Network Analyst - Senior

Ember; City of Edinburgh; On-site; GBP 55,000 - 75,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Share options

Hybrid work pattern

Office in central Edinburgh

Job summary

Ember is building the future of public transport with a data-driven mindset. The analyst role spans from spotting opportunities on maps to launching routes and iterating based on performance.

You’ll test ideas out in the real world, interact with local communities, and influence strategy with the founders. Expect collaboration across operations, charging, and engineering, plus AI-enabled tooling for faster data work.

Qualifications

• Statistically literate; expert with spreadsheets and statistics.
• Know SQL and/or Python for data analysis.
• Grounded: evidence-based decision making in real-world data.

Responsibilities

• Design and launch new routes; analyze data to improve performance.
• Develop probabilistic timetables and register with the Traffic Commissioner.
• Collaborate with engineers to build tooling for route planning.
• Test ideas in the real world with local communities.

Skills

Statistically literate

SQL

Python

Hands-on

Detail-oriented

Self-managing

AI-native

Tools

Excel

SQL

Python

Job description

We're looking for an experienced analyst to help design and grow Ember's network. You'll find route opportunities, build the timetables that run them, and use data to make every part of the network work better. We care less about which industry you've worked in than about your ability to think clearly, work in the real world as well as in code, and run several things at once to a high standard.

About Ember

We're building the future of public transport — convenient, affordable, connected and zero-emission. Our goal is to make it easier and more enjoyable to get from A to B with Ember than it is with your own car.

Ember is a tech company, not a traditional bus operator. We've built a platform that coordinates our entire operation – everything from monitoring vehicles and controlling chargers to selling tickets and calculating ETAs. This allows us to use electric buses more intensively than anyone else in the world, leading to a massive reduction in emissions. It also helps us provide a much better passenger experience, with innovative features like demand-responsive stops.

We’re still tiny, with a handful of routes and 98 buses. The challenge is to scale this 50x whilst staying lean, increasing efficiency and delivering an even better product experience. We’ve recently raised a Series A from some of Europe’s leading climate VCs and are looking for mission-driven individuals who want to get on board and help take us to the next level.

The role

This is a broad, hands‑on role where you'll work across the full lifecycle of a route — from spotting an opportunity on a map to launching it, then making it better once it's running. We're a small team with a lot of ownership on offer. You'll decide what needs figuring out, and figure it out.

Finding new routes means going deep on Google Maps, researching existing transport alternatives, getting out into the real world to test ideas, and engaging with local communities to understand what they actually need. You'll need to know what's possible with our fleet of electric coaches and charging infrastructure, and to be comfortable trading off the most attractive‑looking route design against the efficient use of those assets. The best route on paper isn't always the best route to run.

You'll also be one of the people shaping where Ember goes next. That means thinking about the network in the medium to long term rather than just individual routes, and being a strong voice in strategy conversations with the founders.

We don't build traditional clock‑face timetables that ignore traffic patterns. Ours are probabilistic, accounting for how the use of each stop varies across days, weeks and seasons. You'll design them, take them through council consultation and registration with the Traffic Commissioner, and make sure the resulting service information ends up in the right places — everywhere from Google Maps to the paper timetables in bus shelters.

A great timetable is only the start. You'll work alongside our operations and charging teams to make sure we've hired and trained the right number of drivers, that there are decent rest facilities where they can take breaks, that we have enough vehicles to run the route, and that the charging will be there when it's needed. You won't do any of these things yourself — but you'll be central to figuring out what's needed and communicating that to other teams.

Launching a route is also only the start. Once a service is live, you'll use our data to assess how it's performing and work out how to make it better — sometimes a tweak to the timetable, sometimes a change to a stop, sometimes a deeper rethink. You'll do this in our own tooling: we don't rely on third‑party network planning software, and you'll work closely with our engineers to make that tooling better with every route you run through it.

We're serious about AI as a tool. You'll have access to frontier models from Anthropic, OpenAI and others with generous usage limits, and we expect you to use them to move faster on data work and analysis. Being AI‑native isn't a substitute for being good — you're accountable for the routes you design and the timetables you launch.

What you might work on

You’ll work on a mixture of greenfield and brownfield projects. That could include:

• Designing and launching new intercity routes in new geographies — picking the corridor, understanding the existing alternatives, working out charging patterns, building the timetable and getting it registered with the Traffic Commissioner.

• Re‑engineering the timetable on one of our busier routes so we can provide higher passenger utility without adding vehicles, using booking, occupancy and traffic data to find the slack.

• Building tools that let us run more of the network with less effort — whether that's simulating a proposed timetable against historical demand before we commit to it, or automating the parts of route launch that currently eat days of analyst time.

Diversity and equality

At Ember, we support diversity across our team and customers. We work to ensure every employee feels respected and able to give their best, whether temporary, part‑time or full‑time. We’re happy to offer flexible working patterns where they make sense, are compassionate when it comes to time off and we offer enhanced maternity and paternity leave.

Read more about our approach in our Equal Opportunities Policy.

What’s on offer

You'll receive a salary of £55,000–£75,000 per annum, depending on your experience and skills, plus share options. You'll be expected to work from our lovely office in central Edinburgh most days — we value in‑person communication — but there's flexibility around the odd day from home.

Who we're looking for

You should have a desire to get involved in the growth of a quickly scaling business, with a real opportunity to make your mark. How you work and think matters more to us than specific industry experience. The following should sound a lot like you:

• Statistically literate. You're an expert in spreadsheets, comfortable with the most complex formulas. You know SQL and/or Python. You have a good grasp of statistics and can use it to make sense of messy real‑world data.

• Grounded. You know when a model is telling you something real and when it's overfitting. You know when a statistically robust result is operationally useless — the right answer for a route isn't always the one with the lowest p-value. Good solutions survive contact with reality and then thrive.

• AI‑native. You treat AI tools as another way to apply your skills. You're comfortable using frontier models to work faster and more rigorously, and you experiment with new tools and techniques as they evolve.

• Detail‑oriented and strategic. Our network is complex, with lots of moving parts that depend on each other. You can zoom in to the detail of a single stop or driver shift, then zoom out to see how a change ripples through the wider system.

• Interested in transport. You don't need to be a bus spotter, but the problems we're solving should genuinely interest you.

• Hands‑on. This isn't a desk job. You'll get out into the network — riding routes, walking stops, meeting council officers — and you're comfortable blending the strategic, the digital and the real world.

• Self‑managing. You can run several projects at once without things slipping, take initiative on what to prioritise, and jump in to help colleagues across the business when they need it.