Market Intelligence Analyst

Toptal is a network of the world’s top 3% of software engineering, design, finance, and project management talent – available on demand to help companies accelerate, adapt, and scale. With $100+ million in annual revenue and triple-digit growth, Toptal is the largest fully distributed workforce in the world.

We take the best elements of virtual teams and combine them with a support structure that encourages innovation, social interaction, and fun [see this video from The Huffington Post]. We see no borders, move at a fast pace, and are never afraid to break the mold.

If you’re not in the job market, you’re exactly the type of person we’re looking for.

Position Description

As the Market Intelligence Analyst at Toptal, you will work as part of Toptal’s Business Operations team to plan the development of new lines of business. After beginning with a focus on software engineering, Toptal has rapidly expanded both to new industry verticals (including Design, Finance, and Project Management) and to specialized more specialized, in-demand niches (blockchain, DevOps, Salesforce, etc.). As this expansion continues and accelerates, you will guide prioritization of new verticals and specializations by developing and maintaining models to dynamically capture demand both from Toptal’s existing client base and the broader professional services market. You will be a major driver of priority and strategy for Toptal’s new lines of business, helping to define the future of work by identifying which industries are best suited to transition to a remote, highly global, on-demand, freelance, quality-focused model for talent acquisition and management.

This is a remote position that can be done from anywhere.

Responsibilities:

You will build a market research model for the talent staffing and professional services industries that will guide strategy and prioritization for Toptal’s new verticals and specializations. You will work with our Business Operations, SMB, Enterprise, Marketing, and Talent Operations teams to understand characteristics of quality Toptal clients, typical buying patterns, and key existing clients. You will research and analyze the landscape of existing staffing firms and consultancies, both large and small, leveraging your research to assess both the size of relevant talent and services markets, as well as their suitability to Toptal’s model. In doing so, you will analyze an industry’s suitability for remote services, proximity to our existing services and expertise, profitability, and growth potential. You will also develop systems to capture unaddressed demand from our existing SMB and Enterprise client base on an ongoing basis, using this data to further refine your models. Finally, you will develop recommendations for how to group talent categories based on market demand and hiring patterns.

In the first week, you will:

• Onboard and integrate into Toptal.
• Rapidly begin learning about Toptal’s history, culture, and vision, with a heavy focus on how verticals operate at Toptal.
• Shadow key teams across the company to learn the core of Toptal’s operations and capabilities, including SMB, Enterprise, and Talent Operations.

In the first month, you will:

• Review existing vertical and specialization prioritization models and data sources.
• Review historical vertical financials from launch to present day to understand the range of possible outcomes.
• Meet with key stakeholders around the company to understand the nature of the markets you will be analyzing and the relevant data sources.
• Begin developing new models for prioritizing vertical and specialization launches.
• Develop an understanding of the global professional business services market and integrate its dynamics and characteristics into our models.

In the first three months, you will:

• Work with stakeholders and existing client demand data to refine and improve your market fit models.
• Build in talent grouping functionality into your models, making recommendations on how talent categories should be packaged and treated both internally and to clients.
• Begin building methods for capturing data from our existing base of clients and leads on an ongoing basis.

In the first six months, you will:

• Expand our methods for capturing data from our existing base of clients and leads on an ongoing basis.
• Develop additional surveying of our base of clients and leads to guide prioritization of new initiatives, including everything from development of new fully managed services, to thought leadership, to auxiliary services facilitating the transition of organizations to the future of work.

Requirements:

• You must have strong experience doing market research in the talent and services space.
• Experience as a consultant in the services industry is preferred.
• Strong ability to operate from first principles and develop models from scratch with non-traditional assumptions.
• Experience in research, data collection, data mining, and meta-analysis.
• Experience in surveying.
• Strong professional skepticism, including the ability to challenge assumptions, communicate limitations, and flag blind spots.
• Hustle. You understand how to build from the ground up and will dive in and do whatever is needed.
• Resourcefulness. You should have a strong ability to navigate an organization to get any information you need with limited direction and oversight.
• Communication. You must be able to work 1-1 with Toptal core team members and clients to understand market demand and buying patterns, while still being able to zoom out and present findings to an executive audience.
• Passion. Our goal is to change the way organizations build teams and how the world’s top talent finds opportunities. You have to be passionate about what we do, and be a strong advocate of the change we are driving in the market.
• Ownership. You take responsibility for quality of work that you do.
• Quality. You take pride in everything you deliver as a reflection of yourself. You also take personal accountability for the quality of Toptal’s project management service.
• You must be a world-class individual contributor to thrive at Toptal. You will not be here just to tell other people what to do.