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Democrats, Organizing for America Look to Grow Tech Squad

BY Nancy Scola | Tuesday, July 7 2009

Republican National Committee new media director Todd Herman announced at last week's PdF '09 that the GOP will have a new web presence up and running at GOP by mid-August, but the Democratic Party and its Organizing for America wing aren't waiting around to see what Herman et al come up with on the online and data fronts. The DNC and OFA have announced that they are expanding their tech operation with hiring in nine positions, including engineers in their fairly new "Innovation Labs." The available positions:

  • New Media Analytics Engineer: "Responsible for analyzing past and present user response to the organization's e-mails and web site, optimizing the organization's online presence, and helping to develop analytics reporting tools."
  • Front-end Web Developer / Information Architect: "Own the information architecture and interaction design for both BarackObama.com and Democrats.org."
  • Innovation Labs Engineer: "Innovations Labs is a new team in the Technology Department that will create new tools in collaboration with departments across the DNC, within the Democratic Party, and with Organizing for America."
  • Senior Data Analyst: "Will work with the DNC Data Team to regularly update VoteBuilder, the DNC's national voter file."
  • Junior Data Analyst: Same as above.
  • Analytics Manager: "Will work with the data team to develop new national models for the voter file based on new and existing data sets, as well as any state-specific or national political microtargeting projects."
  • Senior Systems Administrator: "Part of a team responsible for creating and maintaining infrastructure for Democrats.org and associated internal and external applications, and coordinating application deployment and testing with the development team."
  • Junior Systems Administrator: Same as above.
  • Desktop Support Associate: "Responsible for configuring and maintaining desktop computer hardware, software, connectivity, and inventory. Needs to work closely with IS staff, end users, and independently on maintenance."

With warning that "this isn’t a 9-5 sort of job," the DNC and OFA indicate they have thier eyes open for people with highly-developed tech chops who are also "passionate about engaging millions of Americans in advancing President Obama's agenda and changing the country." (Among the required skills for the various positions are comfortability with things like Ruby, Git, SQL, and SAS.) The application for the DNC and OFA tech jobs can be completed here.

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