Director of Analytics

Position Summary

For nearly 15 years, Catalist has been a leader in civic data and data science innovation. Our mission is to provide progressive organizations with the data, software, and services needed to better identify, understand, and communicate with the people they need to engage and mobilize. Our clients include the largest, most influential organizations in the U.S. active in civic engagement, advocacy, and political campaigns.

Catalist is home to a dedicated, creative team of technologists, data scientists, and campaign experts committed to using our talents and technology to nurture a vibrant and growing progressive community.

The Catalist Analytics department supports data-driven progressive organizations that boost civic participation and run successful electoral programs. We develop new statistical methods for solving unique problems associated with systematic missing data, latent variable detection, supervised modeling, and unsupervised modeling.

As the Director of Analytics you’ll help shape and manage an ambitious progressive research and development agenda. You will investigate the most effective tools and methods to identify universes for voter contact programs, assemble coalitions for long-term electoral victory, adapt to a fractured and siloed media environment, and more. The depth of Catalist’s data allows us to answer questions others cannot tackle – we have over a decade of voter files, mountains of historical election results, tons of survey research, a whole host of other data, and it’s all organized and ready for analysis.

The Director of Analytics reports directly to the CEO and manages a team of 5-8 analysts and data scientists. You’ll work closely with members of the data, product management, client services, and technology teams. You will also help Catalist recruit and develop new talent, shape Catalist’s culture, and support our continuing effort to make progressive data and the progressive data community more diverse, inclusive, equitable, and accessible. We take our individual and collective responsibility on these fronts seriously and want to make sure that the next Director of Analytics can help realize these goals.

Principal Duties & Responsibilities:

• Hiring and Staff Development: This is a management position, and we take seriously the role that senior leadership plays in recruitment, growth, and retention of staff. Finding and developing staff with a diversity of personal and professional backgrounds and with varied experiences is an essential part of the position.
• Being a partner and strategist with the progressive community: Making sure that we fully understand the needs of the organizations that are executing program, distilling these needs into discrete projects, and shaping a strategy from these projects that meets both current and future needs for our clients and our community.
• Being a strong teammate and internal communicator: The analytics department works closely with all the other departments – most of the core Catalist products start off as prototypes coming out of analytics. You will play a central role in facilitating cross-departmental success and preserving the fidelity of the work as it moves from prototype to product.
• Being a skilled and nimble analyst: This is a management position, but in light of the technical nature of the work conducted within the department it is important that you have a background in data science, modeling, survey work, or similar fields. You’ll need to guide and develop members of your team and effectively communicate with both technical and non-technical audiences.

Skills & Experience:

• Team Management Experience: We recognize that the skills required to be a great analyst or data scientist are different than the skills required to effectively manage those people. While it’s not a requirement that you’ve led a team of analysts in the past, we want to know that you have managed a team and been responsible for someone else’s technical work.
• Project Management Experience. Our analytics department works on short and long-term projects, many of which have multiple phases dependent on progress by internal and external stakeholders. A demonstrated history managing multiple projects and resources concurrently is essential. Experience working with hard deadlines is critical.
• Domain experience: It’s not a requirement that you have experience in progressive politics or advocacy, though that experience will make transitioning into this role easier. If you haven’t worked in progressive politics or advocacy, we’re looking for broad industry experience that demonstrates familiarity with managing analysts and research. If you’re coming out of progressive politics or advocacy, that will be all the domain experience you need.
• Technical experience: While you don’t need to be a full stack developer to succeed in this role, you will be deeply involved in shaping the technical agenda of the team, including weighing priorities and complexity of projects. The ideal candidate will have experience building models, conducting technical analyses, and presenting detailed research results to stakeholders.
• Education: There are no formal educational requirements for this position, but you will be engaging in highly technical work, so we recommend a working familiarity with statistical methods used in political campaigns.

Salary:

This is a full-time job, located in Washington, DC. Catalist is currently working remotely due to the pandemic. Compensation will range from $120,000-$140,000 per year, commensurate with experience. Catalist offers a strong benefits package, detailed below.