Senior Data Scientist, In Our Backyards

Position Summary

The Senior Data Scientist will lead data engineering, collection and analytics for the In Our Backyards (IOB) team. They will manage at least two data engineers and work closely with other researchers, policy advocates, and communications colleagues. Their work will leverage and improve Vera’s existing repository of incarceration data, including the public-facing Incarceration Trends Project, and include maintaining web scrapers, developing new ways of collecting information about the criminal justice system, processing that data, and publicly sharing results. Their work products will also support the analytics needs of our network of community grantees, published reports, and campaigns to shape federal, state and local policy and practice changes (currently with a particular emphasis on Indiana, Kentucky, and Tennessee).

The Senior Data Scientist’s responsibilities include:

• Maintain and optimize a large data collection project on jails and prisons in the United States
• Support quantitative analysis of incarceration data and public spending to support policy change.
• Clean and format data for analysis and visualization
• Analyze the impact of criminal justice policy and the impact of other social and economic policies on incarceration.
• Manage at least two data engineers
• Collaborate with and train community and coalition partners, including grantee network.
• Collaboratively identify research questions and priorities that support our work.
• Support other team tasks, as required

What qualifications you will need

The Senior Data Scientist candidate will have the following qualifications:

• A personal and professional dedication to issues of race, equity, and fairness, and a commitment to grappling with creative and concrete ways to use data to shift power and advance equity and inclusion.
• At least three years of related work experience
• At least one year management experience.
• Bachelor’s degree preferred. Advanced degree, a plus.
• Demonstrated proficiency working with data collection, processing, and analysis in Python, with preference for experience with web scraping and using Python Pandas library.
• Experience maintaining and optimizing large and complex software projects.
• Experience maintaining and optimizing SQL databases in a cloud-based environment.
• Full-stack development experience, with preference for software engineering experience.
• Experience or familiarity conducting analysis of social policy or legal regulation is preferred.

The Nitty – Gritty

• This is a full-time position located at Vera’s Brooklyn, New York office
• Salary is competitive plus excellent benefits