Senior Product Data Analyst - Apps

The Company

The Irish Times Group is Ireland's leading independent quality news publishing organisation. The core activity of The Irish Times Group has evolved from six-day print publishing to a seven-day multi-platform news publisher with a market-leading position in subscriptions, audience engagement and digital innovation.

We focus on producing trusted journalism for our readers, providing media solutions for customers and continuously evolving our products, platforms and ways of working in a rapidly changing media landscape.

The Company is owned by The Irish Times Trust and is managed by The Irish Times DAC. In recent years, The Irish Times Group has expanded its interests to include the Irish Examiner, The Echo, regional newspapers, RecruitIreland.com, MyHome.ie, RIP.ie, The Gloss, Score Beo and other leading Irish digital brands.

The Role

We are looking for a Senior Product Data Analyst to become the analytical specialist for our app products. This is a senior, hands-on data role with a strong focus on understanding app performance, customer behaviour and the opportunities behind the numbers.

You will work closely with our App Product and Technology teams to understand how our products are performing, how customers are using them, where there are opportunities to improve and where data can help us make better decisions.

You will become the person who understands the analytical story behind our app products. That means understanding the numbers, investigating why they have moved, ensuring new features can be measured properly, identifying opportunities proactively and providing clear recommendations to Product and Technology teams.

You will be part of our central Group Analytics team, reporting to the Analytics Manager.

Analytics will be your home; Apps will be your specialism.

Responsibilities

You will act as the primary analytical partner for our Apps (Mobile & Web Platforms) product stream. Your work will include:

• Understanding and explaining how our app products are performing.
• Analysing customer journeys, engagement, feature adoption, conversion and retention.
• Identifying opportunities and problems proactively rather than waiting for somebody to ask.
• Helping Product teams decide how new features and releases should be measured.
• Evaluating product changes and determining whether they achieved their objectives.
• Working with Technology teams to understand analytics instrumentation and event tracking.
• Investigating unexpected changes in tracking or product metrics.
• Building the evidence needed to establish whether a problem sits in an app, data pipeline, dataset or report.Building evidence to establish source of data anomalies as they arise – third party tool, app deployment, data pipeline, dataset or report.
• Validating analytics after releases and technical fixes.
• Carrying out complex ad-hoc analysis.
• Writing SQL and working directly with underlying data.
• Building and improving BI reporting where it makes sense.
• Identifying gaps in our data and helping improve our underlying analytical models.
• Turning analysis into clear recommendations for Product and senior stakeholders.

You will also remain part of our wider analyst pool, contributing to work across areas such as subscriptions, audience, advertising, editorial and other digital products.

We see that as an important part of the role: it allows you to understand how the wider business works rather than becoming isolated within a single product area.

Qualifications and Experience

This is a senior analyst position, and candidates should be able to demonstrate the following essential qualifications and experience.

We are looking for somebody who is comfortable taking ownership of a problem without being given every step required to solve it.

You should be able to take an ambiguous question, determine the right analytical approach, work through the data and confidently explain what you think the business should do next.

To be considered for the role, you should bring:

• A degree in Data Analytics, Data Science, Statistics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Economics or another relevant quantitative discipline, or equivalent professional experience.
• 5+ years of professional data or analytics experience, including experience operating at a senior analyst level.
• Strong SQL skills and experience working directly with large analytical datasets.
• Strong Excel skills.
• Hands-on professional experience using Power BI or similar to build and maintain dashboards, reports and analytical solutions.
• Hands-on experience working with Snowflake or similar as a cloud data platform, including querying and analysing data directly.
• Experience independently scoping analytical work and translating ambiguous business questions into structured analytical approaches.
• Experience delivering complex ad-hoc analysis.
• Experience developing recurring reporting or longer-term analytical solutions.
• Strong communication, presentation and data storytelling skills.
• Confidence working directly with senior stakeholders and explaining complex analysis clearly to non-technical audiences.
• A proven ability to work independently, take ownership and proactively identify questions, risks and opportunities worth investigating.

Desirable Skills and Experience

The following experience would strengthen a candidate’s fit for the role but is not essential.

In particular, we would value experience with:

• mobile apps or consumer digital product analytics;
• iOS and/or Android analytics;
• product analytics, including customer journeys, funnels, engagement and feature adoption;
• event tracking, instrumentation or analytics implementation;
• app releases and analytics QA;
• conversion, retention or subscription product analysis;
• working directly with Product Managers and software engineering teams;
• A/B testing, experimentation or test-and-learn approaches;
• GA4, Firebase, Google Cloud Platform or BigQuery;
• Python or another analytical programming language.

You don’t need to be a mobile developer.

You do need to be comfortable getting close enough to the technology and data to work effectively with the people who build our products.

Our Technology

Our core analytics environment is built around Snowflake, Power BI, SQL and Excel.

This role requires hands-on experience with Power BI and Snowflake or similar, alongside strong SQL and Excel skills.

Experience with Google Cloud Platform, BigQuery, GA4, Firebase or Python would also be beneficial.

Our Environment

We operate in a digital media environment where audience, engagement and conversion all matter.

Our products support both consumer subscription and advertising-funded business models.

This means our analysts need to understand more than individual metrics. They need to understand how customer behaviour connects across traffic, engagement, registration, subscription conversion and retention.

Previous experience in news media is not required. However, we have found that genuine curiosity about the business of news and digital media can be a significant differentiator. We would particularly welcome candidates interested in understanding how journalism, technology, audience behaviour and commercial performance fit together.

Opportunity

We aren’t looking for somebody who simply waits for requests. A strong candidate will take ownership, work independently, ask good questions, challenge assumptions, suggest new areas for investigation, have ideas of their own, recognise when the data does not support a conclusion, know when specialist technical support is required, communicate confidently with Product and Technology teams, and use analysis to recommend what should happen next.

You will have support from colleagues across Analytics, BI and Data Engineering, but you should also be capable of getting hands-on and solving a significant proportion of analytical problems yourself.

Why This Role?

This is an opportunity to take analytical ownership of an important digital product area while remaining part of a broader Analytics team.

You will have the opportunity to influence how products are measured, improve our understanding of customer behaviour and help shape decisions about how our app experiences develop.

If you are excited by content, technology, storytelling and the future of journalism, this is an opportunity to make a meaningful impact while working on challenges that are both technically complex and highly visible.

Please send your CV through the Apply button below

The Irish Times Group operates a hybrid working policy.

Our benefits include Health Insurance Contribution, Pension Contribution, Sick Leave Cover, Maternity and Paternity Leave, Irish Times Premium Digital Subscription, Income Protection Policy, Corporate Gym Membership Discounts, Free Digital GP and Life Assurance Policy.