy, out-sourcer strategy, new site requirements, geographic diversification, etc.
• Understand key business and conversion drivers to better define KPIs for the organization that are aligned with the company's overall strategic direction.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams globally - including other Analytics teams - to clarify and present customer experience insights.
• Partner with key stakeholders to prioritize asks based on highest potential value added, and proactively drive initiatives from there. 
• Work with the broader Big Data team in an Agile model to implement self-service data products that will allow the regional management teams to access accurate information directly and easily
• Implement visualizations that allow customers to easily see important trends in our KPIs, and which the operations teams can use to spot anomalies and/or opportunities 
• Respond to ad-hoc analytical questions from key partners, especially for readouts on key tests and/or recent changes that could heavily impact contact propensity.
• Partner with the Technology and Engineering teams to ensure continuous improvement in data collection and underlying data systems to adequately support advancements in our data products and improve our insights. 
• Participate in and at times help lead sections of the Customer Experience leadership weekly meetings to ensure insight-based decision making.
• Directly manage team of 6-8 professionals, ensuring we have training and career development plans that will set them and their own teams up for success today and going forward.

General Skills:

• Passion for number crunching, logical problem solving and intellectual challenges 
• Strong business sense, strategic thinking and team player 
• Ability to decompose a line of business into its underlying drivers and then model changes in those drivers based on historic data to estimate the impact on the overall business.
• High technical aptitude, with a willingness to develop further as data-based analyses grow deeper and more complex.
• Must be comfortable with uncertainty by prioritizing effectively and flexibly handling changes.
• Able to work across different business units/countries to communicate findings company-wide.
• Ability to work independently and proactively, identifying issues and raising them to management, as well as offering potential solutions.
• Ability to build and present evidence-based stories.
• Excellent organization skills, and ability to manage multiple projects concurrently. 

Qualifications 

• Bachelor's degree in an analytical field (e.g., Strategy, Business, Economics, Mathematics, Statistics) and 8+ years of experience in data analytics OR Master's degree in an analytical field (e.g. Strategy, Business, Economics, Mathematics, Statistics) and 5+ years of experience. 
• 4+ years experience managing teams. 
• 3+ years experience in either eCommerce/travel industry or strategic consulting, strongly preferred.
• Significant experience with SQL required; meaningful experience with big data platforms/languages (Hadoop, Hive) and other coding languages (Python, Scala), strongly preferred. 
• Strong willingness to advance technically post-hire.
• Proven experience working with web analytics and visualization platforms (i.e: Google Analytics, Tableau) to implement self-service visualizations 
• Proven track record of solving complex business problems and communicating easily understood recommendations to teams for implementation 
• Expert-level business modeling (Excel) and strategic problem solving skills (issue trees, frameworks, etc.) 
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with demonstrable ability to deliver compelling fact-based presentations 
• Past experience operating in Scrum/Agile methodology 
• Must be fluent in English

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