Data Solutions Specialist

Position Summary

This position, as posted, is a temporary cycle position with the potential and opportunity to stay on pending service contracts for 2025. The hiring date is ASAP and the final date of employment will be February 28th, 2025.

Position Summary: 

Stac Labs is a fully-remote, unionized, small and growing company, seeking a talented, hardworking, and energetic person to join our team as a Data Solutions Specialist, with an anticipated start date in August 2023. Stac works with state Democratic parties and other members to offer services supporting data, analytics, digital organizing and purchasing of tools and software that help state parties support candidates to win races up and down the ballot.

The Data Solutions Specialist is responsible for building and maintaining stac’s relationship directly with state party clients and ensuring they are leveraging stac’s full suite of services. The Data Solutions Specialist is a thought partner to our clients, proactively helping to identify opportunities and solve problems, and working across teams at stac to ensure successful and timely delivery of data solutions and products. 

The Data Solutions Specialist may occasionally handle technical requests directly as well, but will primarily be responsible for documenting, tracking, and managing data solutions that arise as result of their partnership with state party data directors and other party staff or leadership. 

This is a perfect job for someone who:

• Is a strategic thinker and problem solver
• Has strong communication skills and loves building relationships
• Has deep familiarity with systems such as VAN, BigQuery (in particular the DNC’s Phoenix), and DDx, and understands the uses and capabilities of each of them
• Has very good self-organization and is excellent at scoping and documenting problems in writing 
• Is comfortable managing multiple project streams at once

There is flexibility for this role and we are open to candidates from a junior level to a mid-senior level of experience. A junior role would be 1-3 years relevant job experience or one cycle of electoral experience working with campaigns and/or data teams to devise and create technical solutions. A mid-level role would be 4-6 years of relevant job experience, or at least two electoral cycles of relevant experience on campaigns and/or data teams, perhaps even managing a small to medium team in charge of creating and executing data driven solutions. While this job will not have any direct reports, it will manage work and projects across multiple teams within stac. At any level, the candidate must be excellent at problem solving for tricky data problems and have excellent communication skills. At a more senior level, we would expect candidates to have additional technical or programmatic skills (such as scripting in python or managing a team in a larger organization) or experience that would allow them to take on additional responsibilities.

Essential Functions

The tasks, roles, and responsibilities of the job:

• Host regular meetings with state party staff and stakeholders
• Problem solve and brainstorm technical solutions using one or many of the tools and resources available to stac and our client state parties.
• Translate requests from state parties into tickets for technologists and engineers 
• Track and managing communication about tickets
• Occasional ad-hoc support for state party requests

Minimum Qualifications:

The requisite knowledge, skills, and abilities needed to enter the job

Great communication skills: Must have the ability to synthesize and explain complex data reports in layperson’s terms, both verbally and in writing. Must have a working knowledge of data visualization and reporting programs and know how to share insights in a clear, concise and actionable way. Must be able to communicate effectively with state party members to ensure alignment on timelines and deliverables. 

Proactive, creative, problem solving: Must have good instincts when it comes to anticipating and foreseeing challenges before they arise. When confronted with new problems, you must be willing to get creative and think outside the box. You tackle challenges head-on, and you’re eager to dive in with others to identify the best path forward while understanding and being able to articulate trade-offs. The bottom line is you will find a solution that works. 

Strong data management skills: Must have a strong knowledge of database technology, warehousing, and integration. You should have experience working with voter data and a strong working knowledge of VAN/Votebuilder in particular. You should have a proficient understanding of the best practices around data security and managing sensitive voter data. You should be comfortable with the capabilities of CRMs and SQL databases.

Experience working in a technical capacity: Must have experience either managing a technical or data program, or working in an organization’s technical or data team with relevant project management systems. 

Strong self-organization skills: Must have a proven ability to to manage multiple projects simultaneously using well documented processes, such as using project management software, diligent meeting notes, or other forms of documentation that contribute to the longitudinal success of an organization and its work-product. 

Great collaboration skills: Must have the ability to proactively seek solutions in coordination with the members and the stac team, who oversee multiple complex projects. This includes the ability to re-prioritize tasks based on team needs, offer timely input, and share feedback on work progress. It also includes the ability to contribute to and support the team’s culture and goals. The organization is fully remote, so you have the ability to adapt to the best practices and challenges of working with a team located across the country. You believe that we are strongest when we work together. You want to help create an environment where best practices are shared, team members are valued for their impact, and people are given the support they need to be successful. 

A positive attitude and the ability to work well under pressure: Must be a “can do” person with experience working in busy/high-pressure situations. Campaigns are very busy during election season, and we will be supporting the state parties in their election work. You know how to manage a heavy workload and prioritize between competing needs while keeping things positive and moving things forward. You have the capacity and willingness to work long hours during peak season, rolling up your sleeves and getting the work done. 

Ability to travel: State work with party and campaign clients will involve travel, especially at critical times for campaign planning, debriefs, trainings and convenings. Estimated 15% of time spent traveling is dependent on the needs of member states. Overall, the expected amount of travel is no more than 20%. The team will all be remote, but you must have access to an airport from which you can travel. 

Access to reliable, fast internet: Stac is a fully remote team and access to reliable and fast internet is a must in order to ensure that communications with members and the stac team is not an obstacle to performing the basic duties of the job.

Nice to Have Skills/Qualifications: 

Skills that are not required but would be nice to have in the position.

We don’t expect every applicant to know or have worked with every technology we’ve listed, or have worked with everything we’ll be working on, so we urge you to apply if you’re interested and some of the below apply to you. 

• Experience working as an account manager in a services organization 
• Experience working with campaigns, state parties or the Democratic National Committee
• Experience with data warehouses, such as Google Big Query and specifically DNC’s Phoenix databases 
• Experience utilizing data models 
• Experience working at start-ups or at brand new organizations 
• Experience working in a fully remote team 
• Experience using and troubleshooting campaign applications, such as Hustle, ActionBuilder, Mobilize etc. 
• A desire to expand your technical and political skills, with support from organizational professional development 

Job Requirements: 

What the job entails and the level of responsibility the staff members would take on.

• Be the primary point-of-contact and manage relationships with member states. 
• Be proactive in engaging member states’ with discussion and troubleshooting around the challenges they encounter. 
• Effectively document work that needs to be done, as a result of meetings with states, into tickets that can be completed by other stac team members without additional information. 
• Make sure state parties are up to date with all of stac’s resources and taking advantage of every relevant resource. 
• Be comfortable completing ad-hoc data work for member states as time permits. 

Please note this job description is not designed to cover or contain a comprehensive listing of activities, duties or responsibilities that are required of the employee for this position. Duties, responsibilities, and activities may change at any time with or without notice. 

Salary: For someone entering this position at a more junior level, the annual compensation range would be $70-90k, prorated to the months worked with the position title of “Data Solutions Coordinator”. For someone entering at a mid-level range, the annual salary would be $90-114k prorated to the months worked with the position title of “Data Solutions Specialist”.

Reporting To: Director of Data Services

The application process includes conversations with the Director of Data Services, a panel interview with data team staff and a short skills test.

We are an Equal Opportunity Employer with a strong commitment to diversity of staff and leadership. We actively encourage people of color, people with disabilities, women, non-binary candidates, LGBTQIA+ candidates, people of all ages, and people from traditionally marginalized communities to apply. We are tracking diversity in our applications and our hiring processes to ensure we are holding ourselves accountable to our values. The diversity questions in the application form are completely optional and cannot be used to determine specific hiring decisions.