Staff Technologist

We’re looking for a Staff Technologist!

Worth Rises seeks a Staff Technologist (exempt), working remotely, to build and maintain the technical infrastructure behind our public-facing research tools and technology solutions that bring our thought leadership and new functionalities to policymakers, journalists, organizers, and impacted people. The Staff Technologist will own the systems that power our public-facing technology, execute and advise on technical strategy for new tools, and coordinate with external technology partners to expand what our small but mighty research team can do. This role reports to the Director of Research & Data Innovation and works cross-functionally with our Advocacy and Narrative teams.

Worth Rises is a non-profit advocacy organization dedicated to dismantling the prison industry and ending the exploitation of those it touches. Partnering with directly impacted people, we work to expose the commercialization of the criminal legal system and organize and advocate to protect the economic resources extracted from affected communities and strip the prison industry of its power.

Key Results (Year One)
- Scrape and transform the data collection behind our key databases, namely our Corporate Database and National Phone Rate Map to stabilize and manage regular updates.

- Launch Open Connect, our free correctional communications platform, and actively steward the platform for use by correctional agencies across the country.

- Build and maintain a new Correctional Medical Malpractice Map as a publicly accessible AI-powered, documenting legal claims arising from inadequate healthcare at facilities contracting with private correctional healthcare providers.

- Develop an internal dashboard that facilitates our advocacy campaigns, conducts social listening about the prison industry, analyzes our digital media, and tracks our impact metrics.

Major Responsibilities
- Co-develop the organization’s technology strategy with the Executive Director, Chief Narrative Officer, and Director of Research & Data Innovation.

- Execute the organization’s technology strategy, auditing, refining, and building the organization’s portfolio of technology-based research tools and industry solutions.

- Surface relevant technical learning resources, tools, and collaboration opportunities to the Director of Research & Data Innovation to inform day-to-day work and longer-term projects.

- Source, scope, and coordinate internal and external collaborators across all technical projects.

- Create documentation, including well-structured READMEs, clear docstrings, and data dictionaries, that make tech tools and solutions legible to colleagues and future maintainers.

- Other project specific responsibilities
- Open Connect, our free correctional communication software
- Serve as the in-house technical lead for Open Connect, coordinating the development of the platform with the support of external developers, fellows, and contractors.

- Assess the existing codebase, identify gaps, and contribute code directly where needed to move the project toward deployment.

- Steward completed platform to conduct agency pilots, ensuring adaptability to specific needs, collecting feedback from all stakeholders, and refining code for full launch.

- Correctional Medical Malpractice Map
- Serve as in-house technical lead and principal builder, coordinating with external technologists as necessary .

- Support the build through launch, collecting feedback from a small set of advisors, and own ongoing maintenance.

- Connect Families Now Telecom Map (connectfamiliesnow.com/data)
- Own the data pipeline including scraper maintenance, cleaning and transformation, and monthly publishing to the site and GitHub.

- Run validations in close collaboration with the Director of Research & Data Innovation.

- Corporate Database (worthrises.org/data) - Stabilize and automate the corporate database updates and maintenance, including the Airtable a