[Remote] Senior Policy Data Analyst

Note: The job is a remote job and is open to candidates in USA. Recidiviz is hiring a Senior Policy Data Analyst to support state corrections leaders in developing evidence-based policy changes. The role uses administrative data to model policy scenarios, communicate decision-ready findings, and lead analytical projects from scoping through delivery.

Responsibilities

• Building analysis from corrections and parole data. You'll use SQL and Python to wrangle administrative data to articulate how a system behaves. You ramp up on new data quickly, going deep where it changes the answer and making defensible simplifying assumptions where it doesn’t
• Modeling policy scenarios and quantifying tradeoffs. Apply statistical methods like regressions, time series, stock-and-flow modeling or distributional analysis to project how outcomes change under different policy designs, and assess what the data can and can't support. A core judgment is developing simple and elegant approaches that cut to the heart of the decision point
• Communicating findings to the people making the decision. You work backward from what information a stakeholder needs to advance decision-making in the room. You'll create the decks and memos that go to DOC leadership, find the frameworks that make a complicated tradeoff digestible, and take responsibility for tailoring your work to the audience to motivate *action*
• Running your projects end to end. You'll translate project objectives into an analysis strategy, set project roadmaps, and identify and address unknowns. You’ll adjust course as project objectives change, and rightsize analysis with impact
• Collaborating across Recidiviz. You'll collaborate across the organization to obtain state context, understand underlying data infrastructure, and support policy implementation
• Finding the next opportunity. You’ll go deeper on the states you work in — spotting where additional analysis could unlock a decision, and running the early exploration to assess whether it’s worth pursuing

Skills

• 5 or more years of practical experience exploring, analyzing, and processing complex datasets
• Professional experience using SQL with large datasets, including high proficiency writing efficient queries for complex extraction and transformation
• Professional experience with Python, particularly pandas, for statistical analysis and data visualization
• Sufficient statistical background to reason about analysis design, examine results closely, and prepare analyses that hold up to scrutiny
• Experience scoping and delivering analytical work — particularly balancing depth and speed when navigating short timelines and shifting priorities
• Experience on teams where ownership is shared across functions, including proactively seeking context you're missing and flagging risks before they become blockers
• Experience adapting quantitative methods to introduce intuitively meaningful metrics in ambiguous, unconstrained contexts
• Experience working with large administrative datasets from the public sector, especially related to criminal justice
• Familiarity with our data stack, which includes Google Cloud Platform, BigQuery, Looker, Jupyter notebooks, and Python/Pandas

Benefits

• Effective, extremely thoughtful colleagues, working together on a mission that matters
• 90% medical, dental, and vision insurance coverage for you and your dependents
• Flexible time off, including 20 days of PTO, 3 days of paid volunteering time, and 13 paid holidays
• 12 weeks of paid parental leave
• 401(k) retirement plan with 5% company match and no vesting period
• Complimentary One Medical membership (depending on location)
• Partnership with Carrot to provide employees with inclusive fertility and family-forming benefits, as well as a small but growing number of hormonal health and gender-affirming care benefits
• Monthly ClassPass credit for personal wellness
• Free mental health support via Talkspace
• Well-located offices in Oakland and Manhattan, with the flexibility to work remotely or go into either office as you choose
• An annual company offsite each spring and other ad-hoc gatherings
• All the exhilarating challenges and stretch opportunities of a tech startup, combined with the mission-driven heart of a nonprofit

Company Overview