Who we are:

The Vera Institute of Justice is powered by hundreds of advocates, researchers, and policy experts working to transform the criminal legal and immigration systems until they’re fair for all. Founded in 1961 to advocate for alternatives to money bail in New York City, Vera is now a national organization that partners with impacted communities and government leaders for change. We develop just, antiracist solutions so that money doesn’t determine freedom; fewer people are in jails, prisons, and immigration detention; and everyone is treated with dignity. For more information, visit vera.org.

Vera has a staff of 224 people, is headquartered in Brooklyn, New York and has offices in Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, and New Orleans. We are an equal opportunity employer with a commitment to diversity in the workplace. We expect our staff to embody respect, independence, collaboration, commitment, anti-racism, and equity—both in our outward-facing work and the internal culture of our workplace. We value a range of experiences in people’s educational backgrounds and encourage people who have been directly impacted by the criminal justice system to apply.

About the team:

At Vera, we are attentive to the potential benefits and negative consequences of the use of technology in the criminal legal system, including by researchers and advocates. Under the leadership of Vera’s Associate Director of Data Science & Analytics, we are developing “public interest data science” approaches by prioritizing projects that constructively overcome the many challenges present in public and administrative datasets that hold key systemic information on the way our justice and public support systems function. We complement this work with a critical perspective on the current and potential ways data science, predictive algorithms, and AI can be used to exacerbate harm.

About the role:

The Data Engineering Intern for the Research Department’s Central Data Science team at Vera is a 3 month opportunity for a college student, graduate student or recent grad to immerse themselves into working in a data role at non-profit organization. Their work will support the construction and maintenance of a centralized datastore and data ingestion/processing framework with plans to incorporate data to support researchers who work with public and/or large-scale data in the national and place-based initiatives.

The data engineering intern will participate in all day-to-day team activities, ranging from project and sprint planning, code review sessions, pair programming, social activities, and more. They will be directly mentored by a data engineer on the team, who will help train the intern on a range of responsibilities, including data collection, data modelling, automation, building data infrastructure, and ensuring data quality.

In addition to day-to-day data tasks, the intern will focus on a project that they will work on over the course of their internship that is relevant to their interests and experience. This might involve helping to design and manage large-scale data infrastructure systems, creating computational frameworks, designing data models, or building new tools to empower our community partners or organization’s researchers to leverage and improve Vera’s existing repository of data. Depending on their interest, other day-to-day tasks could include exploratory analyses, analytical software development, web scraping, and producing data visualizations.

This is a 3 month commitment over the fall of 2024, with some flexibility as to start and end date

What you'll do:

Data ingestion

  • Integrate new sources of criminal justice, immigration, and economics data into our internally collected data; clean, transform, organize, ensure quality
  • Refactor existing web scrapers and data processes to new centralized infrastructure and frameworks

Central data model construction

  • Contribute code to building a central data model for unrestricted datasets

Code review and codebase maintenance

  • Help maintain existing codebase through reviewing requests
  • Coordinate with data science staff to ensure consistency of datasets, naming conventions, code repository structure, etc.

Other duties as assigned

What qualifications are we looking for?

  • Demonstrated proficiency working with data collection and processing in Python, with preference for experience using SQL and Python Pandas library.
  • Proficiency developing code collaboratively using GitHub
  • Commitment to advancing racial and gender equity in work
  • Curiosity about emerging research and advocacy in the criminal justice space and/or immigration spaces
  • Wrestles with creative and concrete ways to use data to shift power and advance equity and inclusion

Preferred:

  • Professional, personal or academic engagement with issues of mass incarceration and mass criminalization
  • Experience working with Google Cloud Platform and its tools, including Airflow

Location:

Please note this role will report to our Brooklyn, New York; Washington, DC; New Orleans, LA; Los Angeles, CA office. Vera interns and employees adhere to a hybrid schedule and are in-office on an alternating schedule. Full-time positions generally amount to 10 days per month. Part-time positions generally amount to 5 days per month.

Schedule:

The intern should be available to work up to 15 hours per week during the Fall, with some flexibility to accommodate personal and academic schedules.

Compensation:

The compensation range for internships is $16.00 - $25.00 per hour. Actual compensation will vary depending on factors including but not limited to experience and performance. Applicants may choose to receive academic credit. For those who need to earn academic credit, Vera will gladly assist in working with the school or program to make arrangements and meet requirements.

How to apply:

Please submit cover letter and resume. In your cover letter, please explain why you are passionate about criminal justice reform and what you hope to gain from this internship.

Applications may also be faxed to:

ATTN: People Resources / Fall 2024 - Data Engineer Intern, Research & MEL
Vera Institute of Justice
34 35th St, Suite 4-2A, Brooklyn, NY 11232
Fax: (212) 941-9407
Please use only one method (online, mail or fax) of submission.
No phone calls, please. Only applicants selected for interviews will be contacted.

In order to ensure a healthy and safe work environment, Vera Institute of Justice is requiring all employees to be fully vaccinated and provide proof of their COVID-19 vaccine before their start date. Employees who cannot receive the vaccine because of a disability/medical contraindication or sincerely-held religious belief may request an accommodation (e.g., an exemption) to this requirement.

Vera is an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer. All qualified applicants will be considered for employment without unlawful discrimination based on race, color, creed, national origin, sex, age, disability, marital status, sexual orientation, military status, prior record of arrest or conviction, citizenship status, current employment status, or caregiver status. 

Vera works to advance justice, particularly racial justice, in an increasingly multicultural country and globally connected world. We value diverse experiences, including with regard to educational background and justice system contact, and depend on a diverse staff to carry out our mission. 

For more information about Vera, please visit www.vera.org.

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