Director,  Product Analytics, Austin

Have you ever had the opportunity to impact the lives of millions of people in a meaning fulway, helping 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 book able vacation rentals. Our mission is to make every vacation rental in the world available to every traveler in the world through our online marketplace. We're committed to helping families and friends find the perfect vacation rental so they can create unforgettable travel experiences together. 

HomeAway is looking for a proactive, analytical and technically skilled leader to join our Analytics and Data Insights team in Austin, Texas. The mission of the team is to enable stakeholders with strategic andoperational 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 Data Insights Director to support our global Product team.In this role, you will work across all of our Product portfolio. Key responsibilities include helping our Product teams understand and adapt to changing customer behaviors; optimize the product experience through A/B testing; and define and monitor KPIs across the Product portfolio in search of opportunities for us to improve site performance for our Suppliers and Travelers.

This role reports to the VP of Analytics and Data Insights, and requires an individual with excellent analytical and technical abilities, combined with strong presentation and communication skills. She/he will lead a team of ~3-4 managers and 20-25excellent professionals in total.

Team Responsibilities

• Provide data-driven recommendations to our Product teams on how to improve site conversion and efficiency.
• Implement new and innovative analyses to inform and help prioritize our Product roadmap.
• Understand key business and conversion drivers to better define KPIs for the Product organization that are aligned with the company’s overall strategic direction.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams globally - especially engineering and other Analytics teams - to clarify and document customer requirements.
• Partner with key stakeholders to prioritize asks based on highest potential value added, and proactively drive initiatives from there.
• Work with the broader Analytics Platform team in an Agile model to implement self-service data products that will allow the Product teams to access accurate information directly and easily.
• Implement visualizations that allow customers to easily see important trends in our KPIs, and which the Analytics or Product 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 company sales.
• 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 Product weekly meetings to ensure insight-based decision making.
• Directly manage team of 3-4 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 degree in an analytical field (e.g., Strategy, Business, Economics, Mathematics, Statistics) and 8+ years of experience in data analytics OR Masters 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 (egs: 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