Contract Data Engineer

Climate Cabinet • Chicago, IL

7h • $60 - $120 • Remote

About The Position

Climate Cabinet is seeking a Contract Data Engineer to enhance and maintain our vital data infrastructure and tooling. This role is pivotal in identifying and leveraging opportunities to support the election of pro-climate candidates in overlooked but impactful electoral positions, and the passage of impactful pro-climate legislation in state houses across the country.

This role will support Climate Cabinet’s small, tight-knit engineering team (the “Tech Team”), which is responsible for:
Data Infrastructure and Pipeline Development: Design and maintain robust backend systems, data pipelines, and cloud-based storage and processing to support large-scale electoral and civic data analysis.
Data Integration and Management: Ensure the accuracy and completeness of data related to 500,000+ local offices, and regularly update our databases with external data sources like LegiScan and Open States for up-to-date legislative information, demographics, and climate data.
Application Development: Build out the internal toolset with applications that streamline operations, such as custom database interfaces for tracking electoral data and fundraising activities.
Data Analysis and Visualization: Develop defensible, well-thought-through methodologies for calculating useful metrics. Analyze and generate data visualizations to support Political, Policy, Comms, and Development teams, enforcing high standards for analysis quality and accurate data-driven storytelling.
AI Infrastructure and Tool Development: Build out AI-powered tools and connect Climate Cabinet datasets to provide powerful self-serve policy analysis and data visualization tools to the broader team.

The Contract Data Engineer will collaborate closely with the Tech Team, managing work via Jira and Github. This role will take the lead on specific projects that will be agreed with the team as well as provide code review and input on projects led by other team members.

Sample Projects:
Build out Climate Cabinet’s repository of district-level data and expand tooling to support the creation of district-specific legislator briefs.
Expand and future-proof Climate Cabinet’s political candidate metrics system to improve understanding of how competitive an incumbent legislator is in their district.
Build a data pipeline and basic visualization interface for state-level campaign finance data.

This role is ideal for someone who is excited about the challenges and opportunities of working in a small organization focused on meaningful climate action through political engagement. The ideal candidate has experience working with, building, and maintaining civic and political datasets and infrastructure, and has strong political data acumen and analysis experience, including the ability to make informed decisions about designing methodologies, assessing data quality, and developing visualizations.

Requirements

• Proficiency in Python for data analysis and manipulation
• Experience with SQL and database management (e.g., PostgreSQL, MySQL)
• Fluency with Github for version control
• Experience building and managing data systems via Google Cloud Platform (preferred) or AWS
• Experience orchestrating ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) pipelines on cloud infrastructure (using Apache Airflow, Cloud Run, Cloud Functions, etc.)
• Ability to work with APIs and integrate various data sources
• Knowledge of data visualization tools (e.g., Tableau, Power BI, D3.js)
• Familiarity with political data sources and electoral processes (e.g. Legiscan, Open States, BillTrack50) and proficiency with data analysis, particularly political data
• Knowledge of AI tools (preferred)
• Comfort with AI in workflow (Github Copilot, Claude Code, etc)
• Knowledge of building AI applications (MCPs, LLM integrations, etc)

Responsibilities

• Data Infrastructure and Pipeline Development: Design and maintain robust backend systems, data pipelines, and cloud-based storage and processing to support large-scale electoral and civic data analysis.
• Data Integration and Management: Ensure the accuracy and completeness of data related to 500,000+ local offices, and regularly update our databases with external data sources like LegiScan and Open States for up-to-date legislative information, demographics, and climate data.
• Application Development: Build out the internal toolset with applications that streamline operations, such as custom database interfaces for tracking electoral data and fundraising activities.
• Data Analysis and Visualization: Develop defensible, well-thought-through methodologies for calculating useful metrics. Analyze and generate data visualizations to support Political, Policy, Comms, and Development teams, enforcing high standards for analysis quality and accurate data-driven storytelling.
• AI Infrastructure and Tool Development: Build out AI-powered tools and connect Climate Cabinet datasets to provide powerful self-serve policy analysis and data visualization tools to the broader team.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Part-time
• Career Level: Mid Level
• Education Level: No Education Listed