CIRCLE is seeking a graduate student level research assistant to support the CIRCLE Data Team with a national voter registration study and data-related work for the 2026 election season, as well as other data tasks on CIRCLE research projects. The person in this position would:
• Clean youth voter registration datasets
• Analyze national survey data on youth civic engagement
• Write blog-post style reports on data output
• Create simple data visualizations
• Review and check R code related to data cleaning, data merging, data storage, QA, and analysis,
• Build ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) pipelines Required qualifications, experiences, and skills include, but are not limited to:
• Undergraduate-level degree in data science, political science, or related social science field, and, either working towards a Master’s or PhD in those fields or significant work experience.
• Fluency in R and R Studio: i.e., must be able to write R code using well-known R packages such as tidyverse with zero or little help from the internet or AI.
• Proficiency with using Git and GitHub for storing and reviewing code. • Ability to analyze data and write blog post style reports on data outputs, including creating data visualizations.
Preferred qualifications:
• Basic knowledge or experience of working with voter files, voter registration data.
• Experience with Google BigQuery.
• Past professional experience in or coursework on analyzing survey data, including using weight variables and interpreting regression results.
• Ability to collaborate with colleagues and stakeholders (young people, organizers/practitioners, etc.) from diverse backgrounds, views, and positions.
• Willingness to forefront equity issues in data science and think about how issues of equity can be resolved while maintaining rigor.
