Junior Data Engineer & Researcher

Ballotpedia is seeking a full-time, remote Junior Data Engineer & Researcher to join our organization.

We have a goal to maintain a database of candidates for all ~500,000 elected offices in the United States and need to develop more automated ETL workflows to attain this. This will involve finding tools and developing programs to harvest standardized election data from official government sources online, as well as more manual research and outreach where information is lacking. This is a full-time role split between junior-level programming tasks and research, with an emphasis on developing efficiencies through technology.

To succeed in this role, you will need to be detail-oriented, comfortable with Python, SQL, and spreadsheets, and have a drive to constantly improve processes to make them more efficient.

This position is part of Ballotpedia’s Tech Department, a hard-working, curious, and collaborative group of web developers and software engineers supporting Ballotpedia’s many voter-education products and internal staff tools.

Skills and experience desired

• Technical skills and experience desired: Python, SQL, advanced spreadsheet functions, web scraping, basic understanding of web development (HTML, CSS)
• Demonstrated research skills desired: online research, communication and outreach
• Soft skills sought in an ideal candidate include:

• Willingness to work hard to support the mission of Ballotpedia
• Humility, seeking to improve the work of the rest of the staff, and approaching projects as a team member
• Curious, with an unending appetite for learning
• Ability to communicate well with team members
• Motivated by challenging goals

Environment

The Junior Data Engineer & Researcher will work remotely from their home location. All Ballotpedia staff work remotely. To join Ballotpedia, you must have a computer with Internet access. Ballotpedia uses the Google Suite (Gmail, Google Calendar, Drive and more), Slack, and Asana to accomplish our goals. Some familiarity with the Google Suite, Slack, and Asana are helpful.

Ballotpedia has a flexible work environment, BP Flex, in which every employee enjoys unlimited vacation and flexibility in scheduling. Each employee will be oriented to the principles of Ballotpedia’s flexible environment during new employee training.

Compensation

The starting pay range for the Junior Data Engineer & Researcher is $60,000-$70,000, commensurate with experience.

In addition to salary, Ballotpedia offers an annual benefits stipend equivalent to $8,000 that is paid out in equal increments in each paycheck once an employee becomes benefits eligible. The stipend may be used to pay for a full benefits package, including health, vision, and dental insurance; retirement accounts; and more. If benefits are not elected, the stipend is taxed as regular income and added to salary.

To Apply

To apply, visit the Ballotpedia job opportunities page and fill out the form.

Please attach the following in PDF format:

• résumé
• cover letter detailing your interest in Ballotpedia’s mission, this position and your salary expectations

Please ensure that either your résumé or your cover letter include your current address.

About Ballotpedia

Ballotpedia is a collaborative team of fast learners and creative problem solvers who are eager to work hard to make the world a better place. We believe the world will be a better place if every citizen has access to information to make informed decisions about their vote in every election in which they are eligible to vote: primary, general, and special elections; federal, state, and local offices.

We work diligently to present the available information about elections, candidates, judges, ballot measures, policies, and more in a way that enables our readers to vote with confidence and to act as engaged citizens outside of the polling booth.

Ballotpedia readers, like Ballotpedia staff, are special people.

When we launched in 2007, we did not go out of our way to seek new readers. Starting with our small team of visionary idealists, nerds, and aspiring political journalists, we just wrote the best unbiased online articles we could, especially about ballot measures. Readers found those articles in droves. It turns out there was an unclaimed audience out there—people who wanted straightforward facts about political issues, and were willing to read at length instead of just scanning the headlines.

“If you build it, they will come:” our readers came to our neutral oasis in growing numbers; we’ve had many millions of lifetime pageviews, we reached nearly half of all voters in 2020, and, in the month surrounding the November 2020 election, we were the 77th most-visited website in the U.S.

We’ve come to realize that we need to meet our readers where they are. In doing so, over the past five years, we’ve grown our email newsletter program from infancy to include more than 2,000,000 opt-in subscribers with more than a dozen newsletters to choose from. We are working in numerous ways to help put our neutral information in front of people at the times when they most need it, including on mobile phones while you’re standing in the voting booth. We firmly believe that our readers, and the mindset we help them cultivate, are essential to the preservation of our great civilization in a world where too many others are fighting to get us all addicted to sensational posts and the irrational decisions they foster.

If this is a mission you’d be willing to work hard to achieve, and if this is a team you’d be willing to work hard with—JOIN US.