Last year, I set my new year's resolution to get a data science job dedicated to helping fix social and environmental problems. It was very difficult at first to find tech jobs for good, but as I kept searching online and doing research, I was able to find many exciting organizations who were using data science and machine learning to improve healthcare, monitor and prevent climate change, and improve government services. I was excited to be offered a job with DrivenData in September.
Today, there are many sources designed to get data practitioners to apply to businesses including LinkedIn, recruiters, job fairs, and online advertising. Tech jobs designed to fix many of the biggest social problems are often harder to find and hidden in smaller job lists. This guide is designed to help you find data-for-good jobs, so that you can use your skills to make a difference on the issues you care about.
Where to find Jobs¶
Data-for-good jobs are not as easy to find as big tech companies. They do not as often post on LinkedIn, and can sometimes even only post on their pages.
The first step is to find organizations working on problems you are interested in, check up on their job boards, and sign up for email notifications of postings if they have that available.
General For-Good Job Boards¶
These are a good starting point for finding tech and data jobs for good causes, but they may be missing out on some specific causes or on organizations doing ethical work.
- Tech Jobs For Good: Good list for organizations in the tech-for-good space.
- Data.org: Jobs List for data jobs for good causes.
- Fast Forward: Nonprofit tech jobs.
- 80,000 hours: List focused on effective altruist causes and organizations, especially AI safety, animal welfare, global health.
- Idealist: General jobs list for good causes.
- Data Collective: Data roles in Charity Orgs in the UK.
- Ethical Tech Job Resources: List of lists. Many are small lists and very targeted.
Startup Job Boards¶
Startups are sometimes founded to help with good causes. For example, many people are founding startups to help with environmental issues or create medical innovations. You can filter these lists with keywords like “environmental” “climate change” “medicine” etc.
- Y-Combinator: Famous startup incubator. Has many small startups (less than 10 people). Most are not “for good” but a few companies handling health/environmental issues.
- Well-found: Large index of startups and startup jobs. Has many small to medium sized startups and some companies trying to help with various social issues. I recommend searching for cause areas like “environment”, “climate change” or “health”.
- BuiltIn: Startup job board for specific cities.
Issue Area Job Tips¶
If you are interested in specific causes, it's good to look at cause-specific job boards, network with people in the field, and find organizations working on the issues you care about.
Government
- USA jobs: Entry portal for all federal jobs. Often hiring data scientists to help various agencies analyze their data.
- Public Sector Job board: Curated to share government tech and data jobs. Has many data jobs posted by agencies, cities, and states.
- Look for individual city and state job portals for data jobs. This can be very hit or miss, but you can sometimes find jobs not posted elsewhere. Larger cities and states will sometimes hire data analysts/scientists/engineers to help manage their jurisdictions better.
Environment
- Climatebase: Focused on climate change jobs at companies and non-profits.
- Climate Tech List: Focused on technology jobs to help fight climate change.
- Geospatial Jobs List: Substack subscription once a month. Specifically targeted for geospatial jobs.
Health
- Hospitals are often hiring for data scientists/analysts to help perform statistical analysis for medical research experiments. Good to check their job boards.
- Also good to look at startup/company job boards to see if there are any roles improving medicine or devices.
Research
- Researchers often need help analyzing their data. Usually they have PhD or research assistants do this, but some labs have enough funding or data needs to hire professional data scientists/analysts. For this, it’s good to look at job boards for large research universities since they will have the funding to hire data scientists.
- Many schools now also have a central group of data scientists to help researchers on a variety of projects. You can even look at job boards of individual labs, but this can become time intensive.
Stay Positive and Patient¶
One big thing I learned from my application journey is to stay positive and patient. I interviewed for 7 other jobs over an 8 month time frame, and was shortlisted at 4 of them for the final round before getting the job at DrivenData. Data jobs for good are rarer than regular tech jobs, so it takes more time to find positions and receive an offer.
Focus on improving your skills, practicing interviews, working on projects, and looking for jobs at a pace you can handle while not burning out. Here at DrivenData, we host competitions to build the best ML model for good causes. Participating can be a good way to hone your skills and learn about how data science can help with a variety of causes.
This is your year to get a data job for good, and use your talents to help improve the world.
