Democracy Data Fellow

To Apply

This is a part-time fellowship opportunity to contract with Unite America. The initial engagement lasts for six months. To apply for this role, please submit the following: 

1. Your resume,
2. A one page response on how you would approach this contract opportunity,
3. Work products that include:
1. Demonstration of your data visualization skills, which could include a compendium of previous infographics or a paper that has charts to explain findings. 
2. A work product that  demonstrates your writing ability. This should be no more than 3,000 words. You may excerpt a section of previously published research.

Applications are due by Monday, May 6th; applications after that date may not be considered.  Applicants should expect to hear from Unite America in early May. 

The Opportunity 

The Unite America Institute seeks a Democracy Data Fellow to support our research team. The individual will help us:

1. Advise on how we can best use, organize, and visualize quantitative data in our work;
2. Expand our work on “The Primary Problem” by analyzing data and conducting new research on the problems with partisan primaries at the state and congressional level as they happen in 2024, while also assessing and identifying historic trends in in a data-driven way;
3. Identity opportunities to better visualize the data and findings of past, current, and future research;
4. Develop the tools and systems we need to make existing datasets more easily accessible to researchers outside of our organization. 

Our Organization

Unite America is a nonpartisan, philanthropic venture fund (composed of several legal entities) that invests in candidates, campaigns, and organizations in order to advance nonpartisan election reforms that will foster a more representative and functional government capable of solving America’s most pressing challenges.

The Unite America Institute is a 501(c)(3) research organization that conducts research on the  root causes, effects, and potential solutions to political polarization and partisanship. Our research team conducts original analysis, commissions independent research, and organizes a growing community of scholars interested in the primary systems across the United States. 

This is an exciting opportunity to join a best-in-class team and advise us on how to improve our research capability while conducting specific research and visualization projects that can help illustrate the problems with the current partisan primary system used in most states and the impact of nonpartisan reform alternatives. 

The individual will help us achieve the four objectives above, and in order to do so will: assess how the organization is currently using quantitative data in their research and make recommendations in meeting consultations and a summary memo; conduct new research on partisan prairies and publish commentary in the form of visuals, fact sheets, reports, blogs, and other mediums; analyze existing datasets on American voters’ policy preferences and election reform; liaise with other scholars to understand how and what data on election reforms they would like to use; and identify ways we can better serve a group of independent researchers by providing them with accessible and actionable datasets.

Requirements

Desired Skill Sets

In searching for the Democracy Data Fellow, we will be looking for:

• Research experience collecting and analyzing large datasets. Experience working with political science data is a plus;
• Familiarity with basic quantitative research methods;
• Demonstrated ability to write clearly to explain complex ideas and data findings;
• Data visualization experience — including having worked on infographics, graphs, charts, and maps;
• Proficiency with programming languages to manage large datasets (e.g., R, Python); fluency in Google Sheets and/or Excel;
• Excellent visual skills and creative design knowledge, such as experience with layout, typography, color, etc. 
• Fluency with design tools such as Figma, Flourish, and Adobe Creative Suite is a plus. 

Benefits

Contract Terms

The initial contract with the individual or firm we retain will be for six months. There will be an opportunity to reconsider a contract extension at the end of the contract term. 

We will pay a monthly retainer to the selected individual or firm, commensurate with the professional qualifications, experience, and skills of the selected vendor. In order to complete the work and conduct timely analyses as primaries happen, we would expect the contractor to be available for an average of 20 hours per week.