Grist is looking for a web developer with strong passion for improving site performance and business processes through user analytics and split-testing. If you have media experience, aim for excellence, see failure as a learning opportunity, and believe it’s possible to crack a joke and change the world at the same time, this could be the job for you.
Grist is a fast-growing organization that combines the energy, creativity, and initiative of a young internet company with the spirit of a nonprofit. Yeah, we said nonprofit; that means no free smoothies and foosball every time you turn around, but it also means walking into work with the feeling that what you do actually matters. That’s a good feeling, trust us. (And we’re not above the occasional Fruit Ninja tournament.)
You’ll work closely with designers and web developers in a daily scrum to optimize our site and other products.You’re passionate about UI that deliver results. You know how to devise meaningful A/B tests and know how to measure user behavior. Most importantly you know how to make sense out of the mass of data you'll collect. You have an instinct for how to distinguish actionable metrics from the mere vanity measures.
Sometimes you’ll break up your continual analysis of traffic and business optimization work to be creative and build something new based on your research or as a way to test a hunch. It could be a new way to increase email signups or a friction-free way to accept donations. You’re a Web developer with a passion for meeting business goals, or an business analyst with great coding chops. You know your away around the Google Analytics api - and many other tracking software apis too.
You’ll also give guidance to other teams such as fundraising and editorial to help them collect and make sense of data, and to help them improve their products and efforts. For example you’ll help plan and implement A/B testing of email newsletters for the editorial and fundraising teams with the aim of increasing traffic to the site and increasing reader donations respectively. You'll work with the management team to define, track, and help champion the core metrics of the organization.
Essentially, you are familiar with setting up goal funnels in Google Analytics and managing cohorts in Kissmetrics. You know how to optimize these tools and can train others in their use. You’ve got good basic understanding of statistics and can communicate the concepts to non-experts to help them understand the data they work with.
You'll get to work with a smart, small group of fun people who are interested in creating a site optimized for our readers. This is a great opportunity to help us take our mission to the next level. We've grown our audience to 2+ million a month, and with your help we know we can grow larger.