Center for New Data

The Center for New Data is a civic tech nonprofit dedicated to unlocking insights from big data to build a stronger democracy. Our work has been profiled by The New York Times and Fast Company; introduced as testimony to the U.S. Congress by Stacey Abrams; supported investigative features by the Washington Post and Center for Public Integrity; and helped reopen polling locations in Georgia’s 2021 Senate runoff election. Our current programs focus on fighting voter suppression and gerrymandering, leveraging location data from 30 million mobile devices and a national volunteer corps of 200+ data scientists, engineers, project managers, and software engineers.

We are hiring a full-time data engineer to join our founding team and play a key technical and leadership role in redefining big data analytics for voting rights. Working with the Executive Director and Head of Data Science & Analytics, you will help advance the organization’s data-driven strategy to combat voter suppression. There is a tremendous opportunity to work as a strategic thought-partner providing creativity, inspiration, and technical expertise to solve complex problems, and to help shape the roadmap and patterns of an emerging data-for-good organization.

About Center for New Data

At the Center for New Data, we help make equity-driven and evidence-based change possible by sharing insights from big data with public problem solvers. We are committed to closing the data divide by ensuring the same big, novel datasets currently used to target ads and power consumer apps can also be used to reveal social inequalities and power evidence-driven solutions.

We believe that in order for voting rights to be protected, they first need to be measured. We use new data to identify where in-person voting access is most problematic, which populations are most affected, and which solutions are most effective. Partnering with voting rights groups across the country, our data products detect voting rights violations at the local level and also paint a big picture about causes and patterns of voter suppression at the state and federal level.

About the Role

Responsibilities:

  • Work with the Executive Director and Head of Data Science & Analytics to shape data strategy and vision by providing leadership over implementation, including major initiatives around data modeling, engineering, and analysis.
  • Lead, coach, and mentor teams of high-skilled data science and data engineer volunteers, helping them deliver excellent work by providing advice and technical guidance.
  • Implement productionization, e.g., CI/CD, permission isolation, and alerting and logging at various points throughout our data pipeline
  • Implement bug fixes in SQL code
  • Review code and algorithms
  • Get hands-on, performing data engineering work on critical parts of our vote-time estimation pipeline

Required Skills:

  • 5+ years of software engineering experience, including at least 3 years as a data engineer
  • Experience as a technical leader. This doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ve been a people manager, but you have managed work across multiple projects — perhaps through mentorship, task forces and working groups, or served as a domain expert or architect in some specialization. In some specific way, you’ve been a force multiplier for the people around you.
  • You might have experience using DataBricks, Spark, and PySpark, as well as working with BI Tooling such as Looker or Power BI. If not, you’re open to learning.
  • Ability to understand and work across our tech stack:
    • Data scheduling and execution frameworks (e.g., Airflow, Pachyderm)
    • Data warehousing/ETL & dimensional modeling
    • Python and SQL (with emphasis on distributed datastores)
    • Large-scale distributed data stores (e.g., Snowflake, Redshift, BigQuery)
    • Cloud-heavy environments and distributed file systems (e.g., AWS)
    • Familiarity with Git and Agile methodologies

Preferred Qualifications:

  • Experience managing open-source projects and developing patterns for reusable code
  • Familiarity with modern business intelligence and reporting platforms, e.g., Looker and PowerBI
  • Familiarity with GIS and other forms of novel data
  • Familiarity with big data infrastructure, e.g., S3, Snowflake, and Astronomer

Compensation & Benefits

  • A competitive salary consistent with similar roles in tech nonprofits.
  • Generous health, dental and vision benefits and 401k match.
  • A flexible time-off policy for vacation and sick time, observance of federal holidays, and regular wellness days after team sprints.
  • A supportive community where everyone can thrive and find a balance between working hard to make a difference and taking care of themselves. This means that we are committed to a fully remote work environment (for US-based employees) along with flexible schedules and time off policies that work with your life.

To Apply

Please submit your application online via Breezy. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis starting November 28 with an expected start date in January 2023.

Center for New Data is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer fully dedicated to achieving a diverse staff. All qualified applicants are encouraged to apply and will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex (including pregnancy, gender identity and expression, and sexual orientation), disability status, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law.

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