Senior Research Engineer

At Murmuration, we believe that America’s promise is shaped and reshaped by the best ideas and ideals of its communities, and the dreams of the people who believe in a better life for themselves, their families, and each other. 

We help organizations build power in their communities in four key ways: we organize a network of values-aligned partners; we provide deep, data-driven insights into people, places, and perspectives; we develop tools that make organizing and engagement easy and more effective; and we offer services that strengthen our partners’ capacity to lead change in their communities.

We envision an America where every community has what it needs to help people lead healthy, free, and dignified lives. We work to redesign the systems and structures we all depend on — how we learn, live, govern, and solve problems — so that they are just, equitable, resilient, and rooted in shared responsibility. By strengthening the ties that hold communities together, we aim for civic life defined by collective action and care, with effective leadership that truly represents everyone. 

We are a collaborative, curious, and creative team of organizers, scientists, teachers, technologists, campaign veterans, and more who share the unwavering belief that we can use our gifts in service of transforming America — together. We’ve built our team guided by the belief that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. And so we support each other relentlessly — rallying together to face challenges the same way we celebrate each other’s wins.

About the Position

You're an experienced engineer who combines deep technical skill with the judgment to make sound architectural decisions. You drive complex projects across Murmuration's research and data science enablement systems: designing, building, and operating the platforms, tooling, and infrastructure that let researchers, data scientists, and partners work faster and at greater scale. You know how to break down ambiguous problems, make pragmatic tradeoffs between speed and sustainability, and ship reliable systems that serve the organization for the long term.

You'll work at the intersection of engineering and enablement, collaborating across Research, Data Science, Product, and Growth to build the systems that power how we understand and activate civic participation in America. Beyond your own work, you raise the bar for the team through mentorship, technical leadership, and standards that make everyone more effective.

The Research Engineering Team builds systems that multiply the impact of researchers, data scientists, and our network. How do we turn a question that takes a researcher three days into one that takes three minutes? How do we scale model scoring from millions to billions without manual intervention? How do we make cutting-edge analysis accessible to journalists and decision-makers who aren't data scientists? How do we build platforms that let our team move faster and do more?

If you want to build systems that change how we understand and activate civic participation, we'd love to hear from you.

Job Level: P4

What You'll Do

• Work across the stack: You have strong depth in one or more critical areas (e.g., API design, frontend architecture, data integration, infrastructure) and broad proficiency across the rest. You'll use whatever it takes — full-stack applications, backend systems, data pipelines, AI integrations — and continue deepening your expertise over time.
• Build end-to-end systems from data infrastructure that processes large-scale datasets reliably and cost-effectively to intuitive interfaces that make sophisticated analysis accessible to non-technical users like journalists, organizers, and decision-makers. You’ll turn manual, time-intensive processes into fast, scalable, automated ones.
• Apply emerging technologies (including AI/ML) to R&D challenges. You’ll prototype novel approaches, evaluate feasibility, and bridge the gap between cutting-edge capabilities and practical usability.
• Communicate clearly: You’ll provide actionable guidance to research and data science stakeholders on technical feasibility, solution alternatives, and tradeoffs. produce clear technical documentation (e.g., design docs, architecture decisions, and runbooks), and build consensus on design approaches across the team.
• Elevate the team: Mentor engineers at all levels through pairing, code review, and technical guidance, set high standards for code quality and testing that raise the bar for the entire team, and drive process improvements, better tooling, and shared knowledge that make the team more effective over time.

• 6+ years of software engineering experience building data-intensive systems and tooling in production environments;
• Strong architectural judgment: experience designing systems that balance scalability, reliability, cost, and maintainability across multiple services or components;
• Strong programming skills in Python along with proficiency in at least one other language (e.g., JavaScript, Java, Go, Scala);
• Experience designing and building APIs, data models, and system integrations for complex, evolving requirements;
• Experience building and operating production data pipelines using workflow orchestration tools such as Dagster, Airflow, or similar systems;
• Proven track record of driving complex projects end-to-end with limited direction: scoping, planning, coordinating, and delivering across contributors;
• Experience with cloud platforms (AWS preferred) and infrastructure-as-code (Terraform, CDK) with an eye toward cost-efficient architectural choices;
• Strong product sense for internal tools: ability to understand user workflows, identify pain points, and build solutions that meaningfully improve productivity;
• Experience contributing to and implementing technical projects end-to-end with a high degree of autonomy;
• Excellent communication skills with the ability to explain technical decisions and trade-offs to both technical and non-technical audiences; and
• Passion for civic tech, social impact, or grassroots organizing and a genuine interest in building tools that empower organizers and communities.

Nice-to-haves

• Experience building features powered by LLMs or working with LLM evaluation frameworks, whether professionally or as a hobbyist;
• Background working alongside researchers, data scientists, or analysts;
• Contributions to open source or published technical work;
• Experience with survey infrastructure, research tooling, or analytics platforms; and/or
• Experience applying AI/ML techniques to survey, voter, political data, or other data.

Talented Research Engineers come from all walks of life and career. If you are passionate about civic engagement and technology, please apply, even if you do not check every box!

Location and Compensation

The Senior Research Engineer is a full-time, salaried position with a comprehensive benefits package (details below), open to candidates anywhere in the United States.

The starting salary for this position is $190,576. We set compensation using market data and apply it consistently across the organization to ensure fairness and transparency for everyone in similar roles. 

Our Culture of Care

We work hard to create a culture of care to ensure that our staff are best equipped to lead happy, healthy, and balanced lives. To that end, we offer a comprehensive benefits package which includes:

• Health, vision, and dental insurance with 100% of premiums covered for you and qualifying family members;
• Retirement benefits with a 5% employer match;
• A flexible unlimited PTO plan;
• Generous paid parental leave;
• Pre-tax commuter benefits;
• A company laptop;
• A flexible remote work environment;
• A home office setup stipend for all new employees;
• Monthly reimbursement for remote work expenses;
• A yearly professional development fund;
• Mental health and wellness benefits through Calm and Better Help; 
• Yearly in-person staff retreats; and
• A welcoming culture that celebrates diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging.

At Murmuration, we believe a vibrant, representative democracy depends on the inclusion of diverse voices, lived experiences, and perspectives. The best ideas don’t come from a single person or ideology — they emerge at the intersection of different backgrounds, identities, and viewpoints. We are proud of our commitment to building an organization and culture shaped by respect, empathy, and collaboration, where our team’s diversity fuels innovation, civic engagement, and meaningful change. We welcome new colleagues who will help us nurture this collective effort. Join us.

An Equal-Opportunity Employer with a Commitment to Diversity

Murmuration is proud to be an equal opportunity employer, and as an organization committed to diversity and the perspective of all voices, we consider applicants equally of race, gender, color, sexual orientation, religion, marital status, disability, political affiliation and national origin. We reasonably accommodate staff members and/or applicants with disabilities, provided they are otherwise able to perform the essential functions of the job.

Note: Murmuration is two organizations working together to pursue our mission of amplifying the power of civic engagement: Murmuration Research Institute, a 501(c)(3) that conducts research to identify, design, and create the data, tools, and insights that build healthier and more equitable communities; and Murmuration, Inc., a 501(c)(4) that supports organizations working across the country on the nation’s most challenging issues with access to data, tools, and research that build healthier and more equitable communities.