The Advocacy Institute was created to support the legislative advocacy of social justice and movement-building organizations in across New York State. In the last 5 years, we’ve helped hundreds of organizers and advocates engage in more efficient and effective legislative advocacy. The Advocacy Institute is a high impact work-environment. We create and sustain this environment by engaging proactively in intentional and transparent discussions about identity, power, oppression, trust, capacity building, teamwork, and performance. Throughout, we ground ourselves in a commitment to feminist, multiracial leadership. 

Role Overview

The Software Developer drives the advancement of our tools and data engineering processes. The position is part of a team that builds and produces products to satisfy our internal, member and client needs, and requires someone with experience in effective product management and team communication.

Given that this is a small team, the position will manage and do work ranging from website updates, the addition of features to custom software and modification of third-party applications used by our team (e.g. Podio, Zapier, Piesync, Google Apps, etc). The Software Developer reports to the Executive Director and collaborates with consultants and agencies as needed.

Stack Overview

We've deployed a Ruby on Rails application that we use to manage several datasets related to elected officials. We sync these datasets between different platforms (i.e. Podio, postgreSQL, Carto). We also host a members-only portal and generate visually engaging, data-driven materials for advocates that are always up to date. There's also an API that serves up data to our interactive legislator maps. Examples include:

• Interactive Legislator Maps (http://interactive.advocacy-institute.org)
• Geographic Maps (https://tools.advocacy-institute.org/geographic/senate)
• PDF-generator (http://unhny.advocacy-institute.org)

We’ve bootstrapped our environment and tested a bunch of hypotheses about what advocates need. There's a decent amount of technical debt, but we’re clearer now on our focus areas and planning to refactor our data model and codebase to reflect these focus areas.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities

Shared

• Build a portfolio of internal tools that support our goals, workflows and provide data needed for key management decisions
• Build out the product portfolio of tools used by our members and clients to optimize their advocacy and ability to impact public policy
• Identify opportunities for process improvement and manage the implementation of such changes
• Experiment with new technologies and advise others on how the organization can push a tech-forward mentality

Unique

• Serve as default Product & Engineering Manager, prioritizing and overseeing project plans, production timelines, as well as triaging challenges as necessary
• Design, implement and monitor our internal IT service delivery practices and processes (DevOps) such as automations and data synch processes

As Needed

• Help assess where our tools meet the needs of our Members, Partners, Staff and Funders, and where they don’t

Other Duties and Responsibilities

• Additional duties may be required

• Web Development experience 
• Experience designing and implementing Data Engineering (e.g. “ETL”, “Web Scraping”) 
• Experience in Product Management
• Experience using and integrating SaaS Products
• Experience with social justice organizing and / or political work preferred

Physical Demands

• Minimal

Work Environment

• This position is based in a shared office space in Brooklyn, NY with elevator access
• This position may include national travel between 1-3 times a year
• The assigned workspace is a cubicle in an open and shared work area with a moderate level of noise and interruptions

Location

• The role is based in New York City
• Partial remote working supported

Time & Compensation

• This is a full time position, starting as soon as the position is filled.
• Competitive benefits package includes medical, dental and vision coverage as well a 403b retirement account
• 12 days vacation in addition to a two-week winter holiday in year 1
• Salary range is $90,000 to $100,000, correlated to alignment with experience and skills

Apply

Thank you for your interest in the Advocacy Institute!

• To apply, please submit an application package that includes the following:
  • Resume
  • Cover letter
  • Written response to these prompts:
    • How do you know that you have a great attention for detail?
    • Walk me through a moment when you discovered that you’d made a mistake that affected others and how you handled it.
    • Is it important for you to work at a social justice organization? If so, why?

Also, please note:

• No telephone calls please.  
• Because of the high volume of anticipated applicants, we regret that we will be unable to respond to all submissions.
• The Advocacy Institute is a project of the Tides Center, an Equal Opportunity Employer.  Women, people of color, transgender and gender non-conforming people are encouraged to apply.
• We will process applications based on the order in which they were received. We will fully consider all application packages that are submitted before we close the application portal.