Newspack’s mission is to help small and medium-sized news organizations publish great stories, develop a loyal audience and find a path to financial sustainability at a moment when local journalism faces immense challenges.
We do that by deploying a publishing solution, developed in partnership with Google and WordPress.com, that is tailored to the needs of digital news publishers and incorporates industry best practices.
In just over two years, we have launched over 90 publications, with dozens more due to come on board in months ahead. In the process, we’ve created a vibrant community of publishers and editors whose goal is to see journalism thrive in their local communities. They range from venerable publications like the Bangor Daily News to digital startups like The Oaklandside and CalMatters.
As a Business Analyst for Newspack, you will sit between our product/dev team and our news customers, help identify successful editorial and business practices and ensure that they inform the development of our publishing tools and the way our customers deploy them.
Newspack is part of Automattic, the parent company of WordPress.com, a distributed and 100% remote software enterprise with 1,381 employees in 79 countries who speak 100 different languages. We’re committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion and our common goal is to democratize publishing and commerce so that anyone with a story can tell it, and anyone with a product can sell it, regardless of income, gender, politics, language, or where they live in the world.
THE ROLE
As a Newspack business analyst you will work with our engineering team to ensure that the products we build are closely aligned with the editorial and business needs of our customers and reflect best practices in digital publishing. That means staying abreast of the wider news landscape as well as interacting with customers in Slack and other forums -- part of a lively feedback loop that lets us tailor our product to the customers.
A big part of your role will be to work with selected “beta” customers to test and refine key features and measure their performance so they can be rolled out to the wider Newspack community with confidence that they’ll produce results -- whether it’s around enhanced storytelling, audience development or revenue growth. Once a successful approach has been identified, you’ll help ensure that it’s incorporated into the tooling and distributed broadly to our customers.
You’ll have the support of experts in advertising, email newsletter development, reader revenue and analytics to assist you. And you’ll interact directly with our designers and engineers, who work in continuous sprints, releasing code at least once a week.
Broadly, we are looking for candidates who are skilled at gathering and analyzing information, formulating and testing hypotheses, and developing and communicating recommendations.
We are seeking candidates who:
- Are well versed in business fundamentals and can quickly grasp the requirements of the digital publishing industry.
- Have experience with customer insight and data analysis.
- Are conversant in the use of various business intelligence and analytics systems.
- Can lead reviews of business process and develop strategies for optimizing results.
- Can craft requirements and prioritize initiatives.
- Have strong conceptual and analytical skills.
- Can align multiple stakeholders.
- Have excellent planning, time management and organizational skills.
Requirements:
- Bachelor’s degree, MBA or professional business experience.
- Minimum five years in business analysis or a related field.
- Demonstrated analytical and quantitative problem-solving skills.
- Ability to communicate complex ideas effectively – verbally and in writing.
- Experience in digital news is a plus.
HOW DO WE WORK?
- We’re kind to each other and our users – we strive to build a positive, supportive, and inclusive culture of cohesive teams focused on delivering value to our customers.
- We work as a global and distributed workforce resulting in a unique way of working built around our creed.
- We offer flexible work arrangements allowing our team members to work when they feel best.
- We’re open-source! We’re cool with open-sourcing everything except passwords, or secret keys.
We prioritize our employees’ growth and offer a variety of leadership options to those who have interest, including becoming a team lead. Learning and development – we have a generous personal development budget and encourage you to grow your skills through courses, books and conferences.
About Automattic
We are the people behind WordPress.com, WooCommerce, Jetpack, Tumblr, Simplenote, Longreads, and more. We believe in making the web a better place.
We’re a distributed company with more than 1400 Automatticians in 80+ countries speaking 90+ different languages. Our common goal is to democratize publishing so that anyone with a story can tell it, regardless of income, gender, politics, language, or where they live in the world.
We believe in Open Source and the vast majority of our work is available under the GPL.
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at Automattic
We’re improving diversity, equity, and inclusion in the tech industry. At Automattic, we want people to love their work and show respect and empathy to all. We welcome differences and strive to increase participation from traditionally underrepresented groups. Our DEI committee involves Automatticians across the company and drives grassroots change. For example, this group has helped facilitate private online spaces for affiliated Automatticians to gather and helps run a monthly DEI People Lab series for further learning. Diversity, Equity and Inclusion is a priority at Automattic, though our dedication influences far more than just Automatticians: We make our products freely available and translate our products into and offer customer support in numerous languages. We require unconscious bias training for our hiring teams and ensure our products are accessible across different bandwidths and devices. Learn more about our dedication to diversity, equity, and inclusion and our Employee Resource Groups.