Job listings

• Education Data Developer at Texas Tribune

  Posted 1 day ago

  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. 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.

  • Austin, TX
  • Texas Tribune
  • Contact Andy Alford
  • Link to this job