Director of Data Strategy

About the Opportunity

The Correctional Association of New York (CANY) stands at a moment of significant opportunity to build internal data capacity to advance the organization’s mission and goals. CANY is seeking a Director of Data Strategies to develop an integrated data system and establish a culture of data practice and decision-making across the organization. Reporting to the executive director, this position is a senior-level data engineer role and will lead CANY’s data strategy and the development of a centralized data system and business intelligence platform. The Director of Data Strategies will help set up the schema of CANY’s cloud-based data warehouse and oversee CANY’s data pipeline, including cleaning and organizing complex data sets, to develop critical insights into the conditions in New York State prisons. Collaborating across the monitoring and advocacy, research and policy, and impact and measurement teams, the selected candidate will work to deeply understand CANY’s data sources—both qualitative and quantitative—from its monitoring and oversight work, and build and maintain an external-facing data transparency website to support the organization’s broader accountability and transparency goals. 

Key Responsibilities

Lead the implementation and management of CANY’s data warehouse

• Help design and build CANY’s centralized data warehouse, working with a consultant to build out the warehouse infrastructure and import all existing data.
• Manage the organization’s centralized cloud database (likely to be Microsoft SQL Server) that will house data from a range of sources.
• Manage the data pipeline and inclusion of new data sources, including the extraction, transformation, and loading of a range of data sources, including survey responses, questionnaire, field observations, administrative .csv and .txt files.
• Develop solutions to schema integration that helps the organization cross-reference data sources and pull insights on pressing issues.
• Maintain strong data security protocols and ensure that they are followed organization-wide.

 Work across multidisciplinary teams 

• Design procedures to optimize data quality and automation for recurring projects.
• Run quality assurance checks on the data using SQL Server Reporting Services. 
• Train staff on quality assurance and data recording best practices.
• Respond to user feedback by modifying stored procedures.
• Clearly communicate concepts to audiences without a technical background.
• Maintain a Microsoft PowerBI dashboard integration with the database to facilitate clear and immediate research for those without SQL knowledge.
• Facilitate team training on Microsoft PowerBI. 

Serve in a leadership role and contribute to internal process and policy development

• Anticipate and respond to emerging needs with creative solutions as part of a leadership team in the organization.
• Strategize around improving CANY’s data systems.
• Assist in the development CANY’s data governance policies, including considerations around data privacy.
• Manage staff and interns.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in computer science, data science, applied mathematics, or a related field
• At least 3 years of work experience in a data engineering role
• Expert knowledge of SQL
• Experience running quality assurance checks
• Experience with extract, transform, and load of data and associated tools (e.g., FiveTran, Stich)
• Expert knowledge of Python
• Experience with one of the following: R, SPSS, or Stata
• Experience with Power BI (preferred) or Tableau
• Experience merging and analyzing large quantitative datasets
• The ability to work both independently and collaboratively, with a high level of initiative and strong organizational skills
• Interest in and commitment to improving prison conditions and influencing public policy