Data Quality Specialist

Position Summary

Position Summary: 

Stac Labs is a fully-remote, unionized, small and growing company, seeking talented, hardworking, and energetic person to join our team as a Data Quality Specialist, with an anticipated start date in August 2023. Stac works with state Democratic parties and other members to offer services supporting data, analytics, digital organizing and purchasing of tools and software that help state parties support candidates to win races up and down the ballot.

The Data Quality Specialist will be responsible for helping state parties maintain and improve their voter file and volunteer data quality, policies, and best practices.They will be the first line of defense for state parties who need backup on core functions of VAN administration, particularly during staff transitions. They will also be responsible for helping states vet, hire and train staff or volunteers to perform VAN administration. They will create documentation and training materials, audit data systems and help state parties implement new policies and best practices around maintaining their VAN data. They will also help state parties work with additional data tools like BigQuery and DDX.

This is a perfect job for someone who:

• Is detail oriented, organized and knows how to create and maintain good data standards
• Has extensive experience administering VAN/Votebuilder
• Has strong communication skills and loves talking people through their problems
• Is comfortable with clearly setting, communicating, and managing expectations and boundaries with non-technical stakeholders
• Loves organizing and building training and support resources and materials
• Wants to help campaigns on the front lines from behind the scenes
• Is comfortable with a fast-paced, varied, and often unpredictable inbound workload

There is flexibility for this role and we are open to candidates from a junior level to a mid-senior level of experience. A junior role would be 1-3 years relevant job experience or one cycle of electoral experience on a data team administering VAN. A mid-level role would be 4-6 years of relevant job experience, or at least two electoral cycles of relevant experience or working as a Data Director. At any level, the candidate must be proficient with VAN administration and have excellent communication skills. At a more senior level, we would expect candidates to have additional technical or programmatic (such as training or curriculum development) skills or experience that would allow them to take on additional responsibilities and build out more programs around data maintenance and best practices.

Essential Functions

The tasks, roles, and responsibilities of the job:

• This person will provide VAN administration support for states on an as needed basis, during staff vacations or periods of turnover, not to exceed the time it takes a state party to rehire for their in-house VFM or Data Director. If a state party does not intend to immediately rehire, this role will be responsible for working with the state party leadership to locate and train in-state staff or super volunteers to successfully manage the state party’s data policies and support requests.
• This person will be the primary owner of stac’s programs that help state parties create and implement best-practice data standards, from the automation of onboarding/trainings for new VAN users to maintaining quality control reports on voter contact data to monitoring the successful setup of everything from user profiles, committee profiles, master survey questions and much much more.
• Using stac’s existing VAN Audit templates, this person will work directly with states to document and implement best-practice data policies. They will also be empowered to help create new best-practice policies and implement them throughout all stac states where desired.
• This person will help create onboarding and training materials for committee VAN admins and state VAN admins, for use across multiple states and multiple cycles.
• At a more senior level, this person will be writing the SQL needed to create reports and notifications powering enforcement of the audit best-practices.
• At a more senior level, this person will be able to independently create, grow and shepherd new programs that support VAN administration best practices across all stac states.

Minimum Qualifications 

The requisite knowledge, skills, and abilities needed to enter the job are:

Strong data management skills: Must have a strong knowledge of database technology, warehousing, and integration. You should have experience working with voter data and a strong working knowledge of VAN/Votebuilder in particular. You should have a proficient understanding of the best practices around data security and managing sensitive voter data. You should be comfortable with CRMs and SQL databases.

Experience working in a technical capacity: Must have experience either managing a technical or data program, or working in an organization’s technical or data team with relevant project management systems.

Great communication skills: Must have the ability to synthesize and explain complex data reports in layperson’s terms, both verbally and in writing. Must have a working knowledge of data visualization and reporting programs and know how to share insights in a clear, concise and actionable way. Must be able to communicate effectively with state party members to ensure alignment on timelines and deliverables.

Strong self-organization skills: Must have a proven ability to to manage multiple projects simultaneously using well documented processes, such as using project management software, diligent meeting notes, or other forms of documentation that contribute to the longitudinal success of an organization and its work-product.

Great collaboration skills: Must have the ability to proactively seek solutions in coordination with the members and the stac team, who oversee multiple complex projects. This includes the ability to re-prioritize tasks based on team needs, offer timely input, and share feedback on work progress. It also includes the ability to contribute to and support the team’s culture and goals. The organization is fully remote, so you have the ability to adapt to the best practices and challenges of working with a team located across the country. You believe that we are strongest when we work together. You want to help create an environment where best practices are shared, team members are valued for their impact, and people are given the support they need to be successful.

A positive attitude and the ability to work well under pressure: Must be a “can do” person with experience working in busy/high-pressure situations. Campaigns are very busy during election season, and we will be supporting the state parties in their election work. You know how to manage a heavy workload and prioritize between competing needs while keeping things positive and moving things forward. You have the capacity and willingness to work long hours during peak season, rolling up your sleeves and getting the work done.

Proactive, creative, problem solving: Must have good instincts when it comes to anticipating and foreseeing challenges before they arise. When confronted with new problems, you must be willing to get creative and think outside the box. You tackle challenges head-on, and you’re eager to dive in with others to identify the best path forward while understanding and being able to articulate trade-offs. The bottom line is you will find a solution that works. 

Ability to travel: State work with party and campaign clients will involve travel, especially at critical times for campaign planning, debriefs, trainings and convenings. Estimated 10% of time spent traveling is dependent on the needs of member states. Overall, the expected amount of travel is no more than 20%. The team will all be remote, but you must have access to an airport from which you can travel.

Access to reliable, fast internet: Stac is a fully remote team and access to reliable and fast internet is a must in order to ensure that communications with members and the stac team is not an obstacle to performing the basic duties of the job.

Nice to Have Skills/Qualifications: 

Skills that are not required but would be nice to have in the position.

We don’t expect every applicant to know or have worked with every technology we’ve listed, or have worked with everything we’ll be working on, so we urge you to apply if you’re interested and some of the below apply to you.

• Experience with data warehouses, such as Google Big Query and specifically DNC’s Phoenix databases
• Experience working at start-ups or at brand new organizations
• Experience working in a fully remote team
• Experience with agile sprints and project management
• Experience with mapping software, such as GIS, QGIS or Mapbox
• Experience with data visualization tools, such as Data Studio, Periscope or Tableau
• Experience using and troubleshooting relational organizing campaign apps, such as Hustle, Reach, Mobilize etc.
• A desire to expand your technical and political skills, with support from organizational professional development

Job Requirements: 

What the job entails and the level of responsibility the staff member would take on.

• Work with all member states to provide data support and VAN administration during State Party staff transitions. This may include but not be limited to:
  • Troubleshooting VAN, tools and technical issues
  • Help oversee voter file updates where needed and procure relevant data to make those updates happen (e.g., voter information, early vote data, polling locations, etc.)
  • Creating targeted voter contact universes
• Develop a program to help state parties up their data game, including:
  • Training on Portal
  • Training on VAN policies
  • Automate distribution of VAN trainings and requirements
  • Automate core functions such as getting VAN user account activated and deactivated
  • Develop standards, visualizations, and reports for best practices around data administration to help inform decision-making
•  Work with the stac team, state party members and the DNC Tech team to:
• Develop training curriculum
• Develop regular reporting, communication, and process improvements

Please note this job description is not designed to cover or contain a comprehensive listing of activities, duties or responsibilities that are required of the employee for this position. Duties, responsibilities, and activities may change at any time with or without notice.

Salary:

For someone entering this position at a more junior level, the compensation range would be 70-90k. For someone entering at a mid-level range, it would be 90-105k.

Reporting To:

Director of Data Services