DonorsChoose makes it easy for anyone to help a teacher in need, moving us closer to a nation where students in every community have the tools and experiences they need for a great education.

Since 2000, more than 5 million people and partners have contributed $1 billion to support 2 million teacher requests for classroom resources and experiences. Projects range from art supplies to build the set for a school musical, to books and puzzles that affirm students’ identities, to bird seed for an at-home science project. We proudly serve all US public schools, public charter schools, and Head Start centers, and we combat systemic inequity by driving a majority of donations to schools that have been historically underfunded due to economic and racial inequity.

DonorsChoose has been recognized as a best place to work by GOOD Magazine and the Nonprofit Times, while Fast Company named DonorsChoose one of the 50 Most Innovative Companies in the World—the first time a charity has made this list. Our dedicated team works from across the United States bring classroom dreams to life.

About the Data Science & Analytics Team

The Data team advances DonorsChoose’s data-driven philosophy and equity focus using an analytics-centric data warehouse that holds the single source of truth for all areas of our operation. With this structured data, we use business analytics and data science to understand user behavior, build ML products, and inform business strategy across Marketing, Operations, Fulfillment, and Product. We’re also working with current AI technologies like large language models to further scale our operations and social impact. 

This Director role reports to our CTO and manages a Data Scientist, BI Analyst, Data Engineer, and two Analytics Engineers. Our Data team manages our data stack, at the center of which sits a Redshift-based warehouse that houses transactional, event, customer service, and CRM data. We use Fivetran to ingest data and dbt to transform it. Through Looker, our staff accesses this data, which includes classroom requests from 845,000 teachers for 20 million resources, funded by nearly 6 million donors.

About the Role

In this role you will:

1. Manage five direct reports, providing them with leadership, technical guidance, mentorship, and professional growth.
2. Set the strategic direction and priorities for our data analytics, including modeling, engineering, analysis, and AI / ML initiatives.
3. Collaborate with different teams to understand business needs, oversee complex cross-team projects, and enable data solutions to inform decisions across Marketing, Operations, and Product.
4. Push innovation in AI and data science to amplify our social impact and enhance our data-driven capabilities. Stay on top of developments in the field, and identify opportunities for the organization.
5. Promote data literacy across the organization, emphasizing racial equity analyses and strategies.
6. Share our work and learn from others, including the “Data for Good” community and external researchers.

You may be perfect for this role if you:

• Are passionate about the rigorous use of data as a tool for racial justice and educational equity.
• Excel at delivering strategic and tactical data initiatives that further an organization's mission and goals.
• Relish distilling open-ended challenges into clear and tractable ones.
• Have managed people and love helping your direct reports reach their full potential.
• Guide complex cross-team projects with a clear vision, and foster purposeful and collaborative relationships.
• Possess strong SQL and data transformation skills.
• Have experience with machine learning and data science methods.
• Operate with a bias for impact and action, and a drive to deliver results.
• Have experience with (but not required):
  • Modern business intelligence and reporting platforms, e.g. Looker
  • Amazon Web Services data infrastructure, e.g. Redshift, S3, Lambda
  • Development and deployment of machine learning products
  • Data engineering, e.g. data pipeline development, ETL/ELT processes, automation/orchestration
  • Web analytics and event data

Compensation and Benefits

Our compensation philosophy ensures that we are both externally competitive with tech-forward nonprofits of a similar size and internally fair in our pay practices. The following ranges represent the target offer range given the scope and experience expectations for this role.

• The hiring salary range for this role is $153,000-$172,000
• We have a hiring salary range of $170,000-$191,000 for specific higher cost of labor locations, which include New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Boston, and Washington, D.C.

Once employees are hired, everyone at DonorsChoose is eligible to receive annual performance-based raises as they grow in their role. We are open to a variety of experiences, and recognize that the person we hire may be less experienced or more senior than this job description as posted. If you don’t check every box listed here, or you know you’d bring additional experience to the table, we hope you’ll submit your application. 

In addition, we offer full-time staff 25 paid vacation days per year and 11 paid holidays, a rich employer-paid individual and family health plan, a matching 401(k) plan (up to 5% of base salary), annual professional development stipend, and casual and flexible work environment. To learn more about what it is like to work for DonorsChoose, visit our careers page.

Hybrid Workplace and Other Details

In this role, you’ll have the option to work a flexible hybrid schedule in our NYC office, or to work fully remotely from CA, CO, CT, DC, FL, GA, IL, IN, ME, MA, MD, MI, NJ, NY, OR, PA, RI, TX, VA, WA, or WI. 

Candidates who are not in the NYC area should expect to travel to our NYC office on an as-needed basis, about 4-6 times per year. All work-related travel expenses will be covered by the organization and proper safety precautions will be taken to prevent the spread of COVID-19. 

DonorsChoose is a fully vaccinated workplace and all new employees, regardless of their work location, will be asked to share proof of full vaccination against COVID-19 within two weeks of their hire date or request an exemption from this policy due to a disability or sincerely held religious belief or practice. This policy does not apply to employees in states with state restrictions on vaccine mandates.

DonorsChoose participates in E-Verify. We will provide the U.S. Social Security Administration (SSA) and, if necessary, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) with information from each new employee’s Form I-9 to confirm work authorization.

To Apply

Please submit your resume and answer the application questions online. Since we’re trying to get to know you through our hiring process, we ask that you please refrain from using AI writing tools to craft your response to our application questions. A cover letter is optional and may be addressed to Oliver Hurst-Hiller, CTO & Head of Product.

A Final Note

The DonorsChoose team works toward a nation where students in every community have the resources needed for an excellent education. To do this we hire and support a diverse team of the best and the brightest talent available.

We are an organization increasingly representative of the varied races and ethnicities, genders and sexual orientations, religious and political beliefs, and abilities that comprise our nation. DonorsChoose focuses on attracting, retaining, and advancing diverse talent because it makes us more effective, high-performing, creative, and resilient.  

If you are passionate about our mission, highly skilled in your field, and looking for a place where you can bring all of yourself to work, we want you.