Designer and Frontend Engineer at Center for International Development, Harvard Kennedy School

[Mali Akmanalp]

Hello!

We have two fulltime and on-site positions in Cambridge, MA for dataviz-oriented designers and frontend engineers. While the jobs are not purely about visualization, we're looking for designers and frontend engineers who have experience working on data and visualization heavy sites and projects. 

We're currently taking the summer "off" from client-based projects to focus on playing with some of our more pie-in-the-sky ideas and prototyping some of them! We would love for you to join us! If that sounds intriguing, please read on.

At CID, we study why certain countries seem to stagnate and others seem to develop successfully. We believe that the differences in development between countries can be explained by differences and changes in knowhow and capabilities. Countries with a lot of knowhow tend to grow faster, and countries with knowhow in one area tend to develop in closely related industries first (just as we predicted!). We try to observe and study these concepts in real world data (such as international trade data), and ask related questions: Does this hold true at the within-country level? Can we observe knowhow developing in a location over time? Is it possible to grow a new capabilities and industries in a country out of nowhere? Is there a way to predict the next best investment for a country?

We work with governments to do research on their interesting datasets, we build tools to visualize and open up that data to policymakers and the public, and sometimes to provide them with policy advice.

A recent example of a visualization tool we recently launched for the government of Colombia: http://www.datlascolombia.com/#/?locale=en-col

It's also all open source on github here: https://github.com/cid-harvard/

For more details on the positions, please see:

http://stackoverflow.com/jobs/116754/ui-ux-and-visualization-designer-growth-lab-center-for-international

http://stackoverflow.com/jobs/116574/front-end-web-developer-center-for-international

Please send work samples, resumes and cover letters to: cid at hks dot harvard dot edu - and it is helpful if you mention that you came through this post.

Thank you!

~Mali Akmanalp