Data Analyst

Job Description: Data Analyst

Reports to: Head of Commercial Data Intelligence

About Independent Media

Independent Media comprises The Independent, Standard Digital, Bulletin, BuzzFeed UK, HuffPost UK, Tasty UK, Seasoned, IndyBest and indy100.

Harnessing market-leading innovation and excellence across its portfolio of pioneering brands, Independent Media has unrivalled scale, integrity and authority via its sites, apps, video, audio, experiential, newsletters and social media.

While each Independent Media brand speaks in an authentic, unique voice to a loyal and distinct audience, they stand together in their commitment to positivity, inclusivity, and quality journalism and content.

Independent Media’s network reaches 650 million users each month, with 1.1 billion content views across its brands and platforms, including web, apps, social media, podcasts, email, YouTube, syndication partners and print.

The role and the team

The Advertising Operations function consists of three core pillars:

• Campaign Management - delivery and optimisation of direct-sold campaigns, trafficking, QA and client service support.

• Ad Tech Ops and Partnerships - yield management, SSP relationships, inventory strategy, deal management and auction optimisation. Ownership of the advertising technology stack including ad server, header bidding, identity and consent integrations, measurement solutions and platform performance.

• Revenue Intelligence - revenue analysis, yield reporting, forecasting support, performance diagnostics and data-led commercial insight to drive monetisation strategy and optimisation.

As a Data Analyst, you will translate the modeled data into decisions, revenue forecasts, partner performance narratives, yield optimization recommendations that go to stakeholders (sales, finance, programmatic, ad tech).

You will work closely with the Ad Operations and Data Engineering team to make sure data is accurate, accessible, and ready for analysis. Your work will help the company optimise revenue, run experiments, and lay the foundation for AI-driven automation.

This is a unique opportunity to learn ad tech, revenue analytics, and AI-enabled decision-making while developing strong engineering skills, writing clean, production-ready code, building scalable data pipelines, and contributing to a high-impact team.

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

• We champion diversity in our teams and in our reporting. As a growing and global brand, we must have a workforce that’s more representative of our readers, viewers, clients and partners, and a workplace that creates a sense of belonging for everyone

• We are committed to hiring and developing a diverse workforce regardless of background, and we support our people to thrive in their careers here.

The Independent is an equal opportunities employer, if you require any reasonable adjustments to complete your application, please do not hesitate to advise us accordingly.

About you

• You hold a degree in a business-related field (such as Economics, Business Analytics, or a STEM subject).

• You have a solid grasp of fundamentals like SQL and Python and are eager to master the modern data stack.

• You don’t just flag problems, you look for solutions, take ownership of your tasks, and tackle complex challenges head-on.

• You're naturally curious, you ask why, and you don't stop until you've got a real answer.

• You manage your time effectively and thrive in a fast-moving, commercial environment.

• You communicate effectively by building well-documented, intuitive data models that business users can explore autonomously.

• You're keen to use AI and modern tools in your day-to-day work, rather than defaulting to spreadsheets.

• You work well under pressure and can juggle shifting priorities.

Key responsibilities and accountabilities

• Proactively develop and automate data-driven recommendations for revenue optimisation and partner strategy.

• Design, run, and analyse A/B tests to support yield and revenue optimisation decisions.

• Enable self-serve analytics by building robust, reliable datasets for commercial teams instead of fielding individual report requests.

• Use AI tools to speed up analysis and get to insights faster.

• Implement automated testing, monitoring, and alerting within the data pipelines to catch discrepancies in revenue, yield, or partner data before they reach downstream dashboards.

• Learn and contribute to ad tech operations and revenue optimisation projects.

Essential skills and experience

• Track record of taking ambiguous data problems from initial scoping to final delivery.

• Confident in SQL, with some Python.

• Familiar with modern BI tools.

• Good written and verbal communication, comfortable presenting to stakeholders.

• A strong interest in exploring AI, automation, and predictive analytics to drive business value.

• An interest or background in setting up and evaluating A/B tests.

Our values – you will deliver across all our values

Inclusive: We champion diversity in our teams and in our reporting. Working as a team, we put transparency and effective communication at the heart of everything we do.

Innovative: From the very beginning, The Independent has been breaking the mould. We take risks and are always looking to try new ideas in pursuit of excellence.

Independent: Nobody tells us what to think; we make up our own minds and aren’t afraid to do things differently. Like our readers, we value honesty and integrity above outside influences.