Location: New York,NY, USA
Position Summary
The Local News Lab is a product team at the Columbia University Journalism School's Brown Institute for Media Innovation, and we are focused on empowering local newsrooms and their communities. With funding from the Knight Foundation, we're embarking on a new phase of products and services development to help local newsrooms better understand and, through data-driven decision-making, better connect with their communities. Specifically, we're elevating the lab from an academic research project to an independent, mission-driven business aiming to transform local journalism. Think of it as a startup inside a university - we're hoping to match the enthusiasm, drive, and initiative that goes into creating a new venture.
We are looking for a software engineer who is passionate about doing thoughtful work to support local newsrooms and their communities. You'll do this by developing and maintaining high-quality technical infrastructure and tools grounded in a deep understanding of the needs of the people working in local newsrooms - from reporters to web developers to publishers - and the people in the communities they serve. Our approach includes a combination of cloud-based infrastructure (including AWS and GA4) and bespoke software tools. We are also building up our own organizational capacity with the goal of becoming a self-sustaining organization. So we're also looking for someone keen to help build out our team and organization.
This is an externally funded position with the continuation dependent on performance and available funding.
Our team is hybrid remote and in-person in New York City. We work out of a beautiful space in historic Pulitzer Hall, at Columbia University, and we believe in the power of in-person connection and collaboration. We're flexible in what this looks like on a given day or week, but over the long term, we believe it's essential for our team cohesion to meet in person frequently.
Responsibilities
Minimum Qualifications
Preferred Qualifications
Equal Opportunity Employer / Disability / Veteran
Columbia University is committed to the hiring of qualified local residents.