Summer 2025 - Data Engineer Intern, Central Research

The Data Engineering Intern for the Research Department’s Central Data Science team at Vera is a summer opportunity for a college student, graduate student or recent grad to immerse themselves into working in a data role at non-profit organization. Their work will support the construction and maintenance of a centralized datastore and data ingestion/processing framework with plans to incorporate data in a central repository to support researchers who work with public and/or large-scale data in the national and place-based initiatives. The data engineering intern will participate in all day-to-day team activities, ranging from project and sprint planning, code review sessions, pair programming, social activities, and more. They will be directly mentored by a data engineer on the team, who will help train the intern on a range of responsibilities, including data collection, data modelling, automation, building data infrastructure, and ensuring data quality. In addition to day-to-day data tasks, the intern will focus on a project that they will work on over the course of their internship that is relevant to their interests and experience. This might involve helping to design and manage large-scale data infrastructure systems, creating computational frameworks, designing data models, or building new tools to empower our community partners or organization’s researchers to leverage and improve Vera’s existing repository of data. Depending on their interest, other day-to-day tasks could include exploratory analyses, analytical software development, web scraping, and producing data visualizations. What you'll do: Data ingestion Integrate new sources of criminal justice, immigration, and economics data into our internally collected data; clean, transform, organize, ensure quality Refactor existing web scrapers and data processes to new centralized infrastructure and frameworks Central data model construction Contribute code to building a central data model for unrestricted datasets Code review and codebase maintenance Help maintain existing codebase through reviewing requests Coordinate with data science staff to ensure consistency of datasets, naming conventions, code repository structure, etc. Other duties as assigned What qualifications are we looking for? Demonstrated proficiency working with data collection and processing in Python, with preference for experience using SQL and Python Pandas library. Proficiency developing code collaboratively using GitHub Commitment to advancing racial and gender equity in work Curiosity about emerging research and advocacy in the criminal justice space and/or immigration spaces Wrestles with creative and concrete ways to use data to shift power and advance equity and inclusion Preferred: Professional, personal or academic engagement with issues of mass incarceration and mass criminalization Experience working with Google Cloud Platform and its tools, including Airflow Location: Please note this role will report to our Brooklyn, New York; Washington, DC; New Orleans, LA; Los Angeles, CA office. Vera interns and employees adhere to a hybrid schedule and are in-office on an alternating schedule. Full-time positions generally amount to 10 days per month. Part-time positions generally amount to 5 days per month. Schedule: The intern should be available to work up to 35 hours per week during the summer. The dates will be between June 2nd and August 8th, with some flexibility to accommodate personal and academic schedules. Compensation: The compensation range for internships is $16.00 - $25.00 per hour. Actual compensation will vary depending on factors including but not limited to experience and performance. Applicants may choose to receive academic credit. For those who need to earn academic credit, Vera will gladly assist in working with the school or program to make arrangements and meet requirements.

The Vera Institute of Justice is powered by hundreds of advocates, researchers, and policy experts working to transform the criminal legal and immigration systems until they’re fair for all. Founded in 1961 to advocate for alternatives to money bail in New York City, Vera is now a national organization that partners with impacted communities and government leaders for change. We develop just, antiracist solutions so that money doesn’t determine freedom; fewer people are in jails, prisons, and immigration detention; and everyone is treated with dignity.