Senior Analyst, Search Measurements and Analytics

8116 - Midtown Office - 2220 W. Broad Street, Richmond, Virginia, 23220

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Senior Analyst, Search Measurement and Analytics

Richmond, VA (CarMax Midtown Office / Technology Innovation Center)

About the Team

Marketing Analytics is the measurement and insights engine for CarMax's marketing organization, supporting hundreds of millions of dollars in annual media investment across paid search, lead generation, affiliate, and brand channels. The Search Analytics team owns the data and analysis behind one of CarMax's largest performance channels, spanning both the retail program (vehicle sales) and the supply program (vehicle sourcing).

About the Role

This role owns measurement, analysis, and causal inference responsibilities within the search space: rigorously testing whether a result is actually caused by paid search, not just correlated with it, to drive data-backed strategy and decision-making. You’ll own analytical rigor behind how CarMax invests in and optimizes paid search, working alongside a Senior Manager and a small team of analysts.

This includes designing tests and interpreting results with a statistical-based approach, not just reading their results; independently validating agency-reported performance rather than taking it at face value; and translating ambiguous business questions and white-space research into specific, defensible recommendations. You'll operate with real autonomy: media activation, planning, and program leads look to your analysis to shape decisions, not just describe what already happened.

Paid search platform expertise is useful context to support this work, but not the job itself.

What You Will Do – Essential Responsibilities

• Own and prioritize an analytics backlog, spanning testing, research, and measurement priorities, translating competing tasks into a clear, defensible sequence of what gets worked on next
• Design and execute incrementality tests, holdout experiments, and pre/post analyses to isolate the true impact of paid search spend, independent of what platform-reported metrics claim
• Build and maintain data foundations, statistical models, and dashboards that give leadership a trusted, defensible view of channel performance, and be able to explain the methodology behind them, not just the output
• Own budget management input through monthly mROI curve builds, translating diminishing-returns analysis into budget recommendations
• Independently validate agency-delivered analysis and reporting; pressure-test findings and set the quality bar the agency partner is held to Translate ambiguous business questions (where we should shift budget, is this channel actually incremental) into structured analyses and specific recommendations
• Contribute directly to portfolio-level budget allocation and channel strategy conversations, not just channel-level optimization
• Partner with media planners and program leads on cross-channel measurement questions, including how paid search fits into CarMax’s broader measurement approach (e.g., MMM, multi-touch attribution, incrementality testing)

Qualifications and Requirements

• Ability to consistently deliver at a high level on the responsibilities listed above. Requirements listed below are representative of the knowledge and skills required:
• 3+ years of experience in an analytical role, preferably in marketing analytics, media analytics, or another data-rich performance marketing environment
• Strong SQL and Python (pandas) skills for querying, transforming, and modeling large datasets
• Applied experience designing experiments, including hypothesis testing, significance and power analysis, sample size estimation, causal inference methods (e.g., geo holdouts, synthetic controls), and knowing when a result is and isn’t meaningful
• Familiarity with marketing measurement methodologies such as incrementality testing, media mix modeling, or multi-touch attribution
• Experience building and maintaining reports or dashboards in a BI tool (Tableau, Looker, or similar)
• A track record of turning ambiguous data into a specific, actionable recommendation, and communicating it clearly to both analysts and executives
• Bachelor's degree in a quantitative field (statistics, economics, math, marketing analytics, or similar) or equivalent practical experience

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with paid search or bid management platforms (e.g., Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, SA360)
• Experience using GenAI tools to speed up analysis or automate reporting
• Experience collaborating with cross-functional teams including external media agencies
• Work Location: Richmond, VA, onsite 4 days/week. Sponsorship not available for this role.
• The annual salary for this position is: $88,400.00 - $132,600.00 May be eligible for bonus and equity.