Lead Data Taxonomist
The New York TimesThe mission of The New York Times is to seek the truth and help people understand the world. That means independent journalism is at the heart of all we do as a company. It’s why we have a world-renowned newsroom that sends journalists to report on the ground from nearly 160 countries. It’s why we focus deeply on how our readers will experience our journalism, from print to audio to a world-class digital and app destination. And it’s why our business strategy centers on making journalism so good that it’s worth paying for.
About the Role, Mission or Department Overview
The New York Times is looking for a Lead Data Taxonomist to serve as the architect and steward of our enterprise-wide event taxonomy. The New York Times is home to multiple products across News, Games, Cooking, Wirecutter, and The Athletic with billions of monthly events. Therefore, the need for a unified, governed, and high-quality data language is critical. In a long-term effort, it will dramatically improve data quality at the New York Times and power real-time recommendation engines, personalization algorithms, and future AI initiatives.
You will be responsible for New York Times' global event data catalog and taxonomy. You will sit at the intersection of Product, Data Platform, and Analytics, capturing every interaction — from a Wordle guess to a subscriber payflow — through a standardized, semantic lens. You will report to our Executive Director, Data & Insights.
Responsibilities:
-
You will develop and maintain a multi-domain enterprise taxonomy that includes Behavioral, Commerce, Messaging, User, Session, and other key data domains. This taxonomy will be transferable across all NYT products and codebases.
-
You will establish and enforce global events, event properties, standard property values, required fields, acceptable value types, and naming conventions. You will own the definition and lifecycle of global events that track the user journey across the entire NYT ecosystem.
-
You will be the final authority for the taxonomy, approving or rejecting all pull requests and proposals for new events, properties, or changes to the existing taxonomy.
-
You will oversee the enterprise event catalog, ensuring it serves as a high-fidelity source of truth with accurate business logic and metadata.
-
You will define and monitor domain-specific KPIs for data quality, security, and integration, solving for systemic issues.
-
You will iterate with engineers to improve instrumentation capabilities in service of data products
-
You will collaborate with engineers to align the taxonomy with Kafka infrastructure and with Analytics Engineering to ensure data is designed to flow effortlessly downstream and to help develop our larger New York Times ontology
-
You will facilitate and provide oversight for data councils concerning events and metrics
-
You will provide support and training to product and analytics teams to improve and evolve event tracking
-
You will advocate for information architecture best practices and master data management (MDM) principles across the organization.
-
Demonstrate support and understanding of our value of journalistic independence and a strong commitment to our mission to seek the truth and help people understand the world.
Basic Qualifications:
-
7+ years in Data Taxonomy, Data Ontology, Data Architecture, Technical Product Management, or Digital Analytics Implementation.
-
5+ years of developing taxonomies and information architecture for front-end and back-end use cases
-
5+ years of experience with event-cataloging software (e.g., Avo, Iteratively, Segment Protocols, or proprietary internal tools).
-
Experience managing complex, global event taxonomies for large, multi-product organizations
-
Expertise with JSON, YAML, and other data modeling languages and tools
-
Mastery of SQL, Python, and other data wrangling tools and languages
-
Experience enforcing standards in high-growth, decentralized engineering environments
-
Applied knowledge of industry-leading data governance, quality, and data management practices and tools
Preferred Qualifications:
-
Proficiency with GCP, AWS, or other big data environments
-
Background in subscription or media industries with complex data
-
Familiarity with Data Contracts and their implementation within a CI/CD workflow.
-
Master's degree in Library Science, Information Management, or Computer Science.
REQ-019811
For roles in the U.S., dependent on your role, you may be eligible for variable pay, such as an annual bonus and restricted stock. Benefits may include medical, dental and vision benefits, Flexible Spending Accounts (F.S.A.s), a company-matching 401(k) plan, paid vacation, paid sick days, paid parental leave, tuition reimbursement and professional development programs.
For roles outside of the U.S., information on benefits will be provided during the interview process.
The New York Times Company is committed to being the world’s best source of independent, reliable and quality journalism. To do so, we embrace a diverse workforce that has a broad range of backgrounds and experiences across our ranks, at all levels of the organization. We encourage people from all backgrounds to apply.
We are an Equal Opportunity Employer and do not discriminate on the basis of an individual's sex, age, race, color, creed, national origin, alienage, religion, marital status, pregnancy, sexual orientation or affectional preference, gender identity and expression, disability, genetic trait or predisposition, carrier status, citizenship, veteran or military status and other personal characteristics protected by law. All applications will receive consideration for employment without regard to legally protected characteristics. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC)’s Know Your Rights Poster is available here.
The New York Times Company will provide reasonable accommodations as required by applicable federal, state, and/or local laws. Individuals seeking an accommodation for the application or interview process should email [email protected]. Emails sent for unrelated issues, such as following up on an application, will not receive a response.
The Company encourages those with criminal histories to apply, and will consider their applications in a manner consistent with applicable "Fair Chance" laws, including but not limited to the NYC Fair Chance Act, the Los Angeles Fair Chance Initiative for Hiring Ordinance, the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers, and the California Fair Chance Act.
For information about The New York Times' privacy practices for job applicants click here.
Please beware of fraudulent job postings. Scammers may post fraudulent job opportunities, and they may even make fraudulent employment offers. This is done by bad actors to collect personal information and money from victims. All legitimate job opportunities from The New York Times will be accessible through The New York Times careers site. The New York Times will not ask job applicants for financial information or for payment, and will not refer you to a third party to do so. You should never send money to anyone who suggests they can provide employment with The New York Times.
If you see a fake or fraudulent job posting, or if you suspect you have received a fraudulent offer, you can report it to The New York Times at [email protected]. You can also file a report with the Federal Trade Commission or your state attorney general.