Junior Data Analyst (Contractor, Remote)

About Us

UpTogether is a national organization of individuals across the country with diverse backgrounds, experiences, and identities who share a passion for social justice and racial equity.  Our mission is to recognize, highlight and invest in the ingenuity and entrepreneurship of people in undervalued communities and partner with government and philanthropy to do the same.

After working with thousands of families since our founding in 2001, at UpTogether, we are certain people don’t live in poverty because they are lazy, uneducated, or mismanage money, as stereotypes would indicate. Instead, the poverty cycle, which disproportionately impacts Black and Latinx communities, can be traced to well-intentioned but inadequate governmental and charitable policies and practices that rely on a traditional top-down approach. Our approach views individuals and families with low incomes from a position of strength, recognizing that they have the capacity and insight needed to make decisions for themselves and don’t need outside saviors or solutions.

Our three-pronged strength-based approach includes:

1. Social Capital: Incentivize and promote social capital exchanges present in communities, where people rely on each other and increase their economic consumption by engaging in non-monetary exchanges of goods, services, knowledge, and networks that materially improve economic well-being.
2. Direct Investment: Unrestricted cash or cash equivalent investments directly in an individual or household. These investments are neither interest-bearing nor have an expectation of loan repayment. Investments are made based on the strengths demonstrated by a family or a group of families. People do not have to show their “neediness” in order to receive investment.
3. Agency: Individuals and families have full agency over their decisions and how they utilize their direct investments in order to achieve mobility. 

To execute our approach, we built UpTogether, a technology platform that transfers cash investments directly to families and offers an interactive component for individuals to grow and strengthen their social networks and support one another so they can move up, together.

We have proven that fostering social networks, honoring self-determination, and matching people’s efforts with unrestricted cash investments results in achieving significant progress toward social and economic mobility. Our focus now is on bringing this approach to philanthropic and government organizations throughout the country by encouraging the adoption of direct investment and the distribution of funds through our UpTogether platform.

At UpTogether, we work towards these values:

• Community: We honor the strengths and initiatives of people living in undervalued communities and promote the role social networks within these communities play in helping people accomplish their goals and achieve long-term socioeconomic mobility.
• Impact: We test and scale strategies for systems adoption of a strength-based approach to accelerate socioeconomic mobility for people living at or below the poverty line in the U.S.

• Collaboration: We center the lived experiences of families in undervalued communities and engage the knowledge, experience, and perspectives of our board, partners, and staff to build and grow a strength-based approach to end poverty. 

• Racial Equity: We are committed to being an anti-racist organization, and we promote anti-racist policies that eliminate the racial wealth divide. 

• Leadership: We acknowledge that leadership is not based on a title and honor the many forms in which it appears. We celebrate leadership that embodies all of our organizational values, driving us to act against the dominating deficit-based approach to fighting poverty. 

• Choice: We trust that people living at or below the poverty line know what’s best and are capable of making decisions for themselves and their families.

The Position

UpTogether is seeking a full-time Junior Data Analyst contractor for a 3-6 month contract (1099) position with the possibility of extension. The hourly rate for this position is $30 an hour.

This is a 100% remote position (must be based within the United States). The successful candidate will have a solid internet connection and a functional work environment, including your own computer with video conferencing capabilities. Travel will not be required for this role.

We are looking for a junior analyst to join our analytics team for a three to six-month engagement. In a given week, you may be writing a report about household outcomes, exploring the relationship between direct cash investments and upward economic mobility, or developing data-backed visualizations showing the power of people in community coming together. We’re looking for someone who can take an open-ended question and go find those particularly salient findings or compelling narratives. Working knowledge of R (Tidyverse, ggplot2, RMarkdown) is essential.

You’ll be joining the Analytics team within our Policy and Practice vertical, where we’re focused on how UpTogether’s work can bring about wider systems change. Our organization is active on Slack, and we are focused not only on doing meaningful work but also on enjoying the process of working and building together.

Responsibilities

• Produce insightful reports about the impacts of UpTogether’s approach 
• Design and build RMarkdown reports exploring and visualizing data for internal and external audiences
• May develop machine learning models 
• Other analyses as needed 

Qualifications, Attributes & Skills

• Data analysis in R 
• Data visualization (ggplot2)
• Strong writing skills to explain and contextualize data analysis 
• Intermediate understanding of statistics
• Proven ability to thrive in a remote work environment; self-directed; proactively reaches out; responsive; comfortable in a virtual setting 
• Ability and willingness to learn new skills as needed 
• Attention to detail 
• Ability to pivot quickly as needed 
• Ability to work independently and as a member of a team 
• Demonstrated commitment to, or passion for, our mission; deep belief and trust in the innate capabilities of low-income families and communities; willingness to engage in conversations aimed at addressing erroneous stereotypes about low-income people and people of color.

Additionally, applicants should:

• Be excited and energized by a dynamic work environment. 
• Be keenly interested in learning from others 
• Have a functional work environment and solid internet connection 
• Demonstrated leadership through learning, creating solutions, and accountability. 

Compensation

This is a 3-6 month, 40 hours per week, contract (1099) position with the possibility of extension. The hourly rate for this position is $30

Inclusion Statement

At UpTogether, we strive to create a community that embraces equity, diversity, and inclusion, and we support the efforts of others to build such communities. We are committed to an inclusive work environment and are intentional about seeking a diverse pool of candidates that represents the communities with which we work. UpTogether is committed to the principles of equal employment.  We create a diverse work environment and do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national origin, sex, gender identity, religion, sexual orientation, age, disability, parental status, veteran status, or any other protected status under applicable laws. We encourage individuals of all backgrounds to apply.

To Apply

To be considered for this opportunity, please submit a resume via the following link: Junior Data Analyst. Your cover letter should outline how your personal and/or work history will contribute to the mission of UpTogether.  Applications submitted without a cover letter will not be considered.