We're joining a national effort to bring more open data to mid-size American cities. To that end, we're looking an Open Data Project Lead with experience in using open data at the municipal level. Check out the job description here.
Continue readingSuper Committee, Boehner speech protests linked to major labor group
Our DC, a SEIU-linked protest group that stopped the first Super Committee meeting, has been regularly delivering a pro-jobs message to congressional Republicans: with some 100 protesters outside House Speaker John Boehner's speech at the Economic Club of Washington yesterday, according to organizers, who said the protest was in support of the American Jobs Act.
Last Tuesday, it organized a protest at the first meeting of the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, the so-called the Super Committee.
“Jobs! Now!” about 25 unemployed or underemployed protesters shouted outside the room, bringing the meeting to a brief halt. “Jobs! Now ...
Continue readingSunlight Live to cover Rick Perry’s debate debut in California
With a new face officially in the mix, eight Republican candidates will take the stage again next week to spar about the economy, jobs, budget deficit and more at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation & Library in Simi Valley, Calif.
It will mark the first debate for Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who joined the race in August just as former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty threw in the towel. Several of the latest polls now show Perry on the top of the pack, outshining Mitt Romney, who has led the group for several months.
Sunlight Live will cover the debate starting at ...
Continue readingData Visualization Fellowship
We've got a new job listing up, and I hope you'll have a look. If you do, you'll see that we're doing something new. This position came about because we decided that we wanted to create more and better data visualizations -- they're interesting, people like them, and they're a great opportunity to experiment with new technologies.
But as we started thinking through how to staff this position, we realized we didn't really want someone who was an expert in d3, or processing.js, or any other presentation technology. Don't get me wrong: finding someone with those skills for this position would be great. But we already have a bunch of talented front-end developers and designers. I think we can present answers in beautiful and compelling ways; what I could really use are better questions.
So, like I said, we're looking for something a little different. The listing says "quantitative social scientist," but you could easily substitute the "data scientist" buzzword that the tech industry seems to be embracing. Whatever you call it, what we're looking for boils down to this: we need someone with the ability to understand the questions that can reasonably be asked of our data; someone who knows the questions that people have asked of the data in the past; and who is be able to find some decent answers of her own. At Sunlight, those questions are likely to be about the U.S. government and the entities that try to influence it. Once you've got an interesting answer, we'll throw all the Javascript and CSS at it that you could ever want.
So please have a look, and if you know folks who you think would be a good fit, pass the link along to them. And if you yourself are thinking about applying, please don't be scared off by the specific requirements -- they describe what we think an ideal candidate would be, but we know that we're likely to find some surprises. This fellowship is a bit of an experiment for us, but I'm excited about the possibilities it represents.
Continue readingCome Work Here!
One of the few downsides to working with incredibly talented people is that other folks are constantly trying to hire them away. Worse, sometimes they even succeed! This has just happened, in fact. But while we're very sorry to have lost Josh and Kevin to (some admittedly amazing) new opportunities, there is a bright side: the chance to bring some new brilliant technologists into the Labs fold.
So! Please direct your attention to our jobs page. There you'll find two listings for developers in our Washington, D.C. offices. We're looking for someone to lend a hand on the Subsidyscope project, and another dev to serve as a jack/jill-of-all-trades working on a variety of technical projects. But while one of the two positions will have a specific project responsibility, prospective candidates should understand that all labs members have the opportunity and obligation to work on a variety of different things.
Who should apply? More than anything, we're looking for people who are passionate about improving our government, excited about technology's capacity for doing so, and who are interested in digging into some genuinely tough problems. You can find some of the specific technologies we use in the job descriptions, but if you're a smart, creative technologist, don't let, say, a background with Couch instead of Mongo dissuade you from applying.
It really is a pretty great place to work. The compensation's competitive, the work environment's relaxed, and the opportunities for doing exciting, important work are tremendous.
Continue readingSummer Jobs at Sunlight Labs
While we're participating in Google's Summer of Code, we're also looking for some great developers to come spend some time learning the ins-and-outs of public datasets over the course of the summer.
If you're a student who wants to pick up great skills-- learning how to scrape and transform data, learning how to research and verify data's accuracy or learning how to architect big-but-not-very-big datasets, or if you're a super engineer who just wants to give back this summer, we'd be happy to talk to you.
Here are our four Sunlight Labs summer slots:
Continue readingRecovery.gov recipient data just in
Recovery.gov posted information today showing that 30,383 jobs have been created or saved by the federal contracts that have been awarded through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. So far, $16 billion has been disbursed by 9,100 contracts. The federal government is spending more than $525,000 spent on every job they saved or created.
The release covers just a sliver of stimulus spending: Most recovery money is in the form of grants and loans to the states; data from that spending--including recipient and jobs data--will be available at the end of October. So far, federal contracts ...
Continue readingWhere are the Government Web Developers?
Where are the web developers in Government?
Are you a web developer who works for a non-defense related federal agency? Not a contractor, but actually employed by the Executive Branch of Government? If so, I'd like to meet you. Because I'm beginning to think you don't exist. USAJobs tends to agree with me, too. From what I'm able to gather, the entire federal government is hiring a total of 6 "IT Support Specialists," which look like cleverly disguised network administration jobs and "off the shelf software management" jobs.
To be specific, what I'm looking for is:
- A web developer (Someone who knows Python, ASP.NET, PHP, Django, Ruby on Rails, alongside HTML and CSS)
- Who doesn't work for a contracting firm, but is instead employed directly as a full time employee by a federal agency who
- Builds user facing federal websites, and
- Does not work for defense related agencies.
I've met strategists, managers, new media directors, bloggers, even "architects," but not a single developer. I've met lots of government contractors who work as developers as virtual FTEs for the Government. And granted, I don't have much contact with the Department of Defense-- I'm sure deep within that organization there are developers building software for the government that keeps us safe. But outside of defense, are there any? Do they exist? I've asked around, and nobody can seem to point me in the right direction.
If you know of any, point me in the right direction, and let me know why they seem so rare in the comments.
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