Think of Us (TOU) operates as an R+D lab for child welfare. We take on strategic projects with the goal of causing “good trouble” and, ultimately, driving concrete, structural changes in policy, practice, resource flows, power dynamics, relationships and mental models. Our ultimate goal is to integrate Lived Experience at every level, ensuring everyone touched by the system has the conditions they need to Heal, Develop and Thrive.
We work across the ecosystem of current and former foster youth, child welfare workers, philanthropists and policymakers to Spark, Support and Drive to systematically center lived experience touched by the system.
Examples of what this looks like include:
Think of Us is at an incredible moment in our journey to transform child welfare - and is looking for a Director or Senior Director of Data & Analytics to bring their deep expertise and vision to our work, designing and delivering solutions with a data-driven approach across our entire organization.
Reporting to the Vice President of Engineering, the Director or Senior Director of Data & Analytics will lead the day to day operations of TOU's data team, defining our data methodologies and vision and ensuring we are following standards and processes so we can harness the full power of data in our mission of moving a new child welfare system forward effectively.
You will lead a team that demonstrates how data can be used to elevate the voices of those with lived experience, improve service delivery, and help staff meet individual and team Objectives and Key Results (OKRs). A strong candidate will love being a part of the “building stage” of organizations, and get excited by the idea of creating structure and results from a myriad of ideas and opportunities.
Examples of what you and the team will accomplish could include:
- Managing a team to design and develop a service that gives policy makers the ability to visualize and see key insights on data to make critical decisions
- Leading the partnerships with other like minded organizations to co-develop a new youth portal to be deployed in state and local agencies nationally
- Providing critical, real-time quantitative and qualitative data on needs of current + former foster youth to better inform practice and policy
Key Responsibilities of the Director or Senior Director of Data & Analytics include:
Strategy and Design
- Defining and executing against the vision for how data will be acquired and leveraged across TOU
- Combining continuously evolving AI, predictive analytics, and data platform/tools to ensure our teams have the ability to get the data they need
- Identifying opportunities for both customer-facing and internal tooling solutions
- Serving as a trusted expert internally and to states and partners on the nuances of required data collections such as AFCARS, NCANDS, CFSRs, FFPSA, and NYTD.
- Designing creative solutions for meeting and leveraging federal and local data collection requirements, which are often problematic, while designing data collection and analyses that leverage the art of the possible
Leadership
- Providing technical leadership around data architecture; drive requirements, design, and delivery of scalable data ecosystem for use by the entire org and external users
- Maintaining a lived experience/customer-focused outlook on delivering projects, leveraging your civic knowledge and experience to provide the expertise that differentiates our solutions
- Owning our data models: evaluate new technologies and platforms, and make decisions on their adoption with an eye towards our end users (e.g. government, non-profits, rural users, etc.) while verifying that all data practices adhere to regulatory, privacy and security standards, compliance and best practices
- Monitoring KPIs to assess data performance
- Effectively communicating our data goals, planning process, project initiatives, team innovation, and results to leadership, other various audiences and stakeholder
Execution
- Supporting other teams and their projects, being agile and hands-on (a true technical person of all trades) to support their technical needs
- Collaborating with partner organizations and other companies to design, develop and deliver data solutions for our external initiatives, working with external resources directly to manage and execute projects to completion
- Working with the VP of Engineering to manage the tech budget, including determining the most effective staffing model to maximize ROI
- Presenting research findings (ie. in Tableau or Power BI, etc.) on insights for both internal audiences and external settings
- Managing data teams to successfully execute our goals, creating a forward thinking technical vision for your team, while also moving day to day implementation forward
About You
- Collaborative: You partner with others to realize better results. You have a positive and collaborative demeanor, combined with the ability to mentor, and delegate
- Develops Others: You coach or instruct others to improve their performance. You're passionate about coaching team members and helping them grow
- Problem Solver: You effectively identifyand solve challenging problems around data, advanced design, and development skills
- Continuous Learner: You are driven to learn and stay current professionally. You stay up to date with data trends, spend time learning new technologies, and share your learnings with your team
- Innovative: You use original thinking to generate new ideas and solutions with data, you think outside the box and execute upon the vision we set
- Mission-Driven: You have a deep commitment to our mission and nuanced understanding of systemic, structural racism and inequity
Experience
The ideal Director or Senior Director of Data & Analytics candidate will have the following qualifications:
- 3+ years of leadership experience including strategy and setting direction and leading data or engineering/tech teams with a heavy data emphasis
- Direct experience in the following:
- Designing, building and maintaining highly efficient and reliable data pipelines to move data across a number of platforms including applications, databases, data lakes, data warehouses, and BI tools
- Optimized querying and analyzing of large datasets to meet business and functional requirements
- Creating data visualizations from complex research findings (ie. in Tableau or Power BI, etc.) with the ability to present insights that are not easily seen
- Extensive experience in at least one statistical programming language such as Python
- Preparing data (cleaning, transformation, etc.) for predictive and prescriptive modeling
- Expertise in data modeling, data mining and segmentation techniques including deploying and training data/machine learning models
- Optimizing and managing data, including understanding of privacy, security and compliance
- Building and maintaining data infrastructure (e.g. databases, data lakes, data warehouses) to support large scale real time data loading and data querying with a focus on automation
- Lived experience and/or proximity to Child Welfare, whether as former foster youth, kinship family or other, is a plus
- We provide generous health, dental, & vision coverage for you and dependents as well as a 401k plan for your pre-tax retirement contributions
- We're a remote team with schedule flexibility
- We have a flexible vacation policy
- We hold monthly organization-wide learning sessions to deepen our understanding of the Lived Experience of foster youth and also on topics outside of foster care to build culture of curiosity and growth
- We provide the opportunity for you to interact with leading voices in government, foundations, the nonprofit world, and entertainment working to reform foster care
Salary + Timeline
This role has a salary range of $126,000 - $154,000. We are looking to fill this position immediately - applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis.
To Apply:
Click on the link below!