Work · A point of view
Analytics worth building for
Not a job hunt — a thesis. Two lenses on where data-leadership work actually matters. The craft lane is where the discipline runs deepest: lifecycle, payments, and BNPL analytics. The values lane is the harder-won one — companies serving the underserved customer the right way, no-fee and mission-first. I spent a career in subprime consumer finance; this is my read on who’s doing it well, with the posted comp to prove the market takes it seriously.
How to read it: posted base-salary ranges from live job descriptions — not total comp, not levels.fyi, and several are geo-banded (the high end reflects CA / NY / Seattle). Each row links to its source posting, or to a deep-dive case study where one exists. Complements the IC-role Salary Dashboard.
26
leadership roles tracked
$209K
median of posted midpoints
$91K–$325K
full base-salary span
Instacart
top midpoint · $299K–$315.5K
The craft lane — Customer, Lifecycle & Payments Analytics
Where the discipline runs deepest: acquisition→retention, segmentation, loyalty, product analytics, and payments/BNPL — the work I’d add the most leverage to.
The values lane — where the mission is the product
Same craft, pointed at companies that serve the underserved customer rather than extract from them: no-fee, transparent financial inclusion, and mental health. I know this customer cold — these are the firms doing right by them.
Updated 2026-06-28 · posted base ranges, geo-banded where noted · each row links to its case study or source posting.
A living point of view
This isn’t a static opinion — it’s fed by /jd-salary-scrape, a scheduled routine
that refreshes both lanes with the most recent openings and commits the data to the repo (the
same pattern as the Ogden home-finder). It feeds a recurring Golden Data newsletter segment:
what the analytics-leadership market pays, and which companies are worth respecting —
with the cleaned dataset as the lead magnet.