Not every master’s student can say they landed a job at a company followed by football legend Cristiano Ronaldo, sprint icon Usain Bolt, and DJ superstar Tiësto.
Fewer till can say they achieve this right after completing their degree.
And fewer still can say they play a key role in a company with over 115 million followers and seven billion impressions every month.
Gülnaz Çavuşoğlu, a junior data analyst at 433, can.
433 may be one of the most influential football media platforms in the world.
But Çavuşoğlu’s journey started like the rest of us: not knowing what to study at university.
Çavuşoğlu, a Besiktas football club fan, believes her passion for football also played a role in landing the job at 433. Source: Gülnaz Çavuşoğlu
How data shaped Çavuşoğlu’s journey
Çavuşoğlu’s journey began in Turkey, where she was born and raised. At 19 years old, she joined a bachelor’s degree in Statistics programme at Middle East Technical University because she had always enjoyed working with numbers and solving problems since high school.
She hated physics, so engineering was out of the question. She knew she didn’t want to go into social sciences or business either.
An elective course on entrepreneurship during her final year at university would later change her mind.
Taught by a lecturer who explained business concepts like storytelling, the course planted a seed. She started thinking beyond numbers — about how data could intersect with business strategy and decision-making.
Interested, she took a digital marketing certificate as a backup plan in case she wasn’t accepted into a master’s programme. The course, offered by a foundation supporting women’s employment in Turkey, introduced her to marketing analytics and confirmed her gut feeling: she wanted a future blending business with data.
Çavuşoğlu was drawn to 433 to explore how social media companies manage data and extract insights from it. Source: Gülnaz Çavuşoğlu
While looking into master’s programmes in Europe, Çavuşoğlu noticed a gap. Most were either heavily focused on technical data science or stuck in theoretical frameworks.
She wanted something in between, where she could apply her skills to real-world problems.
That’s when she found the Jheronimus Academy of Data Science (JADS), a joint initiative by Tilburg University and Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands.
Once enrolled, she quickly realised that a strong foundation in statistics and machine learning was crucial.
Students at JADS came from all sorts of academic backgrounds — communication, business, and marketing. Those without a technical background must complete a six-month pre-master’s to prepare for the coursework. Çavuşoğlu, with her stats degree and some machine learning experience already under her belt, joined the master’s programme directly. Still, the learning style was different from what she’d known before.
Instead of being walked through machine learning concepts step by step, students are thrown into projects and asked to figure things out. “It’s not like, ‘Here’s machine learning, follow these steps,'” she says. “It’s more like, ‘Here’s the project — figure it out.'”
It was not easy at first, but Çavuşoğlu adapted, and by doing that, she honed skills she hadn’t expected — like communication and teamwork. Working in multicultural teams, presenting findings weekly, and translating complex data for non-technical audiences became routine.
“I used to be scared of presenting, especially in English,” she says. “It was challenging to explain complex results in a different language, especially when the stakeholders don’t have any background in data science. But now I’ve learned to simplify my findings and communicate clearly.”
That ability — to turn numbers into stories that make sense to everyone — is what defines a great data analyst. And it’s what helped Çavuşoğlu land a role at football media giant 433.
After earning a bachelor’s degree in statistics, Çavuşoğlu pursued an MS in Data Science in Business and Entrepreneurship at the Jheronimus Academy of Data Science. Source: Gülnaz Çavuşoğlu
Landing a part-time role at 433
Çavuşoğlu wasn’t always a football fan. But like many, she had a turning point during the pandemic. Her cousin, a die-hard follower of the sport, made it his mission to walk her through every rule, from offside to corner kicks. “He made sure I understood the basics,” she says.
That crash course sparked something, and Çavuşoğlu soon found herself genuinely enjoying the game. Supporting Beşiktaş FC came naturally, and over time, football became part of her identity.
When she started looking for a part-time job while studying abroad, Çavuşoğlu knew she wanted something aligned with her interests. 433 quickly stood out.
“I didn’t just apply blindly,” she says. “I went beyond that. I researched what tools they were using, who was working there, what the team looked like, and the company’s history through LinkedIn and Glassdoor. I used all that information to write a strong, personalised cover letter that showed I was genuinely interested in them.”
In her application, she also highlighted her passion for football. “I believe that when you truly enjoy what you do, you perform better — and I think that helped strengthen my application.”
But there was more to it. Çavuşoğlu was also intrigued by how 433 used data to drive its success. “There’s so much data involved, and I was curious to see how they manage it and what kind of insights they extract from it,” she says.
The application process for the role at 433 was straightforward but competitive. First, Çavuşoğlu submitted her CV and personalised cover letter. From there, shortlisted applicants were asked to complete a case study using Tableau or Power BI. “I had one week to finish it,” she says.
Once Çavuşoğlu completed the case study, she created a report explaining the dashboard she had made and submitted both to the company.
Her work paid off. She was invited for an interview with the team manager, who took a deep dive into her dashboard. “He asked me to explain how I managed the data and why I highlighted certain insights,” she says. “He was trying to understand my thought process and determine whether there was an original perspective behind it.”
Once that round was complete, Çavuşoğlu moved on to a final interview with HR. A few days later, she got the call confirming she had gotten the part-time job and was officially part of the 433 team.
“When I got the call, I immediately told my family, and both they and I felt proud of me, because I had done everything on my own in a different country while trying to create a new life,” she says.
At 433, Çavuşoğlu handles ad hoc data analysis for various teams to help them understand user behavior and drive data-informed improvements. Source: Gülnaz Çavuşoğlu
The analyst behind 433’s fan experience
Çavuşoğlu starts her day as a junior data analyst at 433 by checking the app’s dashboard. The 433 app is designed for football fans, offering more than just scores — it features exclusive content, quizzes, and match prediction games that let users compete with friends.
Her main responsibility is ensuring the dashboard, which tracks app performance, is up-to-date and accurate. She verifies that data pipelines and semantic models refresh correctly each day, and if any issues arise, she investigates and fixes them.
“This dashboard is important because everyone from the content and UX teams to design and the product owner uses it daily to monitor how the app is performing, how much we’ve improved, and how recent games have impacted user engagement,” she says.
Alongside dashboard maintenance and improvements, Çavuşoğlu manages in-app event tracking. For example, when users scroll through content, a “view” event is recorded. Different user actions trigger specific events, which she structures carefully because they form the basis of the dashboard’s data. These events feed into the database, enabling the team to analyse user interactions effectively.
Beyond that, Çavuşoğlu’s work primarily revolves around user data collected from the app. Every user action, from app openings to feature clicks, is logged with timestamps and unique user IDs. She uses SQL to analyse this data and generate insights for UX designers and content creators.
“They want to understand things like user engagement, retention rates, and how users interact with different parts of the app,” she says. “Based on these insights, they can make informed decisions to improve the product and content strategy.”
Though 433 is best known as a football platform, it’s also a tech company and a commercial brand partner, with ventures extending into social media and fashion. Because of this diverse structure, Çavuşoğlu’s data projects focus mainly on user behaviour and engagement rather than football statistics.
Çavuşoğlu is happy with her current role, where she’s learning a lot and gaining insights into the business side while collaborating with content creators, designers, and project leads. Source: Gülnaz Çavuşoğlu
The future of data analysis
Data is becoming increasingly important everywhere, including in football. In fact, it played a huge role in helping Liverpool sign promising young players (who later turned world-class), win matches, and dominate the football world. It clearly signals how data analytics transforms industries, from sports to digital media.
Hence, it’s no surprise that by 2033, the US Bureau of Labour Statistics projects a 36% growth rate for data scientists, which includes data analyst roles, well above the average for all occupations.
Çavuşoğlu sees this rapid growth as a sign of how much the field is changing. She believes the role of data analysts is shifting from simply generating reports to actively shaping user experiences. Analysts are now working closely with product and marketing teams to personalise content and make smarter business decisions in real time — something Çavuşoğlu believes is the future direction for the field.
She is particularly excited about trends in sports data analytics, especially the use of real-time analytics to make experiences more interactive. Features like personalised notifications, smarter content recommendations, and delivering the right content at the right moment are transforming how users engage with sports platforms. “These features are really exciting for me, and as they become more common in the future, I’m eager to learn more about them.”
She emphasises that having a strong grasp of business concepts helps analysts focus on solving the right problems rather than getting lost in overwhelming amounts of data. Her university courses on strategy and business models have reinforced this view, showing her that knowing the business context is key to making data meaningful.
“Data can be overwhelming,” Çavuşoğlu says. “If you don’t know the right question to ask, even if you gather a lot of information from the data, it may not be useful. For me, it’s essential to understand the business strategy in order to make the data truly valuable.”
This mindset also shapes how she sees her future. “Right now, I’m happy at 433, and I’m learning a lot,” Çavuşoğlu says. “I’m gaining more insights into the business side while also working with content creators, designers, and project leads. It’s great to be here, and I’ve always wanted to work for a company like this.”
