Civic Data Analyst

Alta Planning + Design is an active transportation company dedicated to creating active, healthy communities through planning, landscape architecture, engineering, and education/encouragement programs. Alta was founded in 1996 when cities and communities were calling for safer streets for people walking and bicycling as the non-motorized transportation movement developed into a profession in the United States. We pioneered the field of active transportation, evolving our planning and design work into a visionary global practice that empowers people to live active, healthy lives and getting them to where they need to go.

Our core values and work bring about positive change by creating places that are geared toward moving people rather than cars, connecting community members to daily needs and human experience, and empowering every person to live an active healthy life. As a global leader in mobility innovation for over 24 years with 175 people on staff, we are dedicated to connecting people to places by working across disciplines and scale to address social justice, safety, and environmental resilience.

Alta Planning + Design is seeking a Civic Data Analyst to join our team.  This position can be based anywhere in the United States, but it would be great if you were near one of our many offices in the US.  This is a unique opportunity for anyone who is passionate about active transportation and the way it positively impacts our communities in need. If you are looking for an innovative organization that is an industry leader in active transportation, apply with us today!

Position Priorities

Alta’s Civic Data Analysts are at the forefront of civic data analytics by bringing data-informed decision-making to a multidisciplinary practice. The Civic Analytics group at Alta leverages emerging technologies to bring multimodal metrics to narratives that enable communities to enhance transportation choice and encourage active and healthy lifestyles. If you are passionate about telling the stories of people on the move through data, this is the position for you.

The essential priorities of this position are to:

• Thoroughly understand the firm’s data needs and capabilities, develop new products, track industry trends, and create process improvements and capabilities.
• Collaborate across Alta’s disciplines to understand their data analysis needs, priorities, and expectations.
• Support planners, designers, and engineers in tasks related to data analysis and visualization.
• Implement analytical solutions that bring valuable mobility insights and can scale across an organization.
• Engage with emerging technologies and datasets such as AI-derived asset databases, near-miss collision analysis, connected vehicle data, and other transportation-related datasets.

Position Responsibilities

Key position responsibilities for this role include the following:

• Performing work in data science and visualization that requires the use of complex methodologies, challenging datasets, and close coordination with stakeholders.
• Conduct data analysis and develop visualization components of client projects and for research and development efforts.
• Writing reports, technical memos, and presentations.
• Developing and applying a variety of methods for the analysis of complex transportation and geospatial data sets.
• Keeping abreast of trends in technology and finding ways to connect them to solving challenges to mobility and access to opportunities.
• Keeping an eye on labor-intensive processes and analysis and identifying ways to streamline and automate them so they can create organization-wide value.

Requirements

This position requires a combination of skills, experience, and education including, but not limited to:

• Bachelor’s Degree in Statistics, Mathematics, Computer Science or another quantitative field with demonstrated experience in the transportation planning field, OR a Bachelor’s Degree in Planning or Engineering with some experience in the software development and/or data science fields.
• Proficiency in Python and/or R, SQL.
• GIS Proficiency – both open-source (PostGIS, QGIS, geopandas, etc.) and the ESRI suite ( ArcGISPro, Spatial Analyst, Network Analyst, etc.).
• Demonstrated work of applied statistics or machine learning techniques to transportation challenges.
• Ability to create informative data visualizations through code (e.g. D3, ggplot, matplotlib, plotly, kepler.gl, etc.).
• Experience designing, implementing and documenting analytical solutions using code. Ability to execute an analysis entirely with code.
• Basic familiarity with deploying analytical solutions over the web with the use of Flask, Django, Fast-API, or R-Shiny.
• Data specifications & database acronyms like OSM, MDS, GTFS, GBFS, GPS, CurbLR don’t scare you.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills.

Preferred Skills and Qualifications

• 1+ year(s) of experience manipulating data sets, visualizing data, building statistical models, and the general application of data science concepts and tools within the domain of transportation planning or consulting.
• Web development (JavaScript, HTML, CSS).
• Comfortable in a fast-paced working environment.
• Knowledge of advanced statistical/machine learning techniques (e.g. regression, simulation, scenario analysis, modeling, clustering, random forest, etc.).
• Experience deploying web services on AWS, GCP, DigitalOcean, etc.
• Demonstrated experience with deploying analytical solutions over the web with the use of Flask, Django, Fast-API, or R-Shiny.

Work Environment and Physical Demands

• This is a largely sedentary role that operates in a professional office environment. This role routinely uses standard office equipment such as computers, phones, photocopiers, filing cabinets, and fax machines.

Travel requirements

• 0-10% travel to other offices for training opportunities.

To apply: please upload a resume and cover letter to be considered for this position. Incomplete applications will not be considered. Due to the high volume of applicants we will not be able to respond to email or phone inquiries.