Associate or Senior Associate, Research

Location. Los Angeles, New York City or remote. 

Compensation and benefits. $66,300 - $85,860 annually depending on experience, with generous medical, dental, vision, and retirement.

Role type. We are looking to hire three new members for our team. All three roles are full-time, long-term with no end date.

Deadline. Sunday, May 19 at 11:59pm Pacific Time. We may close the application sooner if we receive a high volume of excellent applicants.

About the opportunity

The Vote Rev Research Team is hiring three researchers at the Associate or Senior Associate level to work on partisan and nonpartisan research and design initiatives. The researchers will work closely with other Research Team members to (i) conduct qualitative research, (ii) assist in the designing, prototyping, and optimizing of voter engagement innovations, and (iii) assist in the design, implementation, and analysis of experiments. 

Candidates should have some familiarity with voter engagement or behavioral science, and be passionate about advancing social justice and electing progressive candidates. We're especially excited about candidates with experience in ANY of the following: (i) qualitative research and creating intuitive and user-centered design solutions, (ii) statistical methods and programming, or (iii) political organizing or campaigning.

Vote Rev’s design process

The researchers will work as part of a team to design, prototype, optimize, and test new voter engagement innovations. Vote Rev's ENGAGE innovation process starts with carefully defining a problem we want to solve (e.g., non-activist voters don't talk to their friends above voting). We use qualitative and quantitative research to deeply understand the system in which the problem occurs and the behavioral barriers individuals face. Then we generate potential designs, test and refine prototypes, and run evaluations to gauge their effectiveness. Ultimately we create refined tactics with best practices that can be adopted by community groups, voter engagement nonprofits, and campaigns throughout the progressive movement!

Responsibilities

Your work will touch every stage of the ENGAGE process. Your exact responsibilities will depend on your experience, skills, and interests, and the team's needs. Activities may include:

Working with research team members to design, execute, and analyze qualitative research: interviews, focus groups, observation, and user experience research.

• Participating in design work in collaboration with researchers, voters, community leaders, organizers, campaigns, and partner organizations. You'll help refine ideas and iterate on low- and high-fidelity prototypes, so we can learn quickly from both failures and successes. 
• Supporting quantitative research by helping design and monitor field trials and collecting, cleaning, and analyzing large, messy data sets

Staying up-to-date with the latest research and best practices in behavioral science and political campaigns. Helping develop presentations and written materials to share findings and recommendations with teammates, partners, and funders.

Questions your work might answer:

• What stops people from talking to voter registration canvassers? 
• What’s the best way of retaining campaign volunteers cycle after cycle?
• How can we get more people to sign up to vote by mail for every election?  
• Why do voters who regularly vote in Presidential elections not always vote in Midterm elections?

Who we're looking for

This is an entry-level or early-career position with substantial support from more senior team members and opportunities for growth and development. If you are eager to make an impact through behavioral science research and designing new voter engagement tactics, please apply even if you don't meet every bullet point in the sections below.

A successful candidate will be: 

• Excited about bringing together the strengths of design research, behavioral science, quantitative methods, and political organizing to design and field-test voter engagement innovations.
• Able to flexibly move between rigorous, precise research and fast, scrappy problem-solving to suit the needs of the moment.
• Skilled at communicating research insights and scientific concepts to both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Willing to travel up to 5 times per year for field research, design workshops, or meetings (with advance notice and some flexibility on dates).
• Excited about learning and growing in the behavioral design field!

Key skills and experience:

• Bachelor’s degree 
• Some kind of experience designing or analyzing qualitative research methods such as surveys, interviews, and/or focus groups
• 1-4 years of experience in ANY (not all!) of the following areas:
• User research, human-centered design, behavioral science, or a related field
• Political campaigns or organizing
• Statistical methods (at the level of linear regression) using R or Stata

Helpful but not required:

• Knowledge of core behavioral science principles such as heuristics and biases, "nudges", and persuasion
• Experience working for a political campaign or voter engagement nonprofit
• Basic knowledge of randomized controlled trials and experimental design
• Basic skills in SQL, R or python programming, or cloud management 

Reasons to love this role

• The Research Team plans and executes hand-in-hand with our partner-facing teammates. We ensure that we're learning from organizations working on the ground, and that we're creating the innovations and answers they need for this moment.  
• Sustainable work culture: We support team members in finding work schedules that fit their lives, we offer generous PTO, and we're dedicated to making sure you can truly disconnect during your time off. Expect work to be intense during the lead-up to the elections, and then to have plenty of time to rest and recover afterwards. 

Compensation and benefits

• Compensation: $66,300 - $85,860 annually depending on experience
• Benefits: Choose from a variety of fully employer-subsidized vision, dental, and medical HMO or PPO plans. We also offer partially subsidized coverage for spouses and dependents. In addition, we offer generous paid family medical/parental leave.
• Retirement: We offer a 401k plan. After three months of service, Vote Rev will contribute an amount equal to 6% of your salary every month, no employee contribution required. 
• Paid time off: Employees accrue 1.5 days of PTO per month, up to a maximum of 18 days of PTO. In addition, all federal holidays, a summer break ( July 1 - July 5, 2024), a winter break ( December 23, 2024 - January 1, 2025), and every Friday after election day through the end of 2024 are company holidays.
• Flexible work location: For candidates in NYC, we encourage hybrid home / office work (e.g., 2 days/week in the office). Most days coming to the office is optional but you can be there as frequently as you want. 

Timeline

We aim to close this application by May 24. Applications are reviewed as they come in, so you may be notified whether or not you are moving forward before the application closing date. If we receive a high volume of applications we may close the application sooner than May 24. The steps in the process are:

• Resume and application questionnaire screen: This step is to establish the baseline for candidates we will advance through the process.
• Case study: An at-home assignment that you are expected to take less than 2 hours to complete. This gives us a chance to see how you think and see an example work product.
• Initial interview: This will be a 30-minute conversation with a member of the Vote Rev team, and might include answering scenario-based questions.
• Final interviews: Applicants will be called back for a set of final-round interviews with other members of the Vote Rev team. This will require up to three hours during business hours. 
• References: We will ask for three professional or personal references for our top one or two candidates to learn more about working with them.
• Job offer: We provide our best and final offer in terms of compensation, which will be within the salary band shown in the job description. We base our offer on the number of years of relevant study and work experience and where that fits within our internal salary leveling system. We do not negotiate salary or other benefits due to research finding that introducing opportunities to negotiate results in pay disparities that are not correlated with competency. 

We expect to make an offer no later than June 21, with a preference for a start date shortly after the offer is accepted. 

About the organization

Vote Rev is a PAC that designs and quickly mainstreams field-tested voter engagement innovations to help Democrats win. Its sister organization, Vote Rev Action Fund (VRAF), works with and for nonprofits that amplify the power of historically disenfranchised communities. The two organizations design prototypes of new voter and civic engagement tactics, refine early-stage but promising ideas, and then stress test those ideas, subjecting them to randomized controlled trials. Through this work, they develop new tactics to mobilize hard-to-reach voters and boost turnout. Vote Rev and Vote Rev Action Fund  – with a shared staffing structure where each team member dedicates a portion of their time to each entity – support progressive campaigns and nonprofit organizations, respectively, to help them implement these tactics at scale through end-to-end support services.

In 2020 (when we were known as “VoteTripling.org”), Vote Rev and VRAF released polling place vote tripling (PPVT) — an in-person relational voter engagement tactic — and trained dozens of partners on it, including the Biden-Harris campaign. Vote Rev’s partners' 94,000 canvasser-hours of PPVT produced 1,100,000 friend-to-friend reminders to vote – 5x as many as the official Biden campaign app! PPVT was featured in The Washington Post, The New Yorker, and The New York Times.

Since then, we’ve designed and tested other simple and powerful tactics, including site-based vote tripling (SBVT) (formerly known as high-traffic on-the-spot (HTOTS) relational turnout), an in-person, second-generation PPVT done at non-polling place high-traffic sites. In 2022, campaigns and allied organizations using PPVT and SBVT produced 450K relational reminders — and during the 2022 Georgia Senate Runoff, VRAF ran a lightning-fast randomized trial of SBVT that proved its effectiveness at boosting turnout and mobilizing hard-to-reach voters. 

In 2024, we’ll boost over ten thousand net votes through Vote Rev’s work mainstreaming these tactics to Democratic campaigns and allied organizations, and VRAF’s work mainstreaming them to nonpartisan civic engagement organizations!

Vote Rev and VRAF are based in Los Angeles, CA, with an additional office in downtown Brooklyn, NY, and employees nationwide. We are dedicated to creating an organization that reflects the diversity of the country we serve. We strongly encourage women, people of color, and others who are underrepresented in campaigns and voter engagement nonprofits to apply.

Given campaign finance restrictions, candidates for this position must possess valid work authorizations, and cannot be foreign nationals. This means that we are legally prohibited from hiring anyone for this position who is not a US citizen, lawful permanent resident (green card holder), or DACA recipient. We are not able to sponsor work visas. By applying to this role, you are acknowledging that you are a U.S. Citizen, DACA recipient, or current Legal Permanent Resident.

Requirements for the organization

• Commitment to the mission of the organization to design and quickly mainstream field-tested voter engagement innovations that amplify the power of historically disenfranchised communities
• Commitment to understand and actively oppose racism and promote equity 
• Commitment to working with and for teams of diverse individuals, and, to reducing disparities in whose voice is heard in the electoral space
• Demonstrated awareness of one’s own cultural identity and ability to build relationships and collaborate across lines of difference

Application Instructions

Women, Black and Indigenous People of Color, People with Disabilities, and LGBTQIA+ people are strongly encouraged to apply. Applications will only be accepted electronically.

• OPTIONAL: Please listen to this podcast to familiarize yourself with our work, and also visit www.voterev.org/media for more resources if you are interested.
• Fill out the application form on this page.
• You will be asked to provide information about yourself, a resume, and to answer some questions in lieu of a cover letter.
• Do not submit a cover letter. 

Given campaign finance restrictions, candidates for this position must possess valid work authorizations, and cannot be foreign nationals. This means that we are legally prohibited from hiring anyone for this position who is not a US citizen, lawful permanent resident (green card holder), or DACA recipient. We are not able to sponsor work visas. By applying to this role, you are acknowledging that you are a U.S. Citizen, DACA recipient, or current Legal Permanent Resident.

MANDATORY COVID-19 VACCINATION POLICY

Vote Rev Action Fund is committed to protecting our employees and our communities from COVID-19. Toward that goal, and in consideration of guidance released by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and various public health authorities and professional organizations, Vote Rev Action Fund has implemented a mandatory COVID-19 vaccination policy for its employees.

All employees must be fully vaccinated and boosted (once eligible) for COVID-19 as a term and condition of employment at Vote Rev Action Fund unless an exemption or deferral has been approved. Individuals are considered fully vaccinated two weeks after they get their second dose of a messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccine, such as Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna, or two weeks after a single dose of the Janssen/Johnson & Johnson vaccine. If you received the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna COVID-19 vaccines, you are eligible to get a booster at least 5 months after completing your primary COVID-19 vaccination series. If you received the Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen COVID-19 vaccine, you are eligible to get a booster at least 2 months after receiving your J&J/Janssen COVID-19 vaccination.

New employees must be fully vaccinated before their start date unless an exemption due to a medical condition or a sincerely held religious belief or practice is granted.