IT Ii: Data Analyst

In furthering the cause of tenant and housing justice in the Austin area, Building and Strengthening Tenant Action (BASTA) seeks a Data Analyst to join our team. BASTA, housed in Texas RioGrande Legal Aid (TRLA), builds tenant power by bringing underrepresented Austin renters into a housing justice movement fueled by tenant-led organizing, community education, and outreach. Our work is centered on dismantling the systems that prevent tenants from living in dignified and healthy homes.

BASTA achieves its mission through its teams: the BASTA Organizing Team (BOT), which forms tenants associations at multifamily properties in Austin and builds BASTA’s base; the BASTA Education & Arts Advocacy Team (BEAT), which engages allies to creatively educate Austin renters and the broader Austin community; the BASTA Citywide Advocacy and Policy team, which develops project-wide campaign priorities, trains our base on housing justice issues, and ensures that tenants are not left out of policy conversations; and the BASTA Legal Advocacy Team, which represents individual tenants and tenant organizations, and provides legal guidance to the other teams.

Position Description:

The Data Analyst will leverage the use of technology, data analysis, and software development to advance housing justice in Austin. The Data Analyst will create and maintain data pipelines and digital tools to support the BASTA team’s work related to both citywide advocacy efforts and property-specific campaigns.

The Data Analyst will maintain and expand BASTA’s existing data tools - such as our County-wide property and eviction databases, data collection forms, and external dashboards, and work with the other teams to build out new tools that can be used to target and bolster campaigns for property-level and citywide improvements.The Data Analyst will support the BASTA team in producing descriptive and interactive materials to make sense of data in plain language for both our team and the public and, as a member of the Citywide Advocacy and Policy team will play a key role in developing out our project’s citywide campaign priorities and evaluating our campaign’s efficacy.

The ideal candidate embraces the complexities and limitations of data recognizing, has a keen eye for details and recognizes the importance of accuracy, thrives in a collaborative team environment, is comfortable not always having a clear path and welcomes the messiness of an iterative process, and meets challenges with an excited curiosity, ready to brainstorm new approaches. This position will report to the Research & Policy Director.

Responsibilities

• Develop and maintain:
  • Digital tools to assist team members and the broader public in researching multi-family properties, including eviction dashboards, and a property research tool integrating multiple datasets;
  • Extract, transform, and load (ETL) pipelines for datasets across multiple platforms and end-user interfaces like Streamlit, Google Sheets, Looker Studio, and Salesforce;
  • Data collection tools that support efforts to track housing-related data, including eviction proceedings and outreach calls; and
  • Pipelines that aid in BASTA’s daily operations, connecting to other workflows that staff use like Google Sheets, Hustle, and Slack.
• Conduct analysis of collected data using statistical methods to inform and support BASTA campaigns.
• Work with team members to ensure information on housing trends, data, and technological tools are accessible to BASTA staff, the public, and the tenant community.
• Support the development of reports and presentations using key data findings and analysis.
• Identify and develop partnerships with academic institutions and volunteer organizations to expand BASTA’s analytics and research capacity.
• Keep up-to-date with emerging housing datasets, data tools and technologies.
• Represent BASTA in ally spaces, at events, and in student research projects.
• Occasionally support outreach efforts in the field to build and maintain understanding of BASTA’s core work.
• Any other duties assigned.

Required Qualifications:

• Commitment to social, economic, racial and language justice;
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills;
• Strong organizational and research skills;
• Detail-oriented;
• Ability to effectively multi-task, problem solve, work well with others under pressure, and creatively adapt as needed;
• Ability to work independently and as part of a team;
• Demonstrated strength in Python;
• Familiarity with web accessibility principles and user-centered design;
• Knowledge of SQL;
• Basic knowledge of cloud deployment architectures;
• Basic knowledge of statistical methods;
• Experience with Google Docs, Sheets and Slides or Microsoft equivalents;
• Bachelor’s degree; and
• Authorization to work in the United States.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Community engagement, movement, or grassroots organizing experience;
• In-depth knowledge of database design, preferably using PostgreSQL and PostGIS;
• Basic aptitude for geospatial data analysis;
• Experience in Google Looker Studio, Google BigQuery, and Google Cloud environments;
• Knowledge of advanced and computational methods of statistical inference;
• Proficiency in Salesforce use and development;
• Familiarity with Slack, Hustle, Miro, Toggl, Squarespace, and Canva; and
• Ability to work occasional evenings and weekends.