Position Summary

 

Location. Los Angeles (preferred) or New York City. There are Vote Rev offices in both cities. We encourage hybrid home / office work (e.g., 2 days/week in the office). Most days coming to the office is optional but you can be there as frequently as you want. 

Compensation and benefits. $60,000 – $66,000 annually depending on experience, with generous medical, dental, vision, and retirement.

Role type. This is a full time, long-term role with no end date.

Due to the nature of our work, we are legally unable to hire individuals who are not US Citizens, current Legal Permanent Residents (you already have a Green Card), or DACA recipients.

 

About the opportunity

We are hiring an Associate to be a member of our Research Team, working on our partisan and nonpartisan research and design initiatives. The Associate will work closely with Research Team members to (i) conduct qualitative research, (ii) assist in the designing, prototyping, and optimizing of voter engagement innovations, and (iii) assist in the design and implementation of experiments. The ideal candidate will have a background or close familiarity with qualitative research and creating intuitive and user-centered design solutions as well as a passion for advancing social justice causes and electing progressive candidates. 

Vote Rev is looking for people who want to strengthen democracy and create an organization where everyone can thrive. There are no education requirements and we welcome anyone with relevant experience. Whatever background you bring, please apply if this role would make you excited to come to work every day!

Note: The Research Team may be hiring again later this year! If you have questions about the role or if you would like to hear about future opportunities with the research team, email and include “Interested in joining the Research Team” in your subject.

 

About the organization

Vote Rev designs and quickly mainstreams field-tested voter engagement innovations to help Democrats win. In 2020 we released Polling place vote tripling (PPVT) and trained dozens of partners on it, including the Biden-Harris campaign. Our partners’ 94,000 canvasser-hours of PPVT produced 1,100,000 friend-to-friend reminders to vote – 5x as many as the official Biden campaign app! PPVT was featured in The Washington Post, The New Yorker, and The New York Times. 

In 2022 Vote Rev and our sister organization, Vote Rev Action Fund, provided training and materials to help partner organizations spark 450,000 relational get-out-the-vote reminders. Simultaneously, we used our ENGAGE design process to start developing the next generation of tactics. In the Georgia runoff, we ran a lightning-fast randomized trial of a new, more scalable version of PPVT with the potential to generate 10x as many votes. 

In 2023 we’ll optimize our existing voter engagement tactics and design two new tactics ready for 2024. In 2024, we’ll boost tens of thousands of net votes by mainstreaming these tactics to Democratic campaigns and allied organizations!

Vote Rev is headquartered in the Culver City neighborhood of Los Angeles, CA, with an additional office in downtown Brooklyn, New York City, and employees across the country. 

We are dedicated to creating an organization that reflects the diversity of the country we serve. We strongly encourage women, people of color, and others who are underrepresented in campaigns and voter engagement nonprofits to apply.

Note: Due to the nature of our work we are unable to hire any individuals who aren’t U.S. Citizens, Legal Permanent Residents (Green Card holders), or DACA recipients.

Vote Rev’s design process

The Associate will work as part of a team to design, prototype, optimize, and test new voter engagement innovations. Vote Rev’s ENGAGE innovation process starts with carefully defining a problem we want to solve (eg, non-activist voters don’t talk to their friends above voting). We use qualitative and quantitative research to deeply understand the system in which the problem occurs and the behavioral barriers individuals face. Then we generate potential designs, test and refine prototypes, and run evaluations to gauge their effectiveness. Ultimately we create refined tactics with best practices that can be adopted by community groups, voter engagement nonprofits, and campaigns throughout the progressive movement!

 

Responsibilities 

Over the next two years, your work will touch every stage of the ENGAGE process. Activities will include:

• Working with research team members to design, execute, and analyze qualitative research: interviews, focus groups, observation, and user experience research.
• Participating in design work in collaboration with researchers, voters, community leaders, organizers, campaigns, and partner organizations. Refining ideas and iterating on low- and high-fidelity prototypes, so we can learn quickly from both failures and successes. 
• Supporting quantitative research by helping design and monitor field trials.
• Staying up-to-date with the latest research and best practices in behavioral science and political campaigns.
• Helping develop presentations and written materials to share findings and recommendations with teammates, partners, and funders.

Questions your work might answer:

• What stops people from talking to voter registration canvassers? 
• What’s the best way of retaining campaign volunteers cycle after cycle?
• How can we get more people to sign up to vote by mail for every election?  
• Why do voters who regularly vote in Presidential elections not always vote in Midterm elections? 

In each case we catalog behavioral, psychological, and systemic barriers to the desired behavior, and then determine where we can make a difference.

 

Who we’re looking for

This is an entry-level position with substantial support from more senior team members, and opportunities for growth and development within Vote Rev’s Research Team. If you are eager to make an impact through behavioral science research and designing new voter engagement tactics, please apply even if you don’t meet every bullet point in the sections below.

A successful candidate will be: 

• Excited about bringing together the strengths of design research, behavioral science, quantitative methods, and political organizing to design and field-test voter engagement innovations.
• Able to flexibly move between rigorous, precise research and fast, scrappy problem-solving to suit the needs of the moment.
• Skilled at communicating research insights and scientific concepts to both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Willing to travel up to 5 times per year for field research, design workshops, or meetings. We will provide advance notice about travel and, when possible, flexibility on dates.
• Excited about learning and growing in the behavioral design field!

Key skills and experience:

• 1+ years of experience in user research, voter engagement, organizing, human-centered design, behavioral science, or a related field.
• Experience with qualitative research methods such as surveys, interviews, and/or focus groups.

Helpful but not required:

• Knowledge of core behavioral science principles such as heuristics and biases, “nudges”, and persuasion.
• Experience working for a political campaign or voter engagement nonprofit.
• Basic knowledge of randomized controlled trials and experimental design.

 

Compensation and benefits

• Compensation: $60,000 – $66,000 annually depending on experience.
• Benefits: Choose from a variety of fully employer-subsidized vision, dental, and medical HMO or PPO plans. We also offer partially subsidized coverage for spouses and dependents. In addition, we offer generous paid family medical/parental leave. 
• Retirement: After three months of service, Vote Rev will automatically contribute 6% of your base salary to your retirement account every month, no employee contribution required.  
• Paid time off: Employees accrue two days of PTO each month. All federal holidays and December 24th to January 1st are company holidays. 
• Flexible schedule: Team members must be available 9am-2pm Pacific Time (12-5pm Eastern Time). Outside those times they’re usually free to set the hours that work best for them. 
• Flexible work location: We encourage hybrid home / office work (e.g., 2 days/week in the office). Most days coming to the office is optional but you can be there as frequently as you want.
• Relocation allowance: We can provide a relocation allowance for those who need to relocate to LA. 

 

Reasons to love this role

• Opportunity to scale a startup: Vote Rev is building off a successful 2022 election cycle. There’s a lot of work to be done designing new voter engagement tactics and scaling Vote Rev tactics across the country. We hope you are excited about being scrappy, working across multiple departments, and learning as we grow!
• Novel blend of research and program: The Research Team plans and executes hand-in-hand with our partner-facing teammates. We ensure that we’re learning from organizations working on the ground, and that we’re creating the innovations and answers they need for this moment.  
• Sustainable work culture: We offer generous PTO and we’re dedicated to making sure you can truly disconnect during your time off.

Compensation and benefits

• Compensation: $60,000 – $66,000 annually depending on experience.
• Benefits: Choose from a variety of fully employer-subsidized vision, dental, and medical HMO or PPO plans. We also offer partially subsidized coverage for spouses and dependents. In addition, we offer generous paid family medical/parental leave. 
• Retirement: After three months of service, Vote Rev will automatically contribute 6% of your base salary to your retirement account every month, no employee contribution required.  
• Paid time off: Employees accrue two days of PTO each month. All federal holidays and December 24th to January 1st are company holidays. 
• Flexible schedule: Team members must be available 9am-2pm Pacific Time (12-5pm Eastern Time). Outside those times they’re usually free to set the hours that work best for them. 
• Flexible work location: We encourage hybrid home / office work (e.g., 2 days/week in the office). Most days coming to the office is optional but you can be there as frequently as you want.
• Relocation allowance: We can provide a relocation allowance for those who need to relocate to LA. 

Application instructions

Women, Black and Indigenous People of Color, People with Disabilities, and LGBTQIA+ people are strongly encouraged to apply. Applications will only be accepted electronically.

• OPTIONAL: Please listen to this podcast to familiarize yourself with our work, and also visit www.voterev.org/media for more resources if you are interested.
• Fill out the application form above.
  • You will be asked to provide information about yourself, a resume, and to answer some questions in lieu of a cover letter.
  • Do not submit a cover letter. 

Due to the nature of our work, Vote Rev is only able to hire US Citizens, DACA recipients, and current Legal Permanent Residents (i.e. you currently have a Green Card). If you are in the process of getting a Green Card in the future, you are not currently eligible to work for Vote Rev. We are not able to sponsor work visas. By applying to this role, you are acknowledging that you are a U.S. Citizen, DACA recipient, or current Legal Permanent Resident.

 

Timeline

We aim to close this application by March 24. Applications are reviewed as they come in, so you may be notified whether or not you are moving forward before the application closing date. The steps in the process are:

• Resume and application questionnaire screen: This step is to establish the baseline for candidates we will advance through the process.
• Case study: An at-home assignment that you are expected to take less than 2 hours to complete. This gives us a chance to see how you think and see an example work product.
• Zoom interview: This will be a 30-minute conversation with a member of the Vote Rev team, and might include answering scenario-based questions.
• Final interviews: Applicants will be called back for a set of final-round interviews with Hiring Manager Michael Cohn (Deputy Director of Research) and other members of the Vote Rev team. This will require up to three hours of time during business hours. 
• References: We will ask for three professional or personal references for our top one or two candidates to learn more about working with them.
• Job offer: We provide our best and final offer in terms of compensation, which will be within the salary band shown in the job description. We base our offer on the number of years of relevant study and work experience and where that fits within our internal salary leveling system. We do not negotiate salary or other benefits due to research finding that introducing opportunities to negotiate results in pay disparities that are not correlated with competency. 

We expect to make an offer no later than April 27, with preference for a start date shortly after the offer is accepted.

 

Requirements for all Vote Rev team members

• Commitment to our mission of designing and quickly mainstreaming field-tested voter engagement innovations to help Democrats win.
• Commitment to understand and actively oppose racism and promote equity.
• Commitment to working with and for teams of diverse individuals, and to reducing disparities in whose voice is heard in the electoral space.
• Demonstrated awareness of one’s own cultural identity and ability to build relationships and collaborate across lines of difference.
• Ability to thrive in a startup environment: you move quickly, think strategically, can handle uncertainty, are adaptable to changing circumstances, and are good at tactical execution.

 

Mandatory COVID-19 vaccination policy

Vote Rev is committed to protecting our employees and our communities from COVID-19. Toward that goal, and in consideration of guidance released by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and various public health authorities and professional organizations, Vote Rev has implemented a mandatory COVID-19 vaccination policy for its employees.

All employees must be fully vaccinated and boosted (once eligible) for COVID-19 as a term and condition of employment at Vote Rev unless an exemption or deferral has been approved. Individuals are considered fully vaccinated two weeks after they get their second dose of a messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccine, such as Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna, or two weeks after a single dose of the Janssen/Johnson & Johnson vaccine. If you received the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna COVID-19 vaccines, you are eligible to get a booster at least 5 months after completing your primary COVID-19 vaccination series. If you received the Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen COVID-19 vaccine, you are eligible to get a booster at least 2 months after receiving your J&J/Janssen COVID-19 vaccination.

New employees must be fully vaccinated before their start date unless an exemption due to a medical condition or a sincerely held religious belief or practice is granted.