Senior Director, Data and Analytics

Summary

Join The States Project (TSP) as their Senior Director of Data & Analytics! This full-time, remote position, with some travel, involves leading a team providing data-driven insights for political and policy work. You will oversee data systems, analyze campaign data, and advise senior leadership. The role requires strong analytical skills, experience managing teams, and a deep understanding of the political landscape. TSP offers a competitive benefits package including health insurance, paid time off, 401k matching, and professional development opportunities. Apply by February 28th, 2025.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree required
• 6+ years of relevant professional experience, including significant staff management experience
• Proven track record of leveraging data and analytics to drive decisions in the political arena and high standards for success
• Strong understanding of the state legislative process and how to analyze legislative trends
• Highly collaborative approach to working with colleagues and stakeholders
• Exceptional understanding of campaign targeting and database management
• A strong understanding of the voter file, polling, and election forecast modeling
• Capable of conducting analyses that can determine whether experimental outcomes are statistically significant
• Capable of independently managing time and tasks associated with a fast-paced organization
• Excellent Excel skills and experience using Civis
• Experience manipulating large data sets and developing quality control processes to ensure data integrity
• Clear communication skills that support internal and external stakeholders’ understanding of complex data findings
• Innovative thinking that can help identify new patterns and trends that may benefit internal and external audiences

Responsibilities

• Ensures all systems for tracking and analyzing data across TSP are scalable, secure, and meet evolving cross-team needs
• Oversees the 99 Chamber Dashboard and designs the process required to build a searchable system to track and analyze bill introductions and enactments from across the country
• Provides analysis to strengthen our policy program and manages team that will track progress and trends towards achieving America’s Goals for each target on a state by state basis
• Develops and manages ongoing improvements and changes to the key systems that shape our district assessment process by overseeing the collection and evaluation of district electoral history, demographics, and other data to refine our district DPI, race ratings, and simulations
• Analyzes strength of campaigns across the country and provides recommendations based on a database with campaign field, finance, and other data
• Provides reports, analysis, and recommendations to senior leadership based on new data tools and dashboards that summarize state legislative data and campaign activity
• Oversees election forecast models and race rating process, providing critical inputs into our state and district selection process
• Ensures that polling and modeling data is actionable for senior leaders and key political staff
• Produces presentations with compelling visuals and statistics for external stakeholders, and analyzes existing data to find and develop compelling narratives for donors and lawmakers about the impact of our work
• Ensures a cutting edge data driven focus throughout all political and lawmaker engagement work
• Develops and implements long-term strategies for system integration, process improvements, and operational excellence across data and analytics work
• Takes a comprehensive approach to proposing, overseeing, and reviewing campaign RCTs and other studies to identify and evaluate innovative tactics that can be used to make recommendations for campaigns
• Serves as a key strategist and thought partner to political and policy team members and provides recommendations and data to inform decisions about what is working and what isn’t
• Initiates and conducts new research that can guide future electoral and policy strategies, such as candidate recruitment decisions, as well as inform donor, lawmaker, and other stakeholder communications
• Ensures campaign and chamber targeting decisions are first class
• Leads the organizational strategy on how to use analytics to advance our work
• Provides strong day-to-day management and development of full-time staff on the Data and Analytics team, as well as overseeing consultants, vendors and service providers, including ensuring strong systems, processes, training, and infrastructure
• Collaborates with department and initiative leads to understand and innovate around ways to resolve data-related challenges and requirements and keeps internal and external stakeholders informed on key decisions
• Proposes and leads new cross-team initiatives to increase efficiency and advance organizational data goals/needs, and identifies opportunities for expanded data offerings both internally and externally

Preferred Qualifications

• Expert-level coding in Python or R
• Strong experience coding in SQL
• Experience with Airtable
• Experience with GIS software
• Experience with Shiny, Tableau or other data visualization software
• Deep understanding of political campaigns and best practices
• Experience with polling, support, Monte Carlo simulations, and persuasion models

Benefits

• 75% paid coverage of medical, dental, and vision for individuals and dependents
• Basic life insurance
• An employee assistance program
• Unlimited PTO
• 401(k) matching
• Annual professional development
• Wellness
• Work-from-home stipends
• Paid family leave