Meet the Team

This week, we wanted to take a look at one of our more unique roles at ZeroLight, so we spoke with our Business Intelligence Manager, Dan who joined ZeroLight at the end of 2021 as a Data Analyst, working his way up to his role as Business Intelligence Manager within his first year. 

Due to the nature of our products, ZeroLight receives a huge amount of useful data. From this data, we can gain an insight into market trends, customer preferences for car models, colours, wheel trims etc. and how much engagement leads to an actual purchase. 

All of this data needs to be analysed, which is where Dan comes in!

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Please can you tell us a bit about your career to date? 

I’m a self-taught data person, starting in basic Excel after sixth form, progressing into more advanced Excel and starting on the analytics side by the time I was 20. I then took a career break and moved to the French Alps for a few years, skiing, rock climbing and paragliding! After that, I moved to the airline Jet2 as a Data Analyst where my enjoyment of working with data really…… took off. Utilising Excel, SQL, Python and Tableau to analyse all of the safety and flight-related data for the airline. After a few years there, I decided it was time to move back to sunny Newcastle and made the excellent decision to join ZeroLight.

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What do you do on a day to day basis as Business Intelligence Manager?

The role has evolved in my time here, initially it was a lot of writing scripts to extract and aggregate data as well as creating useful reports and dashboards used to inform and drive business decisions both internally and externally. This has now shifted more towards architecting a more automated and self-serve data platform with our CloudMine team. While still writing code, developing engaging dashboards and fixing bugs, it’s definitely a split between the two.

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What is the best project that you have worked on?

The current automation project of automating our data pipeline to remove the need for running ad-hoc scripts and allowing decision makers to get required information without the need to ask me questions, or need me at all really. Maybe that wasn’t such a good idea? 

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What is your favourite part of your role? 

I would say the best part of the role is the fact it’s linked to every department, you get to engage with most areas and usually be able to help them get the answers they need.

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What is it like working at ZeroLight? 

ZeroLight is genuinely a great place to work, it’s full of interesting and intelligent people who are coming up with new innovative ideas consistently. The work is constantly changing and everyone is clear and on board with the long term goals. The office on the Quayside is a great place to be, especially in the summer and there’s a big social event at least once a quarter. There’s also some great perks like being able to work wherever suits you best both professionally and personally.

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Anything else that you would like to share? 

Quality of table tennis here is questionable.

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