We are not currently accepting applications for this position.

ProPublica is expanding the Local Reporting Network once more, and we’re looking for a designer/developer/journalist to join our award-winning news applications team for one year, starting on July 1.

The Local Reporting Network kicked off in 2018 to support local journalism by providing financial and editorial support for newsrooms doing investigative journalism across the country. In 2019, we expanded the project to support more newsrooms, including ones with a special emphasis on statehouse reporting. Now we’re expanding again, adding six more news organizations to do investigative projects as part of our network. The group will begin work on July 1 and continue for a year.

As a news apps developer, you’ll be collaborating with the local newsrooms that have been selected for the Local Reporting Network program to imagine, report out, design and develop graphics and news apps. You’ll also be teaching and coaching local newsrooms on how to find the elements that make great visual, interactive and data-driven stories, all while learning and growing yourself alongside the rest of the news apps and data team.

You’ll work closely with the local reporters and their news organizations, as well as the senior editors overseeing the project. And in every case, you’ll be involved from the very beginning of the work. From the beginning, too, you’ll also be partnering up with Lylla Younes, a news apps developer dedicated to the Local Reporting Network. She’s fantastic.

Does this sound like the kind of work you’d be excited to do? If so, you should consider applying.

As a news applications developer, here’s what you’ll do:

• Design and develop interactive graphics and news apps to hold the powerful accountable and have real impact on the public.
• Wrangle data, including FOIAing for it, scraping it, cleaning it, analyzing it and preparing it for publication.
• Interrogate databases to find trends, patterns and outliers.
• Bulletproof and spot-check data work done by other journalists on the team.
• Teach, guide and collaborate with local journalists across the country on how to best use, visualize and tell stories with local data.
• Work with the best news nerds on the planet on some of the biggest and most innovative projects in investigative and data journalism. ⚡

We’re looking for someone with:

• Experience designing and developing interactive graphics from scratch.
• Fluency in modern and widely supported front-end programming languages, like HTML/CSS and Javascript, and the libraries that go with them, like D3.js.
• Experience with data journalism, whether it’s scraping, cleaning or analyzing data in your favorite tool of choice, such as Python, SQL or R.
• Journalism experience, either locally or nationally, especially involving stories that shed light on injustices or that cover marginalized communities.
• Diligence, attention to detail and a love for making things.
• The self-discipline to work independently, as well as genuine eagerness to work with others. Everybody at ProPublica has their own superpower. We do our best work together.
• Ability to spin many plates. You’ll be working with a number of reporters across the country on different projects, potentially dealing with several different editors. You’ll need to stay organized, focused and proactive.
• A commitment to being a great colleague and respectful human being.

We are dedicated to improving our newsroom, in part by better reflecting the people we cover. (Here is a breakdown of our staff.)

We are committed to diversity and building an inclusive environment for people of all backgrounds and ages. And we are taking steps to meet that commitment. We especially encourage members of traditionally underrepresented communities to apply, including women, people of color, LGBTQ people and people with disabilities.

This job will be based in ProPublica’s offices in New York City. It is a one-year position. It’s full-time and includes benefits. Expect some travel.

What you should send us:

We cannot emphasize this enough: Great projects are the most important part of the application.

The application form will allow you to send us three projects from your portfolio, as well as give you the space to walk us through your own contributions to those projects. Take advantage of this to tell us everything you did, from behind-the-scenes wins you’re proud of to how you helped your colleagues.

Make sure to read the section above, titled “We’re looking for someone with,” because it’s also our evaluation criteria for the position. Use your projects and the rest of your application to show us that you’ve got the skills we’ve listed, or why the skills you have are the ones we actually need.

We know there may be great candidates reading this who may not fit into what we’ve described, or who have alternative skills — for example, anything from illustration to motion graphics to game design — that could bring a lot to this position. There also may be candidates who psych themselves out of applying even if they would be great at this job. If any of that describes you, please don’t hesitate to apply and tell us about yourself. There’s space in the application to tell us everything you bring to the table, and we look forward to reading it.

Interested? Use this form to apply. The last day to apply is Sunday, May 5 at 11:59 p.m. EDT. We’ll start reviewing applications right after.

Questions? Email [email protected]. Sisi (Hi! 👋🏼) is the editor of our news apps team, and this position will report to her.

No phone calls, please.