Job Description

Job Description

About Acacia Center for Justice:

The Acacia Center for Justice (“Acacia”) provides legal support and representation to immigrants facing deportation through the development, coordination, and management of national networks of legal services providers serving immigrants across the country. Acacia’s goals are twofold: to support immigrant legal services and defense networks to provide exceptional legal services to immigrants; and to advocate for the expansion of these programs and the infrastructure critical to guaranteeing immigrants access to justice, fairness, and freedom. Acacia ensures accountable, independent, zealous, and person-centered legal services and representation to protect the rights of all immigrants.

Job Summary:

The Data Scientist role involves supporting the team by taking ownership of technical and analytical tasks that are components of broader projects. A data scientist will produce analysis and contribute to reports under the supervision of a more experienced researcher or data scientist. They will have solid analytical and methodological experience and emerging project development and leadership skills. Data Scientists have expertise and training in statistical and possibly machine learning methodologies in a modern data science technology stack.

Data Scientists have emerging fluency in the team’s core subject areas and, over time, specialization and growth of skills that would allow them to manage products, supervise analysts or interns, and represent Acacia in conversations with external partners. In this role, data scientists begin to develop supervision and management skills and become increasingly involved in data science project design and analysis, with support and guidance from senior staff. The data scientist also collaborates with team members to advance project or initiative goals, by actively engaging in team meetings and program activities, and supports efforts to ensure Acacia’s race equity and inclusion priorities are a core aspect of Acacia’s research, including in methodological approaches, publications, hiring and staffing, and external and internal research communications.

Primary Duties/Responsibilities:

• Data collection, management, and analysis
• Produce data collection, manipulation, and analysis code in one or more programming language using common data science tools and techniques in consultation with senior data science staff
• Conduct code review of peer and data analyst code
• Lead and develop discrete analyses and/or data science products as components of broader projects
• Project manage routine and ad hoc reporting for immigration programs funded through federal contracts
• Oversee data quality controls including working with data and research analysts to support their work documenting and correcting data quality issues.
• Identify opportunities to use data to support, and be responsive to, ongoing program management and oversight data needs.
• Write up/presentation of data science findings and results
• Prepare data or background research for reports
• Synthesize analysis results into visualizations and narratives for a variety of audiences in line with initiative goals
• Present summary program statistics as data visualizations and dashboards to inform program management and service delivery and policy and programmatic recommendations.
• Maintain an understanding of developments in program support, program administration, and federal policy to inform data collection quality control and to contextualize trends.
• Lead background research and literature reviews and integrate into public-facing products including reports, advocacy documents, or other publications (quantitative or qualitative) under the supervision of senior researchers

Technical Development

• Build on project management and technical mentoring skills, including taking projects from proof-of-concept analysis to production-ready processes

Hiring/Supervision

• Supervise and mentor research assistants, analysts, and/or interns on tasks as needed
• Other duties as assigned

Required Skills, Knowledge, Abilities:

• Commitment to using research and analysis to address and undo racism and inequity in the immigration legal system required; lived experience preferred
• Fluency in at least one analytical programming language, preferably R, Python, and/or SQL
• Demonstrated ability to write analytical code in a reproducible, modular structure
• Able to contribute code and collaborate with others in git (or equivalent version control environment), including basic command line skills
• Familiarity with an analytic dashboarding tool, preferable Tableau
• Strong working knowledge of relational databases, AWS cloud services (S3, Redshift, Lamda, DMS) and ETL processes (Airflow), particularly as they intersect with data science
• Emerging ability to build supportive analytical tools that enable phases of a data science project (e.g. web scraping, interactive visualizations, automations, logs of regular processes, etc.)
• Foundational knowledge and commitment to uphold data security, privacy, and ethics principles
• While this is not a current hiring requirement, this position may require tier 1 background investigation, tier 2 background investigation, or Electronic Questionnaire for Investigations Processing (e-QIP) security clearance in the future (for additional information: https://www.dcsa.mil/is/eqip/).
• Acacia is unable to provide H1B sponsorship at this time; candidates must have United States citizenship.

Preferred Skills, Knowledge, Abilities:

• Fluency in a language other than English spoken by people impacted by immigration enforcement in the United States

Education and Experience:

• Bachelor's degree + 3-4 years of relevant experience in applied research, computer/data science, natural/social science, or related discipline; or master's degree in a relevant field + 1-2 years of relevant experience. In lieu of the degree requirement, applicable work or life experience may be considered.

Compensation and Benefits:

Acacia has established an internal compensation philosophy that centers equity and pay transparency. The salary for this position is set at $80,000 The salary listed is just one component of Acacia’s total compensation package for employees. Supporting Acacia staff—both personally and professionally—is our priority.

• Medical/Dental/Vision- Some plans at $0 cost to the employee
• Employee Assistance Program
• 20 days per year of vacation time
• 12 days per year of sick time
• 5 personal days
• 4 organization-wide Wellness Days
• 11 observed holidays, including the last week of December.
• $2000 Professional Development Stipend
• Home office set-up stipend
• Internet Stipend
• 401k with 5% employer contribution, no employee participation required.
• Student loan repayment assistance.
• Gym Reimbursement

People of color and those who have been impacted by the criminal system and immigration system are strongly urged to apply.

To Apply:

Please upload a resume and cover letter at the link provided or email hiring@acaciajustice.org with Subject: ATTN: Human Resources / [Job Title], Acacia Center for Justice

Equal Opportunity Employment:

Acacia is an equal opportunity employer and seeks to recruit persons of diverse backgrounds and support their retention and advancement within the organization. We are committed to fostering a workplace culture inclusive of people with respect to their race, ethnicity, national origin, gender/gender identity, sexual orientation, socio-economic status, veteran status, marital status, age, disabilities, political affiliation, religious beliefs, or any other characteristic. Our commitment to justice and diversity also means providing a work environment that is welcoming, respectful, and engaging.

This job description is not meant to be an all-inclusive list of duties, responsibilities and requirements but constitutes a general definition of the position's scope and function within our organization.

Acacia Center for Justice is an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer. All qualified applicants will be considered for employment without unlawful discrimination based on race, color, creed, national origin, sex, age, disability, marital status, sexual orientation, military status, prior record of arrest or conviction, citizenship status, current employment status, or caregiver status.

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