The European Climate Foundation (ECF) was founded in 2008 as a major philanthropic initiative to help tackle climate change by fostering the development of a low-carbon society at the national, European and global level.

We support over 500 partner organisations to carry out activities that contribute to the public debate on climate action, drive urgent and ambitious policy in support of the objectives of the Paris Agreement and help deliver a socially responsible transition to a net-zero emissions economy and sustainable society in Europe and around the world.

As towns, cities and countries around the world declare climate emergencies, seas rise, forests burn, glaciers melt, increasing numbers of people take to the streets demanding urgent action and our societies begin to wake up to what the science has been saying for many years, there has never been a more important time to be working on climate change.

The ECF brings together diverse perspectives and backgrounds to find the best innovative solutions to tackle climate change. We are focusing on engaging and hiring great people from a wide diversity of backgrounds to strengthen the cause. If you share our values of respect, innovation, and collaboration, join us.

The strategic communications unit at ECF is looking for someone with strong data engineering and data science skills. They must be interested in finding novel ways to measure media coverage and public discourse around climate change, while also being able to build the data collection systems needed to achieve that goal.

The Data Engineer (MEL) needs to be familiar with methods for continuously gathering and analyzing data. This is a role for someone with a deep intellectual curiosity about the world, as well as the ability to teach themselves new skills and create their own tools. They should be excited about building end-to-end infrastructure from scratch, along with conducting data analysis.

Consider the following questions: how has the public debate around climate change shifted in the past five years? Why do some stories go viral across media markets, while others don’t? And what climate-related topics bridge across, or further reinforce, polarization in our society?

Questions like these are often examined on a longer time scale in academia. This role will ask the same questions, but focus on producing rapid, actionable, real-world analysis. That analysis will inform the strategy and daily activities of the strategic communications team and a wide range of partners around the world.

Key responsibilities

• Create bespoke data systems for collecting and organizing large volumes of media coverage and social media content drawn from APIs and other databases; potentially build up ETL pipelines

• Develop and deploy scrapers for data from web sources, and processes to deal with raw data that contains human, machine or system errors

• Conduct analyses of that data such as social network analysis, text mining, sentiment analysis and other NLP approaches

• Collaborate with the MEL Manager as well as a global strategic communications team to identify useful hypotheses to test, along with the data sources needed to do so

• Create dashboards, visualizations and other tools that help media, policy and advocacy practitioners and partners make better strategic decisions

• Contribute to the expansion of a data-driven learning culture within the global strategic communications team

This role is ideal for an intermediate-level data engineer with 3-7 years of experience and training in data science, software development or a related field. The ideal candidate has:

• Interest in climate change, news media, politics and social movements

• Insatiable curiosity about the world and the ability to teach yourself new skills

• Experience in locating and managing data; this includes database management (SQL), data cleansing, web scraping, working with APIs, etc.

• Demonstrated knowledge of appropriate programming languages (R, Python, etc.)

• Experience with machine learning and statistical computation such as natural language processing, network analysis, clustering, sentiment analysis, etc.

• Experience with data visualization platforms (Tableau, Plotly, Flourish, Data Studio, etc.)

• Experience with social listening and media monitoring platforms is a plus (Talkwalker, Meltwater, Factiva, LexisNexis, Crimson Hexagon / Brandwatch, etc.)

• Training or experience in social science research, survey analysis or campaign evaluation is a plus

• The ability to flourish in a fast-paced and independent work environment, and to work nimbly across phone/video conferencing, Slack, and multiple time zones

• Excellent command of the English language (both spoken and written) with additional languages as a plus

• The disposition to work generously with colleagues in a high-trust global community of peers

• A commitment to an inclusive and empowering approach to facing climate change

What we offer

• The unique opportunity to work as part of a highly dynamic, international group of individuals who combine their passion to make a difference with a rigorous and results-oriented approach to work

• A flexible work environment and a space to develop and challenge yourself

• A full-time position with a consultant or employment contract (subject to location) for 12 months, with a possible renewal after one year

Location

Flexible, with time zones in Europe, Africa or the Americas preferred.

Some international travel will be required. We may be able to provide co-working spaces in some locations.

Only candidates with the right to work in their location will be considered.

Start date

As soon as possible

How to apply

Please upload below:

1. CV

2. short cover letter expressing your motivation for this role

3. both in English!

Please note only shortlisted candidates will be contacted.

All applications will be treated confidentially. We will store your information in our internal database unless you specifically request otherwise.

We are committed to diversity and inclusion in our organisation. We strongly encourage candidates from historically disadvantaged or marginalised groups to apply.