Team Lead of Data Engineering

THE AGENCY
The Department of City Planning (DCP) plans for the strategic growth and development of the City through ground-up planning with communities, the development of land use policies and zoning regulations applicable citywide, and sharing its perspectives on growth and community needs with sister agencies in collaboration with the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).

The New York City Department of City Planning is a great place to work – cultivating intellectual inspiration, professional development and creativity. Visit our website at www.nyc.gov/planning to access the full listing of job opportunities and to learn more about our great agency.

THE DIVISION:
The Information Technology Division (ITD) is responsible for supporting the agency’s technology footprint, including technology infrastructure across five boroughs, as well as workflow applications and databases for analytics and decision-making. The division is comprised of 50+ inter-disciplinary staff with specialties in application development, database maintenance, data processing, data visualization and mapping, desktop support, server engineering, and telecom, amongst many others. The division provides technology support for agency staff across five boroughs.

THE ROLE
ITD is seeking a Data Engineering Team Lead to join and lead the Data Engineering team. DCP’s Data Engineering team’s mission is to create and publish high quality public datasets, build transparent and automated data pipelines using open-source technologies, develop a data ecosystem by offering comprehensive documentation and analytics resources, and bring people together across teams and agencies to share data and learn from each other. The Data Engineering team is continually evolving, and this new hire will have the ability and support to improve existing infrastructure and processes and drive forward new projects and initiatives. The ideal candidate will be passionate about data literacy, quality, and accessibility, have strong technical skills, and be excited about advancing the adoption of new technologies in DCP and City government.

Under minimal supervision but in coordination and collaboration with ITD leadership, the Team Lead’s primary areas of responsibility include, but are not limited to:
- Managing a team of data engineers.
- Planning out individual projects, bi-weekly sprints, and the long-term vision and goals of the team.
- Tracking and taking responsibility for team member’s task completion, and performance and professional development, under supervision or direction of, or in collaboration with the division director.
- Taking a lead role in the designing, deploying, and scaling of current infrastructure to ensure that Data Engineering maintains and improves existing processes, and expands its abilities and offerings.
- Understanding the technologies used by the team and recommending new technologies. Ideating, designing, and implementing improvements to products and processes to ensure that the team is using the best tools for the job.
- Building Data Engineering data products, which involves:
o operating data ingestion pipelines and managing data storage,
o running scripts that transform input data by standardizing text fields, geocoding, merging, aggregating, and performing basic spatial manipulations, and
o reviewing outputs by writing custom scripts and/or using established QAQC tools to identify errors, inconsistencies, and edge cases in datasets.
- Designing new data products from concept to completion, working on specifications with product owners, creating technical designs with team members, helping to plan sprints, contributing to documentation, and delivering a finished product. Leading project-based teams and delegating tasks to other team members.
- Mentoring other data engineers.
- Learning and wrangling complex legacy data systems and bringing the infrastructure into a modern development stack.
- Sharing accomplishments and lessons learned with NYC Planning, other city agencies, and the world via talks, presentations, blogs, or other mediums.

1. A baccalaureate degree from an accredited college in computer science, engineering, human computer interaction, interactive media, digital and graphics design, data visualization, communication or a related field, and four years of satisfactory full-time experience related to the area(s) required by the particular position and a specialization in a relevant technology, process, methodology and/or domain; or

2. An associate degree from an accredited college in computer science, engineering, human computer interaction, interactive media, digital and graphics design, data visualization, communication or a related field, and six years of satisfactory full-time experience related to the area(s) required by the particular position and a specialization in a relevant technology, process, methodology and/or domain; or

3. A baccalaureate degree from an accredited college, and eight years of satisfactory full-time experience related to the area(s) required by the particular position and a specialization in a relevant technology, process, methodology and/or domain; or

4. Education and/or experience which is equivalent to "1", "2", or "3" above.

The City of New York is an inclusive equal opportunity employer committed to recruiting and retaining a diverse workforce and providing a work environment that is free from discrimination and harassment based upon any legally protected status or protected characteristic, including but not limited to an individual's sex, race, color, ethnicity, national origin, age, religion, disability, sexual orientation, veteran status, gender identity, or pregnancy.