Director of Data Acquisition

Civitech is a public benefit corporation dedicated to creating a fairer and more equitable democracy by building the tools and infrastructure needed to increase civic participation, empower Democratic candidates to win, and support the success of progressive causes. Since its founding in 2019, over 500 partners—a range of nonprofit organizations, national political committees, and individual campaigns—have utilized Civitech’s tools to reach tens of millions of voters to help create a more equitable and progressive democracy.

The Director of Data Acquisition will lead a large team focused on the extraction, normalization and ingestion of civic data. This person would also contribute significantly to the product direction of tools used by the team to ingest data as well as the user-facing products built on these datasets. This person would lead a team working to build an unparalleled database on U.S. government officeholders, candidates and places. Civitech is a remote-first company hiring within our current footprint of 27 states (AL, AK, CA, CO, DC, DE, FL, GA, HI, IL, MA, MD, MN, NC, ND, NH, NJ, NV, NY, OH, SD, TN, TX, VA, WA, WI, WY); Civitech does have an office in Austin, TX.

It is important that our team reflects the diversity of the organizations we seek to serve. We strongly encourage women, people of color, LGBTQIA+ people, and others otherwise underrepresented in the technology sector to apply.

What You Will Do::
• This role will be expected to do the following tasks and take on additional tasks as needed:
• (35%) Team Leadership:
• Directly and indirectly manage several team members working on project management in service of data collection from highly disaggregated, nonstandardized and complex sources
• Lead a team of researchers who conduct outreach to local election officials and institutions across the country
• Ensure that researchers are appropriately staffed on research verticals each week with special consideration for each vertical’s relevant deadlines
• Create comprehensive, proactive plans around our data coverage which meet the needs of our customers
• Create a positive, motivated, and entrepreneurial team culture which prioritizes direct feedback and continuous improvement
• (25%) Data Management
• Ensure that millions of data points across domains such as candidate names, early voting locations, geospatial information and phone numbers for elected officeholders are collected and ingested with minimal error
• Create and maintain robust documentation about process, timeline and data standards across all research verticals
• Manage technical contributors responsible for database architecture / design, identifying problematic data and providing technical consultation
• Track key indicators of data quality and make proactive recommendations to improve data accuracy and robustness
• (25%) Cross Team Collaboration
• Support Sales teams by providing guidance on our data and product offerings
• Support Marketing teams by identifying unique insights and analyses from our data
• Partner with Customer Success teams looking to address customer and user tickets in a timely manner
• Make strategic planning decisions around partnerships with external vendors and scoping custom projects
• Join calls with existing customers looking for guidance on how to use our data as well as prospective customers who may have questions about our offerings
• Work closely with engineers and technical staff to maintain and develop internal tools for efficient data collection, normalization and standardization
• Partner with GTM teams to scope, develop requirements and help launch customer-facing products which use our data
• (15%) Systems & Operations
• Create and manage systems for tracking expenses required for completing research in an efficient, accurate and timely manner
• Design new systems for more efficient data collection and processing
• Predict and plan for hiring temporary researchers as needed; partner with HR to onboard them
• Manage several third-party software systems used by the team
• Review all data contracts to ensure that our teams are well-equipped to satisfy SLA requirements

About You::
• 12-18 years of professional experience including including 6-9 years of experience managing large, cross-functional teams
• Strong written and verbal communication skills
• Advanced SQL knowledge
• Product management experience
• Experience working with political data, maintaining complex datasets and designing novel ETL processes
• Committed to leveraging technology and data products to increase civic participation
• Experience working closely with Sales, CS and Marketing teams

Additional Qualifications (desired but not required):
• Experience with database architecture, data engineering or data science
• Product management experience

About our Data Acquisition Team: The Data Acquisition team is focused on building processes to extract, normalize, ingest and regularly refresh large volumes of civic data. This includes data relating to current positions, officeholders and candidates for office from the federal level to local special districts. This team also collects geospatial data to power our products and direct users to useful voting resources.
This role will be asked to manage others.

Additional Role Details:
Full-time - exempt, fully remote (must be within current 27 states), with a salary range commensurate with qualifications and experience.

Civitech is not able to provide visa sponsorship at this time.

Civitech provides equal employment opportunities (EEO) to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, age, disability, genetic information, marital status, amnesty, or status as a covered veteran in accordance with applicable federal, state and local laws.

No recruiters or agencies, please - we will not accept unsolicited resumes or candidates from third party vendors!

Why Work At Civitech:
- Medical, Vision, & Dental Insurance
- 401(k) plan
- Employee Stock Options
- Employer-paid Life Insurance and Short/Long Term Disability Insurance
- Flexible Time Off & Paid Company Holidays
- Flexible Spending Account
- Parental Leave
- Flexible Schedules

*** It's important that those who join our team not only fully believe in our mission, but also will embody our core values and serve as a culture enhancer. ***

Civitech’s Values:

We act with Integrity – At Civitech, we hold ourselves to the highest standards and value open and transparent communications with all of our stakeholders. Our rigorous approach to product design, testing, and data science leads to accurate assessments of our outcomes and challenges us to constantly improve our tools.
We are Changemakers – As a team, Civitech seeks to make transformational change in our democracy by eliminating obstacles meant to hamper contribution from every member of the community.
We are Collaborators - Buoyed by our mission, we look for opportunities to partner with everyone committed to making democracy easier to participate in. We seek to understand the challenges our partners face and use our skills and creativity to help them solve them.
We are Bold – We recognize that disruptive change won’t come with doing business as usual. Civitech seeks to revolutionize civic participation by bringing innovation and creativity to politics.