EPeeps Nadja Jury | Analytics Engineer

Hello! I’m Nadja, my pronouns are she/her, and I’m an Analytics Engineer based in Sydney! I’m half English, half German, but I lived in New Zealand for all of high school and university, so I’m probably more of a Kiwi these days. I’ve been with EP since the end of 2016, and I’ve worn a few different hats in the last 5 years. I was a part of both our Customer Support team and Enrolment team for the first 18 months part-time, whilst I finished my studies at university. After graduating, I joined the Engineering team as a junior backend developer, but quickly found I had a strong passion for all things data. I ended up transitioning into the newly-formed Data team in 2019, and have loved every minute since! 

What do you enjoy most about your role?

I’m a bit of a chronic-organiser – anyone who knows me knows I love the nitty gritty details, so bringing order to the chaos that comes with all the data of a company like EP is incredibly satisfying. I really enjoy defining and structuring common data points, so that everyone can easily understand the numbers and what they mean.

Goals for the next 3 months? 

At work, my goals for the next 3 months include helping the team grow and expand, doing a big spring-clean of our codebase over the summer, and working on my Python skills.

In my personal life, my goals for the next 3 months include moving back to New Zealand, learning more Māori, and perfecting my chocolate chip cookie recipe!

Tell us about a time when you viewed an event or occurrence as a negative, though in hindsight it turned out to be a positive.

Whilst I was at university, I heard about this ‘speed-dating’ style interview event that was designed to set students up with summer internships. I signed up and went to four different interviews, each about 5 minutes long. The first three interviews did not go well! I’d never done an interview before, and wasn’t particularly good at selling myself, so didn’t really give good answers to any of the questions. By the time I got to my final interview, I didn’t have a lot of hope so ended up just chatting to the two interviewers about all sorts, instead of trying to give a good interview. About a week later, I got an email from one of those interviewers, asking me to come chat about joining EP for the summer. 5 years later, I’m still here! 

How do you prefer to start your day?

In a perfect world, I’d wake up before my alarm, do a bit of yoga, have a smoothie, and read a little before starting work. 

In reality, most mornings I wake up to both of my cats yelling at me for their breakfast. I normally check my phone for any messages from my family, who are spread out across many different time zones, and check my emails. I’m subscribed to a few different newsletters, so I love reading those as I get ready! 

My team always jumps on a call each morning to chat about the day before, and what we have planned for that day. We call it our ‘Rubber Ducking’ time, since we normally chat through any problems we’re having with our work, and help each other out. After that, I’ll always go make myself a strong coffee, then jump into whatever work I have for the day! 

What are you most excited about? 

At work, I’m incredibly excited for our team to grow! Over the past 2 years, I’ve done a lot of work on data from our customer-facing teams, but we’re looking to start expanding the scope of our team. I’m really looking forward to exploring other data points, such as product usage data and the kinds of analytics we can bring to our customers in-platform. 

In my personal life, I’m so excited for the world to open back up for travel. I really want to take my partner back to Germany, and have him meet my extended family for the first time. I also really want to see my sister again – she lives in the UK and going to see her is top of my to-do list once international travel is available. 

What is your secret talent?

I’m really big into cross stitch and embroidery! I’ve started making my own cross stitch patterns to make little pictures for friends and family. I’m also pretty good at sudoku! 

What advice would you pass on to a younger version of yourself?

Plan ahead, but don’t fixate on a plan. Younger Nadja would always get very attached to a plan, and then panic if it didn’t work out (e.g. taking and failing a ‘pre-med school’ paper at university – I ended up switching to Computer Science and it was the best decision of my life). Things change, people change, and it always works out in the end!

Any last words you would like to share?

Thank you for taking the time to read this! If you want to connect, I’m always up for a chat over LinkedIn or via email! 🙂