Similar to the startup interview, this is written with the goal of learning more about the data org at a specific company and providing questions that will help illuminate whether or not this is the right data org for you.

Tell me about data

The following is a short list of questions that I like to ask specifically about the data org and how it’s going to grow.

  1. Tooling
    1. What is the stack across the org?
    2. What teams own which tools?
    3. What tools do you use to document work?
      Eg dbt-docs, amundsen…
    4. What is your approach to project management? 
  2. Org culture
    1. How data savvy are the folks that you work with?
      1. Are they familiar with looker? Excel?
      2. Can/do they write their own sql?
    2. Tell me about documentation. How does it look like in within the org? How would you like it to look, ideally?
    3. Does the data team have an SLA with the rest of the org? Who defined this?
    4. Who does the data team roll up to? How data savvy is this person?
    5. How data driven is your SLT? How are major decisions made?
    6. How is success measured?
  3. Vision
    1. Data culture
      1. What type of data culture would you like to create?
      2. What type of data culture exists now?
      3. How are you driving the building of your data culture?
      4. Are you building for scalability? How?
    2. Data team
      1. What parts of the team roll up to you?
      2. How are you thinking of building out the team?
      3. What does progression in the role you’re hiring for look like?
        Eg, career ladder internally, growth opportunities, leadership opps
    3. 18 months
      1. What are the biggest projects for the next 18 months?
      2. What are your biggest pain points?
  4. Day to day
    1. How much time is spent in meetings vs IC work?
    2. What is the anticipated IC/meetings ratio for this role?