Preparing for an interview at Seatgeek requires a balanced approach that addresses technical expertise, business strategy, and communication. You should approach your preparation with the mindset of a strategic partner who uses data to solve real-world marketplace problems.

SQL and Data Manipulation – This is a foundational technical requirement. Interviewers will evaluate your ability to write accurate, efficient SQL queries under time constraints. You should practice writing queries that involve aggregate functions, complex joins, subqueries, and window functions.

Marketplace Business Sense – You must understand how a two-sided marketplace operates. Practice structuring answers around supply and demand, user acquisition cost (CAC), customer lifetime value (LTV), and conversion funnels. Be ready to explain how changes in user behavior impact overall platform revenue.

Structured Problem Solving – When faced with ambiguous business cases, your ability to break down a problem logically is more important than finding a single "correct" answer. Use frameworks to structure your thinking, state your assumptions clearly, and walk your interviewer through your hypothesis-driven approach.

Cross-Functional Communication – As a Business Analyst, you will act as a translator between technical data and business strategy. Focus on articulating your thoughts clearly, explaining your technical choices, and highlighting the business impact of your past projects.

The interview process for a Business Analyst at Seatgeek is designed to be highly professional, structured, and surprisingly swift, often wrapping up in just over a week to a few weeks. The company values transparency and speed, ensuring candidates are kept informed of their status at each stage.

The journey begins with an initial HR recruiter screening call, which typically occurs within a few days of your application. This conversation focuses on your background, career goals, and basic alignment with the role. Following a successful screen, you will move to a technical evaluation phase—often involving a virtual hiring manager interview or a dedicated technical screening. This step is designed to assess your analytical intuition, SQL capabilities, and problem-solving frameworks.

The final stage is a comprehensive panel interview, which can be conducted virtually in a single block of back-to-back sessions or spread out over a couple of days to accommodate scheduling. This round consists of multiple 30-minute interviews with key stakeholders, including product managers, peer analysts, and business leaders. The focus is to evaluate your technical depth, cultural fit, and ability to collaborate effectively across different departments.

The timeline above details the typical progression of the Seatgeek hiring process. Candidates should use this visualization to budget their preparation time, focusing heavily on SQL and business metrics ahead of the technical screening, and shifting toward behavioral frameworks and case studies as they approach the final panel. Note that while the process is fast-paced, the final panel is thorough, testing your resilience and consistency across multiple conversations.

To stand out during the Seatgeek interview process, you must excel in three core evaluation areas that reflect the day-to-day challenges of the analytics team.

SQL and Data Interpretation

This evaluation area tests your hands-on coding proficiency and your ability to draw logical conclusions from query outputs. At Seatgeek, databases are vast and complex, meaning query efficiency and logical accuracy are highly valued.

Be ready to go over:

• Join Logic and Aggregations – Knowing when to use specific joins and how to group data without losing critical transactional details.
• Window Functions – Utilizing functions like ROW_NUMBER(), RANK(), and LAG/LEAD to analyze sequential user behavior.
• Data Cleaning and Parsing – Handling null values, parsing strings, and converting data types within your queries.
• Advanced concepts (less common) – CTEs (Common Table Expressions), query optimization strategies, and database indexing theories.

Example scenarios:

• "Write a query to identify users who purchased tickets to more than three different genres of events in the last calendar year."
• "Optimize a slow-running query that calculates daily active users and transaction volume across multiple database tables."

Business Case and Product Metrics

This area evaluates your ability to apply analytical thinking to product performance and business growth. You will be asked to diagnose problems and propose data-driven solutions for the Seatgeek platform.

Be ready to go over:

• Funnel Analysis – Identifying drop-offs in the user journey from landing page to ticket confirmation.
• A/B Testing Frameworks – Designing experiments, establishing control and variant groups, and determining statistical significance.
• Marketplace Dynamics – Analyzing how ticket pricing, seller fees, and inventory volume affect overall transaction velocity.

Example scenarios:

• "We are launching a new seat-view feature on our interactive map. How would you measure whether this feature increases checkout conversion?"
• "A competitor has lowered their seller fees, causing some ticket brokers to leave our platform. How would you analyze the financial impact of this shift?"

Stakeholder Collaboration and Culture Fit

This area measures how well you work within cross-functional teams and align with Seatgeek's collaborative, user-centric culture.

Be ready to go over:

• Translating Data to Insights – Simplifying complex statistical findings into actionable business recommendations.
• Conflict Resolution – Handling situations where data contradicts a stakeholder's intuition or product roadmap.
• Prioritization – Managing multiple high-priority analysis requests from different business units.

Example scenarios:

• "Describe a situation where you had to convince a Product Manager to pivot their strategy based entirely on your data analysis."
• "How do you handle a request for a dashboard when you believe the requested metrics do not actually align with the company's core goals?"

As a Business Analyst at Seatgeek, your primary responsibility is to act as the analytical engine for your assigned team. On any given day, you will write SQL queries to extract raw data, clean and structure it, and build intuitive dashboards using visualization tools like Looker. These dashboards are critical, as they allow product managers, marketing leads, and executives to monitor business health in real-time.

Collaboration is at the heart of this role. You will not work in a silo; instead, you will partner closely with product managers to define key performance indicators (KPIs) for new features and design rigorous A/B tests to validate product hypotheses. You will also coordinate with data engineering to ensure that the underlying data pipelines are robust, reliable, and structured appropriately for downstream analysis.

Beyond routine reporting, you will drive ad-hoc strategic projects. This involves diving deep into complex datasets to uncover hidden trends—such as shifting user demographics, seasonal purchasing patterns, or emerging fraud vectors. You will package these insights into clear, visual presentations and deliver them directly to business leaders, providing the quantitative backing needed to make major strategic bets.

A successful candidate for the Business Analyst position at Seatgeek combines technical mastery with strong communication skills. The team looks for individuals who are self-starters and comfortable navigating ambiguity.

• Must-have skills – Highly proficient in SQL (writing complex queries, window functions, and joins), experience with modern BI and visualization tools (such as Looker, Tableau, or Mode), and a strong understanding of product and e-commerce metrics (conversion rate, bounce rate, LTV, CAC).
• Nice-to-have skills – Proficiency in Python or R for statistical analysis, experience working with snowflake or dbt, and prior experience in a two-sided marketplace or ticketing industry.
• Experience level – Typically 2+ years of experience in a highly analytical role (such as business analyst, product analyst, or data analyst) with a proven track record of delivering actionable business insights.
• Soft skills – Exceptional communication skills, a collaborative mindset, strong organizational abilities to manage multiple stakeholders, and a passion for live events, sports, or music.

Q: How technical is the SQL portion of the interview? A: The SQL screening is highly practical and rigorous. You will be expected to write real-time queries that involve aggregations, complex joins, and window functions. Memorizing basic commands is not enough; you must understand how to apply them to solve specific business problems.

Q: What is the company culture like at Seatgeek? A: The culture is highly collaborative, smart, and driven, with a shared passion for live events. Team members are deeply invested in the product and the company’s success. It is an environment where curiosity is encouraged, and data-backed opinions are highly respected.

Q: How quickly does the interview process move? A: Seatgeek is known for a speedy and efficient interview pipeline. From the initial recruiter screen to the final round, the process can take as little as one to two weeks, depending on candidate and interviewer availability.

Q: Is the final round panel conducted in one day? A: Typically, yes. The final round consists of four 30-minute virtual interviews that are usually scheduled back-to-back. However, depending on scheduling constraints, the recruiting team can occasionally spread these interviews across multiple days.

To maximize your chances of success during the Seatgeek interview process, keep these practical tips in mind:

• Understand the Marketplace Dynamics: Seatgeek is a two-sided marketplace. Always consider how a change on the buyer side (e.g., ticket search filters) impacts the seller side (e.g., ticket listing volume). Demonstrating this holistic understanding will set you apart.

• Focus on the "So What?": When explaining past analytical projects, do not just list the tools you used. Clearly state the business problem, the insights you uncovered, and the measurable impact your work had on the business.
• Prepare for the Live SQL Screen: Practice coding on a shared screen or virtual whiteboard. Talk through your logic out loud as you write your queries so the interviewer can understand your problem-solving process.

• Show Your Passion: Seatgeek employees love live events. Showing enthusiasm for sports, music, theater, or the ticketing industry in general helps build a strong cultural connection with your interviewers.

The Business Analyst role at Seatgeek offers an incredible opportunity to work at the intersection of technology, data, and live entertainment. It is a position where your analytical skills will directly influence product development, marketing strategies, and overall business growth in a highly competitive marketplace. By mastering SQL, understanding marketplace business models, and honing your communication skills, you can position yourself as an ideal candidate.

To prepare effectively, focus your energy on practicing real-time SQL challenges, structuring answers for ambiguous business cases, and refining your behavioral stories using the STAR method. Approach each interview with confidence, curiosity, and a desire to solve complex problems.

The salary insights module above outlines the competitive compensation packages offered at Seatgeek. When evaluating your offer, consider that total compensation often includes base salary, equity, and a comprehensive benefits package designed to support your personal and professional growth. Leverage your preparation and strong interview performance to position yourself effectively during compensation discussions. For more detailed interview insights and resources, you can explore additional candidate experiences on Dataford. Good luck with your preparation!