📈 Head of Data
Job Description
About us
Alpha is a product studio focused on the intersection of AI and consumer social – backed by a16z and many of the world's top investors. Our goal is to create social products that we use, that our friends use, and that reach billions of people.
Clubhouse was our first app, and we’ve been quietly growing that while building our next set of products. We have years of runway, have a deeply engaged user base, and find ourselves at a very interesting time – where AI is making entirely new things possible.
We are a remote-friendly company – with a strong commitment to ensuring people can do great work here and thrive without having to live near an office. This role is open to candidates across the U.S.
The role
As Head of Data at Alpha, you’ll work closely with our CEO to help shape our strategy and build data into everything we do, using the latest AI tooling to reinvent our workflows and increase our speed of shipping daily. You’ll own the data function end-to-end while building and leading a small, high-leverage team in a player/coach capacity.
Who you are
You are an experienced data leader. You can architect and build robust data pipelines, experimentation infrastructure, metrics dashboards and monitoring tools in your sleep. You’re equally comfortable writing SQL, reviewing a complex experiment, or diving deep into metrics with the Board. You enjoy staying close to the work while building and leading teams, and know how to shift your time and attention based on what the function needs most. You probably have ~10 years of experience at high growth consumer companies, and you know what great looks like.
You have strong product and business sense. You think about data as a tool for making better product and business decisions, not as an end in itself. You can hold the business question in your head while deep in the weeds of analysis, and know when to stop analyzing and make a recommendation.
You like building over managing. Yes, you are fine taking on management responsibilities, and you do that part well. But you get more satisfaction from diving in and finding the answer than growing your management scope.
You’re a structured thinker. You can systematically break down a messy problem into its component parts, create a structured plan, and execute. You are high-bandwidth, fast with numbers, and quick with back-of-the-envelope thinking.
You ruthlessly prioritize and execute. You don’t do analyses that won’t change the answer. You push PMs to do napkin math to justify their roadmaps. You don’t do low impact things just because they are low effort. You don’t like recurring meetings and you don’t take 30 minutes for them if you don’t need to. You start with agendas and leave with action items. You take pride in unblocking people.
You’re in the details of everything. You believe metrics should have precise definitions, experiment readouts should be statistically sound, and logging quality matters. You instantly spot mistakes, inconsistencies or numbers that intuitively feel off. You teammates wonder how you are able to zoom out and in so well.
You believe in systems. You retro things and improve your process constantly. You build tools and systems to give your teams leverage. You are extremely AI-pilled, usually the first to dive into new AI data tools. You firmly believe it is going to change everything about your craft.
You are an excellent communicator. You simplify the complex. Your written comms are concise and well structured. Your updates are easy to digest and actionable.
You act like an owner and have bias towards action. You are proactive, resourceful, and thrive in highly autonomous environments. You take end-to-end accountability across execution, reliability, hiring, communication and team growth. You don’t wait for permission to fix what’s broken.
You are low-ego. You have opinions, but will quickly evolve them in the face of new data. You don’t care whose idea it was. You are truth seeking.
You have good values and care about doing the right thing. You want to work with people who have strong ethics and a good moral compass. You enjoy hanging out with your teammates, bring positive energy and make the workplace more fun.
You love what you do. You often find yourself thinking about your work at odd hours – not because you feel you have to, but because you’re excited to create something deeply meaningful for the world.
What you will do
You’ll work alongside our CEO to drive our strategy. This means figuring out what features will drive growth the fastest, building systems to ruthlessly optimize them, and partnering with our CFO to drive revenue. Your work will directly inform what we build, how we measure success, and how we win.
You’ll build the machine that drives the whole company. Data informs everything here – from our product roadmap, to the health of our system, to the progress we’re making towards our mission. It’s critical that our systems are precise and reliable. You’ll start with a strong foundation, a modern stack (BigQuery, dbt, Mode, Eppo, Dust) and real data on millions of users. And you’ll improve upon that foundation each day.
You'll be the connective tissue across product decisions. From experiment readouts to post-launch reviews to weekly metric movement, you'll own the forums where the company aligns on what's working.
You’ll push what’s possible with AI. You’ll have the space and the mandate to be at the bleeding edge of AI tooling, helping transform the company into a closed loop system, where data increasingly automates important work – from feature prioritization, to bug detection and monitoring – improving the speed with which we can ship great things.
You’ll build and ship. As a player/coach, you'll personally lead the highest-leverage investigations, readouts, and audits, modeling the bar you want the team to hold. Like our whole team, you’ll be hands-on, personally prototyping and building out new AI tools, staying sharp, and developing your skills.
You'll build a team and a culture. You’ll get to hire who you want to hire, mentor high-slope data scientists, and build the culture you think should exist here.
You’ll create something deeply meaningful for the world. Social products allow people to connect in ways that were never before possible. When the telephone was invented, it suddenly allowed people to speak with others across the world. Thanks to FaceTime, grandparents everywhere can now watch their grandchildren grow up. At Clubhouse, you’ll be figuring out something entirely new for the world – building something that brings people together to help everyone have a life filled with great friendships.
At Alpha, you will have a seat at the table, you will be able to focus on the work that gives you energy, and you will love what you do each day.
If you are a talented data leader and think this might be a fit, we’d love to talk.
Our company is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate in hiring or make any employment decision based on race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), marital status, ancestry, physical or mental disability, genetic information, veteran status, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, or other applicable legally protected characteristics. We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities in our job application procedures. If you need assistance or an accommodation due to a disability, you may contact us at [email protected].