Rising Star: Ed Mizrahi, junior games analyst at Hutch

Ed Mizrahi, junior games analyst at Hutch, talks about turning data into insights, prompting discussions and the wide variety of career opportunities that can provide

What is your job role and how would you describe your typical day at work?

I joined Hutch in September 2020 as a junior games analyst. This was my first job after graduating with a degree in Mathematics and Statistics. Gaming has always been a huge passion of mine, and I’ve been fortunate to be able to marry that with a fascination for data.

You might think that my day is all about crunching numbers, but it’s so much more than that. You need to look at data in a unique way to solve problems creatively.

My typical day begins with looking at the data dashboards for our live games to check for any big changes or important trends. Has there been a change in daily active users? Has something prompted a big change in game performance? If so, why? We use this data to better understand our games and players.

Alongside this, I’m regularly working on longer term projects such as the evaluation of specific game features. More often than not, this involves presenting back to the company, prompting discussions around how we can improve things for our players.

What qualifications and/or experience do you need to land this job?

One of the fundamentals is a relevant degree, or similar analytical experience, because we spend so much time looking at numbers. You need to understand what the numbers are doing, and how impacting one metric can lead to implications elsewhere.

Talking about your own data-related side projects is also beneficial when it comes to showing your passion and interest. This could be as simple as how you assess your progress in fitness, or something a bit more technical like delving into the relationships between game updates and their effects on different items in that game’s economy. The important thing is understanding how you use your insights to improve a process or product.

If you were interviewing someone for your team, what would you look for?

An appreciation for games is vital, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you need to be a gamer. As long as you understand what makes a game tick, what makes them fun and how certain features can impact the user experience, then that gives you a solid foundation. You also need to be highly numerate, and able to describe complex ideas in an easily understandable way.

This ties into the ability to explain your insights well. Highlighting a piece of data on its own isn’t very interesting, but if you can explain what it means and what we should do with it, then that will make a huge difference.

What opportunities are there for career progression?

There are plenty of progression opportunities, whether you want to follow a linear or alternative path. You will naturally gain more responsibility as you rise in seniority with linear progression, which leads to growing your management skills, or potentially a technical specialism. You can consider a switch to a slightly different team however, depending on where your passion lies.

You could work with the user acquisition team to focus on generating installs, or you could join the product or design teams. The role of the analyst is quite flexible, and there are opportunities for growth and progression in all corners of the business.