Data Engineer and Developer

Seton Education Partners seeks a mission-driven, results-oriented individual to be the founding Data Engineer and Developer for the Brilla Schools Network. We are looking for a resourceful, organized and highly efficient team member who will maintain and extend our internal Python codebase; generate regressions, projections, and other analyses; and help implement data and analytics tactics and processes across the organization. The Developer will report to the Business Data Manager and collaborate with other network staff in order to transform our data into actionable insights. This is an onsite position.

About Seton Education Partners

Co-founded in 2009 by KIPP pioneer Scott W. Hamilton and Teach for America alumna Stephanie Saroki de García, Seton Education Partners is a response to the dramatic decline of urban Catholic schools in America, which have served the economically disadvantaged so well for decades.

In 2013, amidst the shuttering of 60+ urban Catholic schools in the Archdiocese of New York, Seton launched Brilla College Prep Public Charter School in the Mott Haven neighborhood of the South Bronx. Brilla, which means "shine" in Spanish, has achieved academic results that parallel the nation's most acclaimed high-poverty schools. Alongside Brilla, Seton launched El Camino, an optional, privately funded extended-day Catholic faith formation program. In only five years, 99 children have been baptized through their participation in El Camino.

Seton is working to take these remarkable achievements to scale by managing a network of schools and programs that ensure that thousands of underserved children whose Catholic schools close—and other local children—have access to an academically excellent, character-building, and, for those who choose it, faith-nurturing education. This network is a national model for how other cities facing the shuttering of Catholic schools can continue to serve children and families with limited educational options. For more information on Seton Education Partners, please visit www.setonpartners.org.

About the Brilla Schools Network

Brilla Public Charter Schools is a network of K-8th grade schools that currently serves around 1,900 students from Mott Haven, University Heights, and other neighborhoods in the Bronx. The network, which currently includes four elementary and two middle schools, will soon be adding two additional middle schools; once all schools are fully enrolled, the network will serve over 3,000 students in the Bronx. Core to our mission is that our students become young men and women of good character and spirit and be prepared for excellence in high school, college, and beyond. Brilla combines a classical approach to education - an emphasis on virtue formation, Truth, Beauty, and Goodness, and direct instruction of a content-rich curriculum that has stood the test of time - with co-teaching practices and individualized online learning. We approach the formation of our students holistically and also set high academic expectations. Ours is a joyful community that honors the dignity of each student, family member and staff.

About El Camino Network

El Camino, which means "The Way" in Spanish, is an optional, privately-funded Catholic after-school faith formation program that is closely partnered with Brilla charter schools. El Camino helps children, their families and their catechists to know, love and serve Christ and His Church; develop the habits, dispositions and beliefs that are indispensable to human flourishing and happiness; and live as disciples in this world and saints in the next. El Camino honors the teaching authority of the Catholic Church.

El Camino currently serves approximately 30% of Brilla's students across all grades for 90 minutes a day, Monday through Thursday. Children receive homework help from experienced teachers, a nutritious snack, and 30 minutes each of catechism and physical fitness. Additionally, children and families have opportunities for shared and personal prayer and character formation. This video provides a snapshot of El Camino.

About the Position

Reporting to the Managing Director of Data, the Data Engineer and Developer will be in charge of Seton's data warehouse. This data warehouse allows Seton to efficiently retrieve student and staff data from numerous sources, merge them together, generate analyses and export data to SFTP servers and our internal PostgreSQL database. The Developer will be tasked with supporting our existing infrastructure and extending our data infrastructure to meet new needs and data retrieval requests across a multi-system environment. This role further focuses on building and maintaining production ETL pipelines, integrating data from internal and third-party systems, and supporting analytics, reporting, and operational use cases.

The Developer will also manage a server that runs many of these scripts on a scheduled basis, thus providing network and school leaders with access to accurate and up-to-date data and maintain Seton's local PostgreSQL database. They will work across the full data lifecycle; ingestion, transformation, modeling, and delivery, in a hybrid environment that combines local infrastructure with cloud services. The role includes maintaining legacy systems, contributing to platform modernization efforts, and developing internal data tools used by operations and leadership teams.

This is a hands-on role requiring strong problem-solving ability, attention to data quality, and comfort working both independently across a wide range of systems and collaboratively with key stakeholders on the schools and operations teams to meet data needs.

Key job responsibilities:

Data and Analytics Development

• Maintain and extend internal data warehouse and legacy Python codebase in order to efficiently and accurately transfer data between systems; retrieve student and staff metrics from PowerSchool, Centrally, and other sites; generate analyses; create visualizations; identify anomalies within student information system records; and load data into database that powers Tableau dashboards

• Oversee local server that runs Python scripts; quickly identify, troubleshoot, and resolve issues that arise so as to ensure that data output remains accurate and up-to-date

• Monitor, update, and extend Google Sheets workbooks that store output of certain Python scripts

• Develop and maintain PostgreSQL database, SFTP storage, and Microsoft Azure cloud database using workflow tools such as Apache Airflow

• Work with third-party APIs, SFTP sources, and vendor systems to collect data from various sources and transform them into our central data warehouse

• Generate and maintain machine learning algorithms which power predictive models for enrollment and test performance

• Ensure secure handling of sensitive data (PII / compliance requirements) using techniques such as GitHub version control

• Support machine learning pipelines and data preparation workflows

• Implement and maintain ETL pipelines for scheduled and ad hoc data workflows to streamline data movement across systems

• Optimize database queries and support schema design improvements

Project Management and Documentation

• Work with stakeholders to determine appropriate specifications for new development projects

• Manage time wisely in order to balance long-term projects with short-term data requests.

• Maintain documentation on Seton's codebase, including an overview of Seton's Python scripts; lists of steps that must be completed to carry out a given data-related task; and flowcharts that visualize data processing tasks

• Keep codebase clear and intuitive for both current and future users by adding adequate documentation and comments within scripts

Qualifications and Desired Characteristics

Candidates for the position must possess the following personal characteristics:

• Unquestioned integrity and commitment to Seton's mission and values

• Unquestioned integrity and commitment to Brilla's mission, including its commitment to a classically inspired curriculum and character formation

• Personal responsibility with humility

• A relentless drive for excellence

• A strong belief that all children can achieve both moral and academic excellence

• An unwavering determination to be better today than you were yesterday

The ideal candidate will bring experience and skills in the following areas:

• Strong command of Python and the Pandas library; experience with Selenium, Folium, Plotly, Gspread, SQLAlchemy, and Statsmodels libraries; familiarity with SQL (joins, aggregations, basic performance tuning), batch scripting, and HTML/CSS

• Ability to adapt in a fluid, start-up environment and work with existing codebases to debug issues effectively

• Ability to analyze, manipulate, visualize, and present large amounts of data while maintaining data integrity

• Ability to self-direct and prioritize competing goals and exhibit flexibility in a fast-paced, entrepreneurial environment

• Experience building or supporting ETL/data pipelines

• Familiarity with workflow orchestration tools such as Airflow

• Experience working in Linux/WSL environments and using PowerShell scripting

• Experience with version control and other tools to support backups and maintain codebase effectively

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills with keen attention to detail

Preferred skills and experience:

• Experience with dbt, Streamlit, and web automation

• Experience with machine learning workflows

• Experience with Google Sheets, both as a data export destination for Python scripts and as an alternative data analysis and visualization tool

• Experience managing a data warehouse, preferably using tools such as Microsoft Azure, and PostgresSQL

• Experience with API integrations (including Google Workspace) and authentication, SFTP-based data pipelines

• Experience designing data structures and systems for efficiency and perpetuity

• Experience handling regulated data and maintaining compliance with local and state laws

• Clear communicator, strong writer, and innovative thinker who can transform conceptual ideas and initiatives into practical and easily executable plans

• 3+ years of experience in Data Engineering, Data Science, or a related field

Diversity & Inclusivity

We are building an organization in which talented individuals from all walks of life and past work experiences can join our team and make significant contributions. We are particularly committed to attracting and developing individuals who share the life experiences or backgrounds of the students we will serve.

• At Brilla, education in the classical tradition is understood to mean the education of the whole person - mind, body and spirit - in the service of human flourishing. People flourish by living out the virtues. A time proven way of learning how to live out the virtues is to learn about, contemplate and discuss how these virtues have been expressed by fictional and nonfictional people throughout history represented in time-tested works.

Secondarily, a classical education is pedagogically consistent with modern cognitive science. Many current pedagogies are not fully consistent with what we know today about brain development. In contrast, classical pedagogy (referred to as the Trivium) perfectly corresponds to how the brain develops. It emphasizes patterns, routines, and facts that young brains crave (Grammar stage); It leverages the brain's orientation to asking "why" in the middle years (Logic stage); And it focuses on communication and persuasion in the high school years (Rhetoric stage).

To Apply

Initial application materials include: a cover letter, contact information for three references, and a resume that includes information on your background and development experience. You are also encouraged to share links to programming and data analysis projects that you have created.

Resumes without cover letters will not be reviewed.

Seton Education Partners provides equal employment opportunities for all applicants and employees.

The base salary range for this position is $80,000 to $100,000 per year, along with a comprehensive benefits package that includes medical, financial, and other benefits. New hires will typically start at the lower end of this range, depending on their relevant experience, job-related knowledge, skills, and internal equity considerations. Compensation is determined based on our salary scales.