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Imprint is a fintech company that modernizes co-branded credit card programs for major brands like Crate & Barrel, Rakuten, Booking.com, H-E-B, Fetch, and Shell. The company combines payments infrastructure, intelligent underwriting, and customer data to create personalized financial experiences. Backed by top-tier VCs including Kleiner Perkins, Thrive Capital, Ribbit, and Khosla Ventures, Imprint is addressing a $300+ billion market of legacy co-branded card systems.
As Senior Data Journalist, you will build Imprint's data storytelling function from the ground up. This is a highly autonomous individual contributor role at the intersection of data science and narrative journalism—the first of its kind at the company. You will operate as a technical peer to the data science team, not merely consuming their outputs.
You will independently mine Imprint's payments, merchant, and card member data to surface credible, data-driven, and genuinely interesting stories (not promotional content). This requires writing production-grade SQL and dbt models yourself, designing analyses with statistical rigor, defending methodologies under scrutiny, and delivering clear, compelling prose. You will set direction independently, maintain narrative strategy under competing priorities, and ship work consistently.
In your first 90 days, you will: build and operationalize a data room in partnership with data science, including underlying SQL and dbt models for continuous story mining; define core narrative pillars grounded in the company's brand positioning and data differentiation; develop an initial content calendar with proposed formats and cadence; and ship at least one complete story end-to-end.
Key responsibilities include writing and producing data-driven stories that contribute meaningfully to public discourse; owning the data storytelling function end-to-end from SQL/dbt to publication; independently designing analytical approaches including sampling, statistical significance, and data quality handling; partnering with data science as a technical peer to build story-mining infrastructure; proposing and iterating on story formats and distribution; maintaining editorial independence by pushing back on requests outside narrative strategy; and collaborating cross-functionally with communications, brand, product marketing, data science, and leadership.
REQUIREMENTS:
Required:
- Demonstrated experience in data journalism with a portfolio of data-driven stories combining rigorous quantitative analysis and clear written narrative
- Advanced SQL and dbt skills with real production experience building and maintaining data models (not just querying existing ones)
- Working knowledge of statistics including sampling, significance testing, and avoiding common pitfalls in observational data; strong enough to defend methodology under questioning
- Python or equivalent scripting ability for data transformation and analysis beyond SQL
- Ability to independently QA your own work, build reproducible version-controlled analyses that are retrospectively defensible, and maintain high quality standards with no analytics team backstopping
- Strong writing ability and capacity to translate complex, technically rigorous data into compelling, accessible stories for broad audiences
- Track record of working independently to identify, develop, and publish stories without heavy direction
- Ability to hold narrative strategy and push back constructively when requests fall outside it
- Comfort operating in ambiguous, fast-moving environments where the function and technical infrastructure are being built for the first time
Nice to Have:
- Experience with dbt testing frameworks, data pipeline orchestration, or building analytics infrastructure from scratch
- Data visualization or graphic design skills
- Background in economics, applied statistics, or familiarity with consumer finance, payments, or related verticals
- Experience at a media outlet, think tank, nonprofit, or organization with an established data journalism function
