Investigative Data Engineer

<p><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; font-weight: bold">About Canada's National Observer</span></p> <p><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt"><em>Canada's National Observer </em>CNO) is an independent digital news site founded in 2015. CNO covers Canada's changing climate from newsrooms in Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, Montreal, and Ottawa, with more than 35,000 articles published. </span></p> <p><br></p> <p><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt">In 2025, CNO developed a reporting tool, Civic Searchlight.</span></p> <p><br></p> <p><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; font-weight: bold">About Civic Searchlight</span></p> <p><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt">Civic Searchlight is a daily-refreshed, searchable transcript database covering more than 600 Canadian municipal councils, with map and timeline views and direct links back to source video. It's used by journalists at every major media organization, as well as researchers, government departments, universities and advocacy groups, and has already been nominated for some of Canada’s most prestigious journalism prizes — including the National Newspaper Award for Innovation in Journalism and the CJF-Hinton Prize for AI Safety Reporting. </span></p> <p><br></p> <p><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; font-weight: bold">Job Description</span></p> <p><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt">We are looking to supercharge Civic Searchlight with new capabilities, and we need someone with the data skills to deliver them. This will require a high level of familiarity with software development and data engineering.</span></p> <p><br></p> <p><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt">This job will involve a great deal of collaboration with our Technology and Democracy reporter, our Technical Lead and our editor-in-chief, all of whom are responsible for different sides of Civic Searchlight, so people skills will serve you well.</span></p> <p><br></p> <p><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; font-weight: bold">Key Responsibilities</span></p> <ul> <li><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt">Develop and maintain features for our flagship application Civic Searchlight for investigative journalism and other use cases</span></li> <li><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt">Discover new data sources and build pipelines to integrate them with existing infrastructure</span></li> <li><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt">Implement rigorous monitoring and testing procedures so the database stays reliable as coverage grows</span></li> <li><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt">Help build new tools on top of the database, including improved search, alerts, automated summaries and AI-assisted features</span></li> <li><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt">Contribute to architectural decisions as we move from prototype-scale to production infrastructure</span></li> </ul> <p><br></p> <p><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; font-weight: bold">What we’re looking for</span></p> <ul> <li><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt">Strong data engineering skills, including designing and maintaining pipelines from messy sources</span></li> <li><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt">Experience with Python, Javascript, Svelte and SQL</span></li> </ul> <ul> <li><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt">Experience with automated testing and continuous integration</span></li> <li><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt">Comfortable developing collaboratively using git</span></li> <li><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt">Resourceful – willing to take initiative and dig into unfamiliar problems with a track record of getting them done</span></li> <li><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt">A bigger-picture thinker who can connect engineering decisions to journalistic and public-interest outcomes</span></li> <li><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt">Bonus: experience with speech-to-text models, LLMs, cloud infrastructure</span></li> </ul> <p><br></p> <p><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 14pt; font-weight: bold">Preferred start date </span><span style="font-size: 14pt">June 8, 2026</span></span></p> <p><br></p> <p><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; font-weight: bold">How to apply</span></p> <p><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt">Please submit your resume to the Bamboo HR link and respond to the four questions.</span></p> <p><br></p> <p><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt">We look forward to hearing from you.</span></p>

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