Education Data Developer

Job Description

The Texas Tribune, the state’s go-to source for Texas politics and public policy news, is hiring a journalist to build data pipelines and develop new tools as we reimagine our education coverage to help Texans navigate the school system. This position is part of the Tribune's award-winning data visuals department, a hybrid news applications and graphics team.

We're looking for someone with back-end programming experience who wants to tell creative stories with education data using news applications, data analysis and/or evolving techniques like AI. This role will report to the data visuals editor.

The salary for this position starts at $80,000, depending on qualifications.

Submit your application with your resume and cover letter before Friday, May 24. 

Benefits

This job is full-time and has the following benefits:

• Medical, vision and dental insurance
• A $50-a-month cell phone stipend
• 20 days of paid time off each year
• 12 paid holidays
• Up to 16 weeks of paid family leave plus four weeks of additional job protection
• Annual 401(k) match of $2,000
• Support for professional training and career development
• Remote working flexibility

About The Texas Tribune

Here’s what you should know about the Tribune. From day one, we’ve had disruption, innovation and risk-taking in our DNA. We’re ambitious as all get out but still have the punch-above-your-weight mentality of a scrappy start-up. We believe we can meet the demands of our audience and our own expectations for excellence without breaking the bank — or our staff. We understand not everything is a story for us — we have to make choices — but we’re always looking to expand our boundaries. We’re nonprofit because the challenging economic reality for the media these days obligates us to find a different way, reliable and sustainable, to fund serious journalism. We’re nonpartisan because we live in the United States of Confirmation Bias — and we don’t need to be part of the problem. We don’t need to be yet another source of information affirming the voices and perspectives that are already in people’s heads. At the same time, nonpartisan is not non-thinking. We call B.S. when B.S. needs to be called.

All of us at the Trib believe the best way to achieve that mission is to resemble the state we cover. We’re committed to building an inclusive newsroom for people of all backgrounds and ages, and we’re taking steps to meet that commitment. We especially encourage members of traditionally underrepresented communities to apply for this role, including women, veterans, people of color, LGBTQ people and people with disabilities.

Job Requirements

This position can be based anywhere in Texas, though we have a slight preference for employees based in, or willing to move to, Austin, where our office is located. We support a hybrid workplace, with colleagues in the organization who come into the office on a regular basis and others who are based elsewhere in Texas.

Responsibilities:

• Reimagining the Tribune’s educational coverage using available public data, including maintaining and helping decide the future of our Texas Public Schools Explorer.
• Building and maintaining an education data pipeline that will be used to produce both internal tools for reporters and external products that serve our readers. This includes strategizing how to store the data and building out APIs.
• Finding opportunities for data-driven, explanatory education stories in close collaboration with the journalists on our education team. This includes examining school budgets, examining outside influences in school board elections, finding ways to hold school board officials accountable and more.
• Reporting on, requesting and analyzing data.
• Producing data analysis that’s accurate, journalistically sound and without errors.
• Documenting workflows for building data products and bringing useful code back to our open-source development environments and our in-house CMS.
• Balancing a mix of short- and long-term assignments, depending on the news. This role may require occasional night or weekend work.
• Learning, sharing and teaching new methods with colleagues on and off the data visuals team.
• Iterating on our products and working with the audience team to implement reader feedback as we continue to serve their changing needs.

Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree and 4+ years of relevant experience OR equivalent combination of education and relevant experience.
• Experience building data systems — not just one-off projects — and familiarity with relational databases. This includes unit testing and tuning systems for performance and efficiency. Familiarity and/or experience making data more accessible both internally and externally is a plus.
• Experience developing back-end data pipelines and, more specifically, familiarity with ETL pipelines — extract, transform, load.
• Understanding of basic spreadsheet tools plus a programming language such as Python, SQL or R for data reporting.
• Ability to clearly document code and processes and communicate with others to help build institutional knowledge.
• Familiar with or willing to learn how to develop APIs.
• Familiar with or willing to learn how to extract data from PDFs/images and scrape data from websites.
• A collaborative spirit and the ability to work with rigor while knowing that you are still learning and growing. (The data visuals team mascot is the capybara in a yuzu bath because we are all pretty chill.)

We know there are great people who won’t check all of these boxes, and we also know you might bring important skills that we haven’t thought of. If that’s you, don’t hesitate to apply and tell us about yourself.

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