Job Title: Accountant I

Department / Reporting To: Betsy Spore, Director of Finance and Accounting

FLSA Status (exempt, non-exempt): Non-Exempt

Description

The Accountant I is expected to consistently provide high quality and innovative work to Education Analytics. The Accountant I will be responsible for accounts payable, accounts receivable backup, general ledger entries, documents related to expenses, accounting data management, billing, database reporting, month-end close, data entry, reconciliations, payroll administration and bank account management. This position will also provide assistance with the annual audit.

Duties and Responsibilities

• Assist in general ledger entries
• Review and prepare invoices for customer delivery
• Accounts payable (including uploading receipts for employee reimbursements and credit card transactions into the Expensify employee expense reporting system)
• Accounts receivable (including invoicing and recording cash journal entries)
• Review payroll entries and calculate manual payroll changes.
• Review state tax notices and report to ADP
• Complete monthly soft close
• Generate 1099s and W2s as needed
• General ledger review and documentation.
• Assist with monthly financial reporting.
• Assist with updating policies, procedures, and controls
• Assist with the annual audit
  
  

Education and Experience

• Requires at least two years of experience as a bookkeeper or accountant
• Experience using ERP System or another accounting software and Microsoft Office (especially Excel) is required

Knowledge/Skills/Abilities

• Knowledge of Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP)
• Strong organizational skills
• Strong communication skills
• Ability to work with a moderate amount of direct supervision
• Warm, professional interpersonal skills
• Excellent human relations and oral communication skills
• Attention to detail

Travel Requirements

• No travel is required

NOTE:This job description is not intended to be all-inclusive. Employee may perform other related duties as requested to meet the ongoing needs of the organization.

Analytics Engineer / Data Engineer

Education Analytics strives to deliver sophisticated, research-informed analytics to educators and school administrators to support their work in improving student outcomes. To support them best, the data they receive must be accurate, up to date, secure, and easily accessible. The person in this role will be a critical team member who helps to make that a reality.

We are seeking a full-time Data Engineer or Analytics Engineer to lead the design, build, and maintenance of automated data pipelines and analytic systems. An ideal candidate has strong SQL skills and experience with data warehousing concepts, familiarity with complex data integration and/or analysis, and an interest in improving K-12 education.

This role supports the timely delivery of data and analytics to educators and administrators who use this data to drive change and improvement in education. We are looking for candidates who are innovative, hard-working, and curious to help us continue to develop our team's capacity in the development and use of cutting-edge tools. Our team is consistently evaluating tools for new projects and looking for the best tools for the job. Our current stack uses an ELT approach via Apache Airflow and dbt to create data warehouses in Snowflake or Postgres, depending on the scale of the data. These posts illustrate some projects that members of our team might work on.

• https://www.edanalytics.org/blog/introducing-enable-data-union-an-open-framework-for-analytics-and-data-warehousing-with-ed-fi-data
• https://enabledataunion.org/
• https://www.edanalytics.org/blog/building-a-multi-source-analytics-database-to-support-teachers-during-covid-19
• https://www.edanalytics.org/blog/turning-public-data-into-custom-insights-how-ea-has-built-a-public-data-platform-for-our-partners

Responsibilities

• Lead the design and implementation of data warehousing structures for research, analytics, and reporting/dashboarding
• Apply best practices from software engineering to data pipelines
• Help implement code testing, continuous integration, and deployment strategies to ensure system reliability
• Design and implement complex pipelines to integrate data coming from a mix of APIs, flat files, or other database sources
• Develop and improve internal tools and systems to efficiently deliver high-quality, actionable metrics
• Work collaboratively within a team of analysts, school system leaders, and other engineers to create analytics solutions that are scalable, easy to maintain, and support high quality research
• Explore and apply new cutting-edge tools to drive innovation across a variety of projects

Qualifications

• Experience architecting data warehouse and data lake structures that are intuitive and performant
• Knowledge of best design practices in modern cloud-based data warehouses
• Experience designing, implementing, and maintaining modern ELT pipelines with a clean code-base
• Fluency in SQL, experience with Python and Linux.
• Knowledge of software engineering best practices, particularly in team-based development using Git
• Ability to proactively identify and defend against potential data quality & processing issues

Bonus Skills:

• Experience with cloud-based columnar data warehouses (Snowflake, RedShift, BigQuery)
• Experience with Data Build Tool (dbt)
• Experience with Apache Airflow, or other modern data pipeline systems
• Desire to work with cutting edge tools in a fast-paced environment
• Familiarity with AWS tooling and best practices

Hiring Process

1. Hiring team reviews resumes and cover letters
2. Selected candidates invited to 30-minute interview with Data Engineering team managers to discuss skills and experience alignment
3. Selected candidates invited for full day final interview. Candidates are sent a skills exercise in advance that will be discussed in the interview. This doesn’t require any coding, it’s about concepts and planning of data systems, and doesn’t require any pre-submitted work. In addition to discussing the exercise, there will be another approximately 2-3 hours of interviews to meet other Data Engineering team members and key members of other teams and to help candidates learn more about Education Analytics & the role.

How you will successfully onboard in this role

In your first few weeks, you will work through a training exercise our team has developed that familiarizes our new hires with our development setup & tooling, and join team meetings and 1-1 check-ins. From there, you will likely work on 1-2 projects and begin joining project meetings to gain familiarity with the context of the work we do. Next you will start to take on smaller tasks in those projects, and by 3-6 months in, begin to take the lead on larger initiatives.

Additional details

The weekly hour expectation is 45 hours per week, and nights and weekends are sometimes required. Our preference is for candidates to primarily work from EA’s office in Madison, WI.

About us: Education Analytics is a non-profit organization that uses data analysis to inform education policy decisions. We work with school districts, regional offices of education, non-profits, and policymakers to identify ways to make education systems better.

Benefits:

· Competitive salary

· Annual merit bonuses

· Paid holidays and one month of paid vacation per year

· Generous 401k and health benefits

· Parental leave benefit of up to 26 weeks of paid leave

· Free Madison Metro transit pass or subsidized office parking

· Casual office environment

· Location right in the heart of downtown Madison, WI

Education Analytics is committed to creating a diverse environment and is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, disability, age, or veteran status.

Education Analytics (EA) is a national non-profit organization that supports states, districts, and other non-profits as they learn to enhance their ability to leverage data, analytics, and scientific research to improve student outcomes. We have a staff of around 85 technologists, scientists, and strategists all focused on improving district and state support nationwide in this new field of data science. Our current organizational strategy relies on decreasing the cost of complex data flows and increasing the usability of data systems and applications for on-the-ground use as the complexity of these data explodes. We work shoulder to shoulder with our district and state partners to make sure they have the highest levels of support when taking on these new challenges.

The Interoperability Support Specialist position will focus on ensuring project and product success for our partners and for EA as an organization. This role, interfaces with everyone involved in each project, particularly with project partners and the engineering and interoperability teams. The position requires a mix of analytical, communication, technical, and strategic project management skills to meet the challenges of using data and analysis in the complex environment of schools and districts and state education organizations.

This position will collaborate with technical leads on our engineering and interoperability teams to implement products in the full technology stack. Tasks include but are not limited to the following:

• Building and supporting onboarding processes for Cloud Engineering and/or Data Engineering teams.
• Tier 1 and 2 supports for partners using full tech stack services and products.
• Write and maintain documentation for team processes.
• Work with technical managers and project managers to build practice and process to support partners throughout the product journey.

Projects that this position will drive relate to our foundational goal of automating data systems and analytics to increase utility to educators. This position will need to have expertise in data collection and systems (sample projects). We work with partners to support the timely and secure delivery of data and analytics to educators and administrators. Experience in working with the Ed-Fi data standard is a plus as Ed-Fi is an open-source technology specifically built for education (read more about Ed-Fi here).

Hybrid/remote candidates will be considered for this position with periodic paid travel to headquarters and to partner locations.

Duties and Responsibilities

Partner Strategy and Management

• Collaboratively identify partner needs, potential roadblocks, and possible solutions with respect to data analysis, data systems, reporting, and use.
• Serve as the intermediary between partners and cloud engineers to ensure timelines and expectations are met.
• Co-create written documentation that translates complex technical information into user-friendly guidance documents, guides, presentations, and policy memos.

Project Strategy and Management

• Facilitate internal and external meetings to drive work forward through in-person meetings, phone calls and video conferences.
• Ensure project documentation is organized and thorough to foster organizational learning at EA as well as with the partner.
• Manage the project timeline and deliverables using EA’s project management tools and processes.
• Support and innovate on internal systems and process development on the Cloud Engineering and Interoperability team.

Team Strategy and Collaboration

• Collaborate with team leadership on team and organizational strategy.
• Organize and collaborate with members of the Cloud Engineering and Interoperability team, including providing project guidance, giving, and receiving feedback, and providing technical support as necessary.

Business Development

• Work with the Director of Cloud Engineering and Interoperability to identify new partnerships and find ways to deepen existing partnerships as needs arise.
• Support the proposal creation and submission process for grant and RFP opportunities.

Perform other duties as assigned.

Orientation to the Work

• An innovative mindset looking to push the boundaries of what is possible in education data use to support P-12 education.
• Willingness to continue to learn every day at work and to admit mistakes and step outside of your comfort zone.
• Ability to think strategically about complex issues as they arise, including weighing competing options and acknowledging the importance of context.
• Comfortable with both taking initiative and sharing responsibility in a team-based, collaborative environment at a fast-paced, fast-growing nonprofit.
• Customer-service and entrepreneurial orientation to working with partners in a way that ensures EA exceeds expectations.
• Weekly hour expectation is 45 hours per week, with the understanding that specific periods around project deadlines may require additional time commitment to support completion.

Required Knowledge and Skills

• Familiarity with data analysis and management in education.
• Background in technical project management and/or full-stack development and implementation.
• Demonstrated ability to manage complex projects through to successful completion.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills; presentation and/or meeting facilitation skills a plus.
• Personnel management including the ability to create and implement learning opportunities.
• Strong problem-solving and systems-thinking skills.
• Ability to create and foster internal and external relationships.

• Ability to handle numerous time-sensitive tasks concurrently and adapt to a fast-paced environment.

Education and Experience

• 3-5 years of experience for in managing and orchestrating projects in an education organization or working for a state agency or school district in a technical administrative role or senior technical role.
• Master’s degree, or Bachelor’s degree with equivalent experience (3 years in an implementation capacity) in Computer Science, Management Information Systems, or Education preferred. Applicants with degrees in other areas may be considered.
• Experience in implementing and/or supporting Ed-Fi deployments is preferred.

Compensation and Benefits

The starting salary for this position is $90,000, based on experience. EA also has a generous benefits package including:

• Automatic 12% 401k contribution (with up to 3% more based on employee match)
• Paid parental leave for up to 26 weeks
• Medical, dental, and vision insurance options with a generous employer contribution
• Employer paid short-term disability, long-term disability, and life insurance
• 9 paid holidays of your choosing per year
• 26.5 vacation days/year and sick leave accruals
• Employer paid transportation support for Madison-based employees
• Paid professional development opportunities
• Flexible workplace options

Supplemental Information

Application Materials

Applications for the position must include a cover letter and resume. Completed applications will be reviewed by the Data Strategy team. Candidates invited to interview will receive an FAQ about the hiring process, the position, and EA, as well as instructions for completing a video interview.

Equal Employment Opportunity

Education Analytics is committed to creating a diverse environment and is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, disability, age, or veteran status.

COVID-19

We want to let candidates know that EA is a federal contractor with over 50 employees. As the situation has evolved with federal requirements, we now require vaccinations for all employees. Medical and Religious accommodations will be granted where they do not cause Education Analytics undue hardship or pose a direct threat to the health and safety of others. Keep this requirement in mind and please reach out if you have any questions or would like to request accommodation.

Education Analytics (EA) is a non-profit organization that uses rigorous data analysis to inform education research, management, and policy decisions. Our staff is a group of highly motivated, energetic, passionate researchers and analysts who work with school districts, states, and foundation partners across the U.S. to identify innovative ways to improve education systems.

We are seeking a researcher with either a Ph.D. in economics, or a Ph.D. in statistics or a related field, with skills in econometrics, applied statistics, or related quantitative methods. The Research Scientist at EA collaborates with external project partners, other researchers, data strategists, analysts, and policymakers. The position will report to the Research Manager and Chief Research Officer and will play a substantial role in directing various programs of research. The role requires a mix of analytic, statistical, communication, and project management skills to meet the challenges of leading applied, rigorous statistical analyses and making substantive contributions to the fields of educational data analysis, measurement, and policy.

If you are looking to apply cutting-edge approaches to address critical problems impacting the lives of students across the country, we encourage you to apply. We are looking for passionate researchers who view every challenge not as a roadblock, but as an opportunity to do something innovative and exciting to transform the U.S. education system.

This position is preferred to work at our physical location in Madison, Wisconsin, although we will consider remote work as a possibility.

Specific Research Scientist responsibilities include:

• Developing statistical models for education policy applications that may include, but are not limited to, using the following approaches: econometrics, linear regression, multilevel/hierarchical linear modeling, Bayesian methods, propensity score matching, or data science (e.g., machine learning)
• Writing researcher-oriented documents, including conference papers and presentations, academic journal articles, working papers, and technical documentation
• Collaborating with and supervising analysts and programmers to implement statistical models for external partners and for internal research
• Communicating and collaborating with state and local education agencies and other EA partners
• Co-creating written documentation with EA data strategists and analysts, such as technical memos, policy briefs, partner reports, practitioner guidebooks, and grant proposals, for a variety of technical and non-technical audiences
  

Skills and Experience

• Either a Ph.D. in Economics or related field; or a quantitative Ph.D. in Statistics, Public Policy, Sociology, Educational Psychology, Data Science, or a related statistically-focused field is required
• Familiarity with the R programming language is preferred
• Deep knowledge of statistical and analytic approaches for evaluating educational policies and programs
• Excellent problem-solving and systems-thinking skills
• Strong written and verbal communication skills
• Customer-service and entrepreneurial orientation to working with partners that ensures that EA exceeds expectations
• Desire to work in a team environment at a fast-growing, fast-paced nonprofit
• Demonstrated interest in improving and supporting U.S. K-12 public education through data analysis

Benefits

• Competitive salary
• Institutional support for professional organization membership and conference attendance
• Annual merit bonuses
• Paid holidays and one month of paid vacation per year
• Generous 401k and health benefits
• Free Madison Metro transit pass or subsidized office parking (if space is available)
• Casual office environment
• Location right in the heart of downtown Madison, Wisconsin

Education Analytics is committed to creating a diverse environment and is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, disability, age, or veteran status.

We want to let candidates know that EA is a federal contractor with over 50 employees. As the situation has evolved with federal requirements, we now require vaccinations for all employees. Medical and Religious accommodations will be granted where they do not cause Education Analytics undue hardship or pose a direct threat to the health and safety of others. Keep this requirement in mind and please reach out if you have any questions or would like to request an accommodation.

Education Analytics (EA) is a national non-profit organization that supports states, districts, and other non-profits as they learn to enhance their ability to leverage data, analytics, and scientific research to improve student outcomes. We have a staff of around 85 technologists, scientists, and strategists all focused on improving district and state support nationwide in this new field of “data science.” Our current organizational strategy relies on decreasing the cost of complex data flows and increasing the usability of data systems and applications for on-the-ground use as the complexity of these data explodes. We work shoulder to shoulder with our district and state partners to make sure they have the highest levels of support when taking on these new challenges.

Description

The Interoperability Support Specialist position will focus on ensuring project and product success for our partners and for EA as an organization. This role, at EA, interfaces with everyone involved in each project, particularly with project partners and the cloud engineering team. The position requires a mix of analytical, communication, technical, and strategic project management skills to meet the challenges of using data and analysis in the complex environment of schools and districts and state education organizations.

This position will collaborate with technical leads in the Cloud Engineering and Interoperability (CEI) team. Tasks include but are not limited to the following:

• Building and supporting onboarding processes for the CEI team.
• Tier 1 and 2 supports for partners using CEI team services and products.
• Write and maintain documentation for CEI team processes.
• Work with CEI manager and director to build practice and process to support StartingBlocks clients throughout product journey

Projects that this position will drive relate to our foundational goal of automating data systems and analytics to increase utility to educators. This position will need to have expertise in Data collection and systems (sample projects). We work with partners to support the timely and secure delivery of data and analytics to educators and administrators. Experience in working with the Ed-Fi data standard is a plus as Ed-Fi is an open-source technology specifically built for education (read more about Ed-Fi here).

Hybrid/remote candidates will be considered for this position with periodic paid travel to headquarters and to partner locations.

Duties and Responsibilities

Partner Strategy and Management

• Collaboratively identify partner needs, potential roadblocks, and possible solutions with respect to data analysis, data systems, reporting, and use.
• Serve as the intermediary between partners and cloud engineers to ensure timelines and expectations are met.
• Co-create written documentation that translates complex technical information into user-friendly guidance documents, guides, presentations, and policy memos.

Project Strategy and Management

• Facilitate internal and external meetings to drive work forward through in-person meetings, phone calls and video conferences.
• Ensure project documentation is organized and thorough to foster organizational learning at EA as well as with the partner.
• Manage the project timeline and deliverables using EA’s project management tools and processes.
• Support and innovate on internal systems and process development on the Cloud Engineering and Interoperability team.

Team Strategy and Collaboration

• Collaborate with team leadership on team and organizational strategy.
• Organize and collaborate with members of the Cloud Engineering and Interoperability team, including providing project guidance, giving, and receiving feedback, and providing technical support as necessary.

Business Development

• Work with the Director of Cloud Engineering and Interoperability to identify new partnerships and find ways to deepen existing partnerships as needs arise.
• Support the proposal creation and submission process for grant and RFP opportunities.

Perform other duties as assigned.

Orientation to the Work

• An innovative mindset looking to push the boundaries of what is possible in education data use to support P-12 education.
• Willingness to continue to learn every day at work and to admit mistakes and step outside of your comfort zone.
• Ability to think strategically about complex issues as they arise, including weighing competing options and acknowledging the importance of context.
• Comfortable with both taking initiative and sharing responsibility in a team-based, collaborative environment at a fast-paced, fast-growing nonprofit.
• Customer-service and entrepreneurial orientation to working with partners in a way that ensures EA exceeds expectations.
• Weekly hour expectation is 45 hours per week, with the understanding that specific periods around project deadlines may require additional time commitment to support completion.

Required Knowledge and Skills

• Familiarity with data analysis and management in education.
• Background in technical project management and/or full-stack development and implementation.
• Demonstrated ability to manage complex projects through to successful completion.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills; presentation and/or meeting facilitation skills a plus.
• Personnel management including the ability to create and implement learning opportunities.
• Strong problem-solving and systems-thinking skills.
• Ability to create and foster internal and external relationships.

• Ability to handle numerous time-sensitive tasks concurrently and adapt to a fast-paced environment.

Education and Experience

• 3-5 years of experience for in managing and orchestrating projects in an education organization or working for a state agency or school district in a technical administrative role or senior technical role.
• Master’s degree, or Bachelor’s degree with equivalent experience (3 years in an implementation capacity) in Computer Science, Management Information Systems, or Education preferred. Applicants with degrees in other areas may be considered.
• Experience in implementing and/or supporting Ed-Fi deployments is preferred.

Compensation and Benefits

The starting salary for this position is $105,000, based on experience. EA also has a generous benefits package including:

• Automatic 12% 401k contribution (with up to 3% more based on employee match)
• Paid parental leave for up to 26 weeks
• Medical, dental, and vision insurance options with a generous employer contribution
• Employer paid short-term disability, long-term disability, and life insurance
• 9 paid holidays of your choosing per year
• 26.5 vacation days/year and sick leave accruals
• Employer paid transportation support for Madison-based employees
• Paid professional development opportunities
• Flexible workplace options

Supplemental Information

Application Materials

Applications for the position must include a cover letter and resume. Completed applications will be reviewed by the Data Strategy team. Candidates invited to interview will receive an FAQ about the hiring process, the position, and EA, as well as instructions for completing a video interview.

Equal Employment Opportunity

Education Analytics is committed to creating a diverse environment and is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, disability, age, or veteran status.

COVID-19

We want to let candidates know that EA is a federal contractor with over 50 employees. As the situation has evolved with federal requirements, we now require vaccinations for all employees. Medical and Religious accommodations will be granted where they do not cause Education Analytics undue hardship or pose a direct threat to the health and safety of others. Keep this requirement in mind and please reach out if you have any questions or would like to request accommodation.