Research Analyst

University of Chicago • Austin, TX

22h • $62,000 - $70,000

About The Position

The Mansueto Institute for Urban Innovation seeks a highly motivated Research Analyst to work closely with faculty, research assistants, and others at the University of Chicago. The person in this position will support our Local Data Journalism program. An example of past work in this program can be viewed here: https://ctastopwatch.miurban-dashboards.org/. This role manages research projects and works under the supervision of our senior data scientist and the faculty director in partnership with collaborating journalists to analyze data, write summary reports, and assist with visualizations and on-line tool and dashboard development.

Requirements

• Minimum requirements include a college or university degree in related field.
• Minimum requirements include knowledge and skills developed through < 2 years of work experience in a related job discipline.
• Resume/CV (required)
• Cover Letter (required)
• 3 References Contact Information (required)
• Analytical Writing Sample, a research paper or report written for a course or work assignment acceptable (required)
• Brief Technical Assessment (required) using a dataset of your choice which is publicly available, present two simple and quick facts about your chosen dataset in a document which includes your code. Try to spend at most 30 minutes on this assessment. You are encouraged to select whichever programming language and document type you like and to briefly contextualize your chosen dataset with an introduction. The purpose of this assessment is to see how you organize your work at its initial stages. We are not looking for you to come up with complicated insights into the dataset or create a final report with great formatting. Facts could be as simple as a single sentence which describes counts of how often something happens. This assessment will be evaluated on the cohesiveness, clarity, and conciseness of your work, not its complexity (required)

Nice To Haves

• Bachelor’s degree or higher.
• Minimum of one to two years of relevant technical work experience through education or prior employment.
• Drafting and delivering research results.
• Familiar with statistical analysis applied to GIS data.
• Working in journalism or in a newsroom and with FOIA requests.
• Computing and analysis experience with various datasets using standard industry software such as Python, Stata, and/or R.
• Fluency in data organization, manipulation and analysis.
• Knowledge of and ability to navigate Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests and inquiries.
• Understand and translate journalists’ data needs/goals into analytical requirements.
• Qork well with journalists, faculty and researchers.
• Identify and gain expertise in appropriate new methods, technologies and/or software tools.
• Understanding and interest in the journalistic process and effective ways to use data to tell compelling stories.
• Strong analytical skills and problem-solving ability.
• Perform at a high level as part of an interactive multi-disciplinary team including faculty, students and other researchers while demonstrating self-initiative to achieve project’s goals.
• A passion for knowing the upcoming state of the art in urban and geospatial data, and associated analysis and visualization.

Responsibilities

• Cleans, transforms, merges, and matches between large and complex research and administrative datasets.
• Works with external partners/journalists and members of the research team to propose and implement analytical approaches to solving specific research questions.
• Builds statistical models for a variety of research projects.
• Prepares results for memos, presentations, and news articles.
• Performs a range of activities to facilitate the design of research projects and the publication of their results.
• Supervises data analyst fellows and student research assistants, helping direct their work.
• Writes statistical computer programs and reviews computer output for consistency and quality.
• Maintains technical and administrative support for a research project.
• Analyzes and maintains data and/or specimens.
• Conducts literature reviews.
• Assists with preparation of reports, manuscripts and other documents.
• Performs other related work as needed.

Benefits

• The University of Chicago offers a wide range of benefits programs and resources for eligible employees, including health, retirement, and paid time off. Information about the benefit offerings can be found in the Benefits Guidebook.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Entry Level