About Acacia Center for Justice:

The Acacia Center for Justice (“Acacia”) provides legal support and representation to immigrants facing deportation through the development, coordination, and management of national networks of legal services providers serving immigrants across the country. Acacia’s goals are twofold: to support immigrant legal services and defense networks to provide exceptional legal services to immigrants; and to advocate for the expansion of these programs and the infrastructure critical to guaranteeing immigrants access to justice, fairness, and freedom. Acacia ensures accountable, independent, zealous, and person-centered legal services and representation to protect the rights of all immigrants.Job Summary:

This position will largely provide support to the program team for the Unaccompanied Children Program (UCP) that coordinates the delivery of legal support, throughout the U.S., to unaccompanied migrant children who are undergoing proceedings in the immigration court system. UCP is funded by a contract from the Department of Health and Human Services and administered through the Office of Refugees and Resettlement (ORR). The Data Engineer will be responsible for establishing a deep understanding of existing infrastructure, and both maintaining and continuing to develop solutions that will enable Acacia to effect change through data-informed insights, research, and interventions. The Data Engineer will iteratively progress toward the implementation of an ideal solution while accommodating the demands of an applied research setting by creating and supporting systems and processes for collecting, compiling,

manipulating, and analyzing data. The Data Engineer may be responsible for realizing new infrastructure dependent upon programmatic development.

Primary Duties/Responsibilities:

Design and Support for Data Systems and Flows

• Create and support systems and processes for collecting, compiling, manipulating, and analyzing data to support Acacia’s program & research, which includes:
• Working with the Acacia Research Evaluation and Data Analytics (REDA) team and program management staff to identify and solve data ingestion, migration, management, and integration challenges.
• Design data models and set up data environments to support reporting and analysis.
• Build and test data ingestion, migration, and ETL processes.
• Automate processes and schedule jobs within the data environment.
• Write documentation of systems and processes for collaboration within CIJ’s research and programs.

Data Security

• Ensure data ecosystems are security compliant and properly integrated with Acacia’s IT systems where applicable.
• Work closely with IT to ensure compliance and integration of systems.

Internal collaboration and support

• Partner with Acacia REDA and program staff to provide technical and data analytics/coding support as needed.

Required Skills, Knowledge, Abilities:

• Experience collaborating directly with data scientists and data analysts who develop analyses in any combination of R, Python, SQL, Tableau, Stata, etc.
• Working knowledge of AWS data product ecosystem (S3, Redshift, Lamda, Sagemaker, Comprehend).
• Prior experience designing and developing data models, building out and testing ETL data pipelines, and automating scheduled workflows using technologies including pipeline orchestrators (preference for Apache Airflow, AWS Lamda, AWS Glue, and dbt), GitHub Actions, SQL, and Python.
• Fluency in collaborating with Git and GitHub, with dedication to using these tools to conduct peer code reviews and uphold coding standards.
• High comfort level with ingesting messy source datasets that are prone to manual data entry errors and integrating these into a live database.
• Ability to build repeatable and well-documented processes and tools that can be used by other research and analytics team members, regardless of the languages they use to perform their analyses.
• Ability to implement schema and data migrations to meet the evolving needs of the analytics environment.
• Experience making contributions to existing software projects, ability to read, understand, and extend highly interconnected code.
• Experience performing complex, multi-step transformations and aggregations in SQL
• Excellent oral and written communication skills, including ability to present and teach the use of data infrastructure to a range of audiences in a variety of formats, and work effectively on a large team to advance shared priorities.
• Strong social and emotional awareness with your team and external partners.

Preferred Skills, Knowledge, Abilities:

• Basic knowledge of project management mythologies, including Scrum and Agile, with experience using project management software (Asana, Trello, Click-up, Teamwork, etc).
• Experience with data-oriented Python libraries such as pandas, NumPy, or matplotlib.
• Experience with Jinja templating.
• Experience working with and designing/extending star schema data models.
• Comfort with CTEs, procedural SQL (PL/pgSQL), organizing and administrating database objects (schemas, tables, views, procedures) and their permissions.
• Experience with Linux and bash scripting.
• Experience with Docker and deploying Docker images.
• Experience with automating bespoke tasks (e.g. basic web scraping, using 3rd party APIs). Familiarity with government security compliance standards.
• Graduate level education and/or certification in data engineering, analytics, data science or another relevant field (machine learning, IT systems, etc.)

Education and Experience:

• Bachelor’s Degree or equivalent and/or certification in data engineering, analytics, data science or another relevant field (machine learning, IT systems, etc.).
• Advanced degree, if required, 4-7 years of relevant experience. In lieu of degree requirements, applicable work or life experience may be considered.

Additional Eligibility Requirements:

In accordance with federal contracts, a National Crime Information Center (NCIC) check is required for this position. While this is not a current hiring requirement, this position may require a US Federal security clearance.

Compensation and Benefits:Acacia has established an internal compensation philosophy that centers equity and pay transparency. The salary for this position is set at $96,000. The salary listed is just one component of Acacia’s total compensation package for employees. Supporting Acacia staff—both personally and professionally—is our priority.

• Medical/Dental/Vision- Some plans at $0 cost to the employee
• Employee Assistance Program
• 20 days per year of vacation time
• 12 days per year of sick time
• 5 personal days
• 4 organization-wide Wellness Days
• 11 observed holidays, including the last week of December.
• $2000 Professional Development Stipend
• Home office set-up stipend
• Internet Stipend
• 401k with 5% employer contribution, no employee participation required.
• Student loan repayment assistance.
• Gym Reimbursement

People of color and those who have been impacted by the criminal system and immigration system are strongly urged to apply. Acacia is deeply committed to race equality, inclusion and belonging and strives to create a work culture that recognizes everyone's unique lived experience.

To Apply:Submit your resume and cover letter through the Acacia Careers site. If you encounter technical issues or have accessibility needs, email your resume and cover letter to hiring@acaciajustice.org with Subject: ATTN: Human Resources / [Job Title], Acacia Center for Justice

Acacia Center for Justice 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.