🇪🇺 #291 - Scopely: Building a 50-person Data Team in Europe — DataGen

🇪🇺 #291 - Scopely: Building a 50-person Data Team in Europe

DataGen · 09/09/2026 08:18 · 28 min

Contenu de l'épisode

Jonathan Palmer is the former VP of Data at Scopely, a US-based unicorn behind hit mobile games such as Monopoly GO!.


He grew and led the data team at Scopely to 50 people, mostly based in Barcelona.


Before that, Jon was Product Director for Core Data Services at King, the Swedish unicorn behind the hit game Candy Crush. He was also Head of BI at GoCardless, the British unicorn. And he is now field CTO at Omni, the BI & AI Analytics platform.


We cover:


🔥 Workstream #1: scaling the data organization from 10 to 50 people (main teams, organization…)

🔥 Workstream #2: building a modern data stack to improve performance, simplify hiring, and support hypergrowth

🔥 Workstream #3: evolving roles, developing leaders, and adapting the organization as the company scaled

🔥 The biggest challenges: imposter syndrome, managing change, and cultural differences


📚 RESOURCES


- Jon’s Linkedin profile

- The book What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami


🎬 CHAPTERS


00:00 What's Scopely?

01:52 The context when he arrived

02:41 Organizing the data team

08:45 Building a Modern Data Stack

13:44 Adapting the team to new needs

15:37 Fighting the imposter syndrome

16:57 Leading a big team

20:23 Managing cultural differences

23:15 Why he joined Omni

25:00 Jon’s favorite resources

26:13 His best advice


🤩 OTHER EPISODES YOU SHOULD LOVE


#8 - Marshmallow: Building the data analytics team at a unicorn

#4 - Ex-VP of Product at Looker, he launched Omni, the challenger in Business Intelligence

#1 - BlaBlaCar : Managing 50 Data People with Manu, VP Data


👋 MORE DATA CONTENT?


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2/ Sign up for the newsletter (summaries, events) here 💌

3/ Check out the podcast in video format on YouTube here 📹


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