Senior Research Lead: Data and Evaluation

Senior Research Lead: Data and Evaluation

This job is no longer open
LOCATION 
Los Angeles or a remote candidate who can travel to Los Angeles every 2-4 months

VOTETRIPLING.ORG

We design and quickly mainstream field-tested voter engagement innovations to help Democrats win. The principal asset that enables us to fulfill this mission is our talented, interdisciplinary team of voter engagement, political, research, design, fundraising, legal, and strategy experts. 

Our organization was born in the wake of the 2016 election as a grassroots, volunteer-led initiative. Over the next four years, our work took off and we became a team of 30 full-time staff in 2020. From 2016 to 2020 our work focused singularly on designing and quickly mainstreaming field-tested voter engagement innovations that spark Democratic non-activists to mobilize their friends to vote. We succeeded in developing and quickly mainstreaming a suite of elegant, user-friendly and non-proprietary innovations that RCTs suggest yielded over 100,000 net Democratic votes in 2020 swing states. As one example, we designed and quickly mainstreamed ‘polling place vote tripling’. Dozens of major partners used this innovation in 2020, including the Biden-Harris campaign, ultimately resulting in 94,000 canvasser-hours of polling place vote tripling that produced 1,100,000 relational conversations (for context, that’s 5x the 200,000 relational conversations the Biden campaign’s relational app produced). This innovation was featured in The Washington Post, The New Yorker and The New York Times.  

Our 2016-2020 work serves as a compelling ‘proof of concept’ that our PAC fills a clear need within the progressive movement. Moving forward, our 15-person Los Angeles-based team is working on problems beyond non-activist friend-to-friend voter turnout. The exact problem areas we will work on from 2021-2024 remain to-be-determined (more on this below), but will likely include persuasion, down-ballot drop-off, and enhanced relational voter engagement tactics. To reflect our team’s broader focus, in the fall of 2021 our organization may re-brand from VoteTripling.org to a new name that reflects our aspiration to serve as the progressive movement's behavioral innovation hub. We will consider our 2021-2024 work to be a success if we design and mainstream one or more voter engagement innovations so widely that our work yields hundreds of thousands of net Democratic votes in the 2024 presidential election. 

JOB DESCRIPTION

This role will be the second key hire on our Research Team. This individual will be a crucial resource to the Director of Research as they help get the team off the ground, and will serve as a thought partner and leader to the organization.

Our Senior Research Lead: Data and Evaluation will need (i) to understand how our research contributes to organizational goals and strategy, and how findings from our research can be applied in the real world, independently and in partnership with other organizations, and (ii) a background in statistical methods and evaluation, working to both strategically advance our organization and serve as one of our leading researchers. A successful candidate will have a passion for clarity, be a self-starter comfortable with ambiguity, have strong attention to detail, be able to work in a fast-paced and entrepreneurial environment and be driven by a desire to innovate. Given the complex nature of the questions we are working on, the ideal candidate will be relentlessly curious and be able to communicate complex research data in a way that is digestible and actionable to people who know nothing about research.

As a leader in our Research Team, you will be responsible for (i) designing, conducting and analyzing qualitative research, (ii) designing and implementing experiments and evaluating results and (iii) supporting programmatic team data needs as they arise (such as data cleaning and visualization for our partner organizations). You will have a key seat at the table in driving our Research Team’s strategy. You’ll report to our Director of Research but work closely with department heads across the organization.  

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 to apply.

**Please note that due to the nature of our work we are unable to hire any individuals who aren’t US Citizens or who don’t currently have green cards.**

RESPONSIBILITIES

    • Communicating test results externally to partner organizations and to the internal team, in all cases clearly articulating what worked, what didn’t and where further research is needed
    • Leading the design and implementation of evaluations, including experiments (both online and in the field), quasi-experimental studies (e.g., synthetic controls) and qualitative evaluations to test hypotheses
    • Analyzing the results of these evaluations, including, where possible, conducting subgroup analysis to understand differential impacts by group (e.g., race, gender, age)
    • Quality-assuring research activities across the organization including conducting ethical, risk and equity reviews of protocols for quantitative and qualitative research
    • Tracking and executing various project work streams simultaneously, sticking to timelines, troubleshooting, and ensuring all deadlines are met
    • Directing the development of research deliverables, including literature scans, research overviews, detailed result write-ups, succinct one-pagers, and slide decks
    • Studying all aspects of the progressive movement and political organizing, and doing deep dives into topics such as GOTV, persuasion, and political organizing methods
    • Working cross-functionally with all department heads to understand and support emerging data needs
    • Collaborating with the Director of Research to develop and implement the Research Team’s strategy 
    • Supporting learning and professional development for members of the Research Team, with the potential to manage other team members, including learning about data equity and equitable research methods
    • Other duties as assigned. Our Research Department is continually growing and evolving. As such, your role may also evolve to include other aspects of research project development, management and execution. 

QUALIFICATIONS, SKILL SETS, & VALUES

    • Research experience in quantitative methods. 
    • (i) Training/experience in econometrics or data science preferred, especially experience conducting analysis in Stata, R or Python
    • (ii) Experience cleaning and working with raw administrative data and messy datasets 
    • (iii) Knowledge of randomized control trials, experimental design, and survey research
    • (iv) (Nice to have, but not required) SQL for data querying and processing
    • Research experience in qualitative methods (preferred). 
    • (i) Training/experience in qualitative methods, including drafting qualitative materials (e.g., interview or observation guides), designing sampling and recruitment, analyzing qualitative data 
    • (ii) Experience conducting research with diverse participants (e.g., vulnerable, at-risk groups)
    • (iii) Knowledge of ethical and equitable best practices in qualitative research (e.g., informed consent, data protection, training in human subjects research, safeguarding)
    • (iv) (Nice to have) Experience with qualitative data management and analysis software (e.g., NVivo)
    • Outstanding communicator. Excellent verbal and written communication and interpersonal skills. Much of our work depends on responsiveness, timely communication, and clearly detailing next steps with our partners, while speaking clearly, concisely, and loudly (while still listening deeply and allowing space for others' voices to be heard). This is especially important in a remote environment.
    • Time-efficient. Our organization’s ambitions are lofty. Because of that, the Senior Research Lead will have a substantial amount of work on their plate each day. The only way the Senior Research Lead will be able to complete their workload each day is through completing tasks quickly.
    • Goal-oriented. Our work entails a combination of entrepreneurial creativity and straightforward execution. To maintain continual progress, we collaboratively set weekly goals for everyone in the organization and check in on them at the end of the week.
    • Commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion. We are committed to working in diverse teams and developing voter turnout innovations that both boost turnout and reduce disparities in who votes. 
    • Background in behavioral science (preferred). We utilize behavioral science research and insights, thus any experience or exposure to behavioral science is a huge plus.
    • Organizing experience (preferred). Campaign experience or experience as an organizer for grassroots / local groups would be an asset to this role. 

COMPENSATION & BENEFITS

    • Salary. Compensation is based on experience, but will be between ~$110,000-$135,000 for candidates with 4-8 years of relevant, full-time work experience.
    • Paid time off: Roughly 40 days of paid time off each year. Specifically, all federal holidays are PTO, each employee accrues two days of PTO per month (capping out at 24), the days from December 24 to January 1 are PTO, and a day of PTO when your birthday is on a workday. 
    • Comprehensive medical, vision, and dental benefits: Our medical plan option covers you with a generous PPO plan with a $1,000 deductible at no cost to you. In addition, we offer generous paid family medical leave / parental leave.
    • Retirement benefits: After 3 months of service, we automatically contribute 4% of your base salary to your retirement account every pay period (2x per month).

APPLICATION INSTRUCTIONS

    • First, please read this article and this article to familiarize yourself with vote tripling the tactic and VoteTripling.org the organization.
    • Second, after reading the above articles, please upload a resume along with responses to the 3 questions that will appear in this application.
    • Third, submit a code sample (ideally in Stata or R, but other languages acceptable) from an analysis project you have worked on.

TIMELINE

    • We are utilizing a rolling application review process and may consider late applications from exceptional candidates, but we intend to close this application on July 20th, 2021 for an immediate start date following the hiring process

This job is no longer open
Logos/outerjoin logo full

Outer Join is the premier job board for remote jobs in data science, analytics, and engineering.