Founding Data Lead

About Pocket

Take Notes in the Real World

The role

### About the roleThe owner of **Pocket’s data foundation and decision-making systems end to end**. You make our data reliable, accessible, and actionable across **product, growth, marketing, sales, finance, and operations**.Pocket has already reached **hundreds of thousands of customers** and is scaling toward millions. Our data spans customer acquisition, e-commerce, hardware, app usage, subscriptions, customer support, and international markets. Your job is to connect these sources into a **trusted system that helps us understand our customers and consistently make better decisions**.You will build the core data infrastructure, define how Pocket measures the customer journey, and work directly with teams to turn analysis into clear recommendations. You should be equally comfortable **writing SQL, designing data models, investigating customer behavior, and explaining to founders what the company should do next**.This is a **hands-on, founder-facing role** for someone who wants to build Pocket’s data function from the ground up—not simply maintain dashboards or respond to reporting requests.### What you'll own* **Pocket’s data strategy, architecture, and analytics foundation*** A reliable **single source of truth** across Shopify, Amazon, advertising platforms, the Pocket app, device usage, subscriptions, customer support, and finance* **Data pipelines, warehouse architecture, transformation models, documentation, monitoring, and data quality*** Product instrumentation, event taxonomy, identity resolution, and customer lifecycle tracking* Definitions and governance for **company-wide metrics and KPIs*** Analysis of the complete customer journey: **acquisition, purchase, activation, engagement, subscription conversion, retention, churn, and referral*** Customer cohort analysis, behavioral segmentation, and identification of Pocket’s highest-value users* **CAC, LTV, payback period, contribution margin, attribution, incrementality, and marketing efficiency analysis*** Product adoption, feature usage, retention, and experimentation measurement* Executive dashboards and recurring reporting for founders and functional leaders* **Proactive analysis and recommendations**—not just reporting what happened, but explaining why it happened and what Pocket should do next* Self-serve analytics that enables teams to answer common questions without compromising data quality* The long-term development of Pocket’s data function, including selecting tools and helping build the future data team### What we're looking for* **3+ years of experience** across data analytics, analytics engineering, data science, data engineering, or a similarly quantitative role* Experience working in a **high-growth startup or technology company*** Experience analyzing customer cohorts at the scale of **hundreds of thousands of users**, ideally while the company was growing toward millions* **Advanced SQL skills and strong working knowledge of Python*** Hands-on experience with modern data warehouses, transformation tools such as dbt, BI platforms, and product analytics tools* Experience **building reliable data pipelines and models**—not only analyzing existing datasets* Strong understanding of **cohort analysis, retention, funnels, segmentation, experimentation, CAC, LTV, and attribution*** Experience supporting product, growth, marketing, sales, finance, and executive decision-making* An **obsession with data accuracy, consistency, documentation, and reliability*** The ability to turn ambiguous business questions into structured analyses and clear recommendations* Strong product and commercial judgment—you understand that **the purpose of data is to improve decisions and outcomes*** Clear communication skills and the ability to influence technical and non-technical stakeholders* **High ownership, low ego, intellectual honesty**, and the ability to execute without constant direction* Consumer technology, DTC, e-commerce, subscription, mobile app, or hardware experience is a strong plus* Experience building a data function or operating as an early data hire is a strong plus### What we offer* The opportunity to **build Pocket’s data function from the ground up*** Ownership of data across a rapidly scaling consumer hardware and software company* **Direct access to founders** and significant influence on company and product strategy* High autonomy and the ability to turn your insights directly into action* Complex customer, product, subscription, marketing, and commercial datasets at meaningful scale* The opportunity to build the systems Pocket will use as it grows from **hundreds of thousands to millions of customers*** **Base salary of $150,000–$180,000**, depending on experience* **Meaningful equity** through Pocket’s employee stock option plan## About the interview1. **Quick intro call (15 min)** — experience, motivation, compensation expectations, and location fit2. **Data case study** based on a realistic Pocket business problem3. **Technical interview** covering data architecture, SQL, analytics, and data reliability4. **Cross-functional interview** with Product, Growth, or Engineering5. **Interview with the founders**6. Reference check7. Offer8. Onboarding## About PocketPocket is a **Y Combinator W26 company** building a premium hardware plus software product in the AI voice recorder space. We are obsessed with **quality and speed**. We are scaling very fast in the US and European markets and building a device experience that can become the **category leader**.

Skills

• Python
• SQL
• Data Warehousing
• Data Modeling
• Data Analytics