Data Lead

Data plays a key role in how we operate and make decisions. As the data lead at Help Scout, you’ll build the team that turns our data into actionable insights that employees across the company rely on to monitor trends, set goals, and make decisions. Your work will make us smarter, more efficient, and will help us grow the business.

As our Data Lead, you will:

• We’d look to you to lead, develop, mentor, and manage our data team, currently consisting of an analytics engineer, and oversee the hiring efforts to grow the team to 5 people in the next 12-18 months.
• Collaborate with leadership from across the company including marketing, sales, finance, support, and product to gain a deep understanding how data is used at Help Scout today and how we can make it even more useful in years to come.
• Take ownership of our data stack which currently includes Looker, dbt, BigQuery and Fivetran. You’ll maintain the long-term roadmap for our data infrastructure and make sure it can grow alongside the company.
• Evaluate and implement new tools and processes to expand Help Scout’s data capabilities.
• Prioritize and assist with data initiatives and data requests and communicate analyses to stakeholders.
• Initially spend roughly 50% of your time on individual contributor/technical/analysis work and 50% on management/strategy work, but gradually spend a larger % of your time on the latter as you grow the team.

In your first 90 days at Help Scout, you will:

• Learn the ins and outs of the business, our data stack, our processes, our key metrics, etc.
• Gain experience by applying what you learn to solving real-world data requests.
• Meet with other team leads to understand how they use data currently and brainstorm opportunities for improvement that the data team can tackle in the future.
• After you get spun up and better understand the state of data and the needs of the business, you’ll decide on what role we need to hire for next and lead the effort to hire that person in Q3.

About you:

• You are currently leading a data team or are interested in leading one. As the future data lead, you’re eager to mentor and coach the people on your team to accomplish great things and help them evolve to the next stage in their careers.
• You are comfortable using SQL, spreadsheets, and business intelligence software to glean insights from data.
• You default to non-defensive listening and believe in leading with humility and vulnerability. You naturally build excellent relationships with your team and peers.
• You lean in to having difficult conversations with people to resolve a situation and do what is right. You understand the value of direct, transparent, respectful feedback and know that it’s a gift your teammates can use to grow and develop their super powers.
• You are an outstanding communicator, both verbally and in writing. You have experience working across teams drive execution on multiple projects.
• You can manage competing priorities well, between large, in-depth projects and ad hoc requests to support the business day-to-day.
• You are extremely thoughtful when it comes to hiring people for your team, and work actively to identify your team’s growth areas. You prioritize hiring someone that is a long-term compliment to the team versus someone who works and thinks like everyone else.
• You believe diverse teams are critical for high performance and understand the value of fostering an inclusive environment for your team to thrive. You understand the important impact you can have as a coach on DEI efforts in hiring and promoting team members.
• You live in a time zone that would give you at least 4 hours of overlap each day with the rest of the team (all of whom are EST currently).

Bonus points if you:

• Have worked in an analytical role in a fast-growing SaaS business and are familiar with common marketing, sales, finance, and product metrics.
• Have experience with a business intelligence tool like Looker, Tableau, or Mode.
• Have used dbt to transform data within a data warehouse.
• Are a member of the Locally Optimistic data community
• Who you'll work with
• Matt Mazur, our current part-time analytics engineer and data lead. Matt will report to you and will help you get spun up on all things data at Help Scout.
• KJ Lee, a financial planning and analysis specialist who builds sophisticated financial models and has picked up SQL and dbt for fun.
• Shawna Fisher, our CFO, who lives and breathes the numbers. You’ll report to Shawna, though the data team works with every team at the company and is not just focused on financial analysis.
• Adam Goyette, VP of Marketing, whose team you’ll collaborate with on marketing projects.
• Mariah Hay, our VP of Product, whose team of product managers you’ll partner with to understand how people are using our product.

Benefits:

• Competitive salary - Our salary formula is public to all employees (but doesn't divulge your specific salary) and we update it at least once per year. Your salary is the same no matter where you live. Our goal is to pay at or above the market rate of a US-based tech hub like Boston or Seattle.
• Health and dental insurance - We cover you and your family's health/dental insurance 100%. If you are based in the US, we'll cover you on our Aetna policy. If you're based outside the US, we'll reimburse your out-of-pocket health and dental insurance costs.
• Long-term/short-term disability insurance & life insurance - we cover 100% of the premiums for LT/ST disability insurance and base life insurance. You also have the option to purchase supplementary life insurance through our provider (currently US only).
• Flexible vacation - Take time off when you need it! We recommend 3-4 weeks in addition to public holidays, but there are no firm rules. We trust you.
• Sabbatical - After you've been at Help Scout for 4 years, you get a month of paid vacation (in addition to regular vacation) and $2,500 to spend towards travel, learning, projects or anything else during your time off. Read about what our CEO did.
• Paid parental leave, including adoption - 12 weeks of paid leave for all new parents.
• 401k with 1% match- via Betterment for Business (currently US only)
• Personal Development stipend - Up to $1,800 per year to improve your craft
• Set you up for success — we’ll get every new teammate a Mac laptop or equivalent of their choice, and provide a $1500 stipend so you can feel ready to work from home. We also cover up to $350 USD per month if you'd like to rent a co-working desk somewhere.
• Complete transparency - Everyone has full access to business metrics and financial information about the company.

About Us:

Help Scout is made by roughly 110 people in 80+ cities around the world, all with a passion for helping others. We come from diverse backgrounds and are united by an enthusiasm for great products and delightful customer experiences. Help Scout launched in 2011 and today we have more than 12,000 paying customers in 140+ countries.

Why Help Scout?

We're remote. It doesn’t matter if you’ve worked remotely before — we’ve been doing it for nearly a decade and are helping to write the playbook — we’re happy to show you the ropes. Most folks that get a taste of working in a "remote first" company have a hard time going back to the old way of doing things.