Graduate Data Analyst

About the role

native is a fast-moving, startup-style business that has spent the last decade building a managed marketplace linking students, Students' Unions, universities, and advertisers. The role sits within the Insights team, where survey data, behavioural data, and platform data are transformed into research outputs and audience segmentation that clients are willing to pay for. The position is designed for recent graduates who want meaningful responsibility from day one and the chance to grow quickly.

What you'll do

This is a varied data analyst position that covers analysis, survey research, and visualisation. The work changes from week to week, and you will be expected to move comfortably across the full workflow.

• Turn raw data into analysis, charts, and written findings that support the company’s insights work.
• Clean, weight, and interpret survey data from Campus Voice and commissioned studies.
• Use SQL in BigQuery to extract, shape, and prepare datasets for the team.
• Create clear visualisations for reports, commercial presentations, and partner-facing materials.
• Cross-tabulate survey and behavioural data against student personas and segments to support advertiser targeting and show audience differences.
• Maintain survey instruments, notebooks, and documentation so future research can be repeated without confusion.
• Collaborate with engineering to improve datasets and pipelines, and identify where systems are slow, fragile, or difficult to use.

How the work is done

The team uses agentic coding tools as part of the day-to-day workflow, and you will be expected to use them too. These tools can speed up analysis dramatically, but they can also produce answers that look correct while being wrong. The role therefore depends heavily on judgement: defining the question clearly, knowing what a good answer should look like, reviewing machine-generated output carefully, and standing behind the final result without relying on the tool.

This approach is meant to let analysts complete in a day work that previously took much longer, but only when paired with strong rigour and careful checking.

What they're looking for

The company values clear thinking, sound judgement under pressure, and the ability to create structure in ambiguous situations. Candidates should be able to reason from first principles, work independently when there is no obvious path, and take care with accuracy.

• You are comfortable building solutions from the ground up when there is no template to follow.
• You make decisions confidently in uncertain situations and create structure where needed.
• You check your work carefully because accuracy matters to you.
• You have demonstrated resilience, initiative, judgement, or other meaningful achievement through study, projects, or work experience.

Required skills and background

The company is open to a broad range of academic backgrounds. Degrees in economics, statistics, science, social science, geography, maths, or computer science are common fits, but strong applicants from other disciplines are also welcome. If your path has been less traditional, you are encouraged to explain how it shaped your thinking.

• Strong academic or practical evidence of rigour and clear thinking, such as top grades, awards, research results, or a substantial project.
• Solid statistical understanding, including sample bias, weighting, significance testing, and regression interpretation.
• Commercial curiosity about how brands reach audiences and what makes analysis valuable to clients.
• Experience working with messy, real-world data, including cleaning, validation, and schema design.
• Good Python skills, especially with pandas and numpy, plus the ability to organise code into reusable functions and utilities.
• Strong SQL ability, including handling duplicates, NULLs, and joins that can break queries in practice.
• The ability to explain findings clearly in both written form and charts for non-technical audiences.
• Self-directed learning ability to pick up tools such as BigQuery, dbt, plotting libraries, git, and survey software.
• Experience carrying an analysis, study, dashboard, report, or model through to a real end user is a plus.

Progression

This opportunity is structured as a six-month engagement and is intended to act as a trial period for a permanent hire. Strong performance can lead to a promoted permanent role at the end of the six months. The company expects the analyst to work on live commercial projects from the start, with real ownership and direct exposure to client-facing work.

Location and working pattern

The role is based in London, England, United Kingdom. It is office-based for around four days each week, with one optional remote day. The team works quickly and makes decisions face to face most of the time.

Compensation

The salary for this role is £33,000 per year.

How to apply

No cover letter is required. Applicants should answer a few questions that show how they think, and include a recent CV or a link to a LinkedIn profile or equivalent professional profile. Applications are reviewed on a rolling basis.

• Describe a trade-off you had to make and how you reached your decision.
• Share a problem you handled with little guidance.
• Explain a piece of analysis or a number you would present differently to make it clearer.
• Give an example of something you chose not to do and why.

People with non-standard routes into the field, different degrees, or self-taught skills are encouraged to apply. The company says it reviews candidates for how they think and whether the core ability is present, rather than looking only for a conventional path.

Equal opportunity

The organisation aims to create an inclusive workplace where everyone can do their best work, with diversity and inclusion treated as a central priority and backed by active support for employee growth.