Research Specialist I

Texas A&M • College Station, TX

10h

About The Position

The Texas Real Estate Research Center was founded in 1971 by an act of the Texas Legislature. The Center’s enabling legislation defines a broad mandate to “conduct studies in all areas related directly or indirectly to real estate and/or urban or rural economics.” In addition to research programs in residential, commercial, and rural land economics, the Center maintains administrative, data, and communications teams to support its research agenda. We’re looking for a detail-oriented and analytical Research Specialist I with a strong foundation in economics, real estate, or a related field to support applied research on Texas residential markets. The ideal candidate will have experience collecting and analyzing economic data, proficiency in statistical tools like R or Python, and the ability to communicate findings clearly through written and visual formats. We value initiative, collaboration, and a commitment to high standards in research and data integrity. Under the direction and supervision of research economists, the Research Specialist I completes research work including: collecting qualitative and quantitative economic data from internet, internal databases, or through interviews or document research. Organizes and processes data for analysis. Completes analysis and drafts written and graphical results for reports and presentations. Provides support to research economists and other Center staff off site at events or in conducting field research. Day-to-day work may include other administrative and office duties.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in economics, real estate, statistics or related field, or equivalent combination of education and experience.
• Four years of related professional experience conducting applied economic or market analysis.
• Proficiency in one or more statistical/research languages: R, Python, STATA, etc. for organizing data, statistical analysis, and plotting.
• Experience analyzing and charting standard economic and financial data (BLS, BEA, Census Bureau, Federal Reserve).
• Efficient user of Microsoft Excel, Word, PowerPoint.
• Ability to contribute to multiple research projects weekly and work with senior researchers or student workers.

Nice To Haves

• Master’s degree in real estate, economics or relevant discipline.
• Work in an applied research setting (industry or government.)
• Applied knowledge of spatial analysis software: ESRI, QGIS, etc.
• Knowledge of residential single family and multifamily housing market metrics and dynamics.

Responsibilities

• Assist senior researchers with assigned projects regarding Texas real-estate markets and economics with a focus on residential assets.
• Monitor relevant literature and methodology trends for assigned topics.
• Develop primary and secondary data sets through online access, surveys, focus groups, or archival document review.
• Organize, code, transform, and summarize qualitative and quantitative market, household and business data according to appropriate research design methods.
• Standardize and automate data updates, processing, analysis and reporting.
• Draft and maintain documentation on acquisition, development, analysis and reporting methods.
• Maintain high ethics and integrity of data management.
• Review and synthesize relevant literature topics.
• Collaborate with other researchers as needed.
• Apply and synthesize results from multiple techniques to identify key constructs and analyze relationships in real estate markets such as: visualization and exploratory methods, case studies, quasi-experiments, trend and timeseries models, cross-section or panel methods, and spatial analysis.
• Summarize findings for review by senior researchers and revise drafts for written, tabular, and graphical materials for publication.
• Perform other duties as assigned.

Benefits

• Health, dental, vision, life and long-term disability insurance with Texas A&M contributing to employee health and basic life premiums
• 12-15 days of annual paid holidays
• Up to eight hours of paid sick leave and at least eight hours of paid vacation each month
• Automatically enrollment in the Teacher Retirement System of Texas
• Health and Wellness: Free exercise programs and release time
• Professional Development: All employees have access to free LinkedIn Learning training, webinars, and limited financial support to attend conferences, workshops, and more
• Employee Tuition Assistance and Educational Release time for completing a degree while a Texas A&M employee

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Entry Level
• Number of Employees: 1,001-5,000 employees