At the Technology Innovation Department (TID), our mission is to apply modern principles of research, design, and technology to make our transit system easy for all riders to use. Effective and equitable public transit is essential to the social, economic, and environmental progress of Greater Boston.
The MBTA Technology Innovation team is working to transform how people get around the Boston area.
We are a team of designers, engineers, product and content specialists charged with bringing novel ideas, modern standards and a user-centered approach to technology at the T. As the MBTA works to reinvent itself, we have a rare opportunity to craft the future of transportation for Boston and communities all around Eastern Massachusetts, as well as pioneer innovations for other transit agencies around the country.
Do you want to improve the daily transportation experience for 4.7 million people in the Boston region? Ready for the challenge? Then read on.
This role sits between the Transit Technology Program and the Operations Analytics (OA) team. You will be grounded in the methods and tools used by other MBTA data specialists, but applying those methods to continuously improve our rider-facing data and the tools we provide to operations staff. Although your home team will be the performance data modernization team, you’ll work across all the teams in the Transit Tech Program, including real-time data, service alerts, as well as rail and bus dispatching. You’ll work with product managers, software engineers, and others to help us understand gaps and opportunities in how we’re serving our users.
You will work on:
- You will be embedded with the Transit Technology Program, which empowers front-line MBTA staff such as dispatchers, operators, and other officials with modern digital tools to help them deliver effective service and communicate with riders. We use data from these and other internal operations systems to provide MBTA riders with the most accurate information possible about service—this includes schedules, real-time arrival predictions, real-time crowding updates, and upcoming disruption alerts. To do this, we manage industry-standard feeds such as GTFS, GTFS-RT, as well as a GTFS-based JSON API. We are constantly pushing these specifications ahead and contributing our work back to the community, such as when we became the largest US transit agency to publish real-time bus crowding information in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic.
This job requires:
- Data science skills:Your talents will help us understand and make use of the enormous amounts of data generated by our technology systems.
- Thoughtful visualization and storytelling:The audience for your work will often be highly data-literate peers such as product managers, designers, or software engineers. However, sometimes you will need to use data to communicate effectively with operations mangers and others who are less familiar with data science techniques.
- Organization and initiative:Because you will be straddling multiple departments and teams with differing priorities and deadlines, you will need to be able to quickly understand the context and needs of various stakeholders, prioritize your time accordingly, and communicate expectations with your manager and peers.
Principal duties and responsibilities:
- Use tools like Tableau, Splunk, or R to design dashboards, visualizations, graphs, charts, and tools. This could include one-off analyses as well as ongoing data monitoring.
- Gather, review, and interpret data using a combination of SQL, logging, Excel, Python and/or relevant modern data analysis tools.
- Work closely with Transit Tech product and project teams to understand their data analysis needs and support them in decision-making and performance monitoring.
- Advise TID teams on how to approach data creation and logging in ways that support analysis.
- Effectively present and communicate insights to both technical and non-technical peers.
- Develop and maintain a working knowledge of transit operations concepts and apply them to your analysis.
- Perform quality control on data inputs, calculations, algorithms, and model outputs, and investigating associated data gaps or inconsistencies.
- Participate in an existing MBTA data community in OA and other departments, and apply insights and practices.
- Independently manage different priorities based on input from manager and peers.
- Protect the data security and privacy of the MBTA and its riders.
- Respond to each inquiry, whether from a customer, vendor or co-worker, in a courteous and professional manner.
What we’re looking for:
- Although we’re mostly interested in your ability to do the work, here are some guidelines on the capabilities and experience we think might be most suited for this role. Please keep in mind that the experience guidelines are advisory, and not required.
- Two (2) years of full-time work, equivalent part-time, or internship/co-op experience in data science, business support, business intelligence, quantitative work, or other related fields.
- Proficiency with Microsoft Excel, Word, and PowerPoint.
- Experience with modern data tools (e.g., SQL, Python, R, SPSS, GIS, or other).
- Experience working in a product technology team.
- Experience with cloud-based visualization or logging platforms such as Splunk or Tableau.
- Experience with programming languages such as Elixir, Python, or Excel VBA.
- Ability to learn quickly, take direction, work as an individual, and use creative and collaborative approaches to resolve issues.
- Effective organizational, multi-tasking, and time management skills.
- Effective written and verbal communication skills.
- Strong statistics and data fundamentals.
- Familiarity with transportation planning and transit systems, particularly the MBTA subway and bus network.
Minimum education:
- Formal education in transportation planning, public policy, transportation, computer science, engineering, or another field you can make a case for (This could be a college degree, a bootcamp, a certificate program, or something else entirely).
Location:
This role is hybrid. While some activities can be accomplished remotely, we are expecting this person to come onsite twice per week. Occasionally, we may ask you to visit the field: MBTA stations, stops, buses, trains, and garages.
As a contracted role for the MBTA, we are unable to hire candidates who would perform their work in California, Connecticut, Washington DC, Hawaii, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Washington, West Virginia, and Puerto Rico.
At this time, we are only able to hire US residents who will reside in the US for the duration of their employment
Compensation:
Pay rate range is $66 - $80 per hour (W-2), up to 1880 hours per year.
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion:
TID is dedicated to creating a diverse and inclusive environment—it’s essential to the work we do. In order to effectively partner with MBTA departments and do our best work for riders, our team must reflect the wide variety of people who use the MBTA’s services. We welcome people with different strengths, experiences, and backgrounds who share a passion for improving people’s lives. Our team is deeply committed to diversity, inclusion, and continual learning. We strive to foster an environment where each individual is valued, feels a sense of belonging, and is welcomed to bring their best self to work.
Here at TID, we provide equal opportunity for all employees and applicants. We recruit, hire, train, promote, compensate, and manage all personnel without regard to race, color, national origin, cultural identification or expression, socioeconomic background, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, family status, marital status, learning style, neurodiversity, genetics, disability, age, veteran status, or any other non-merit based or legally protected grounds.
Research has shown that women and people of color are less likely to apply for roles unless they believe they meet all qualifications. We strongly encourage candidates from marginalized groups to apply, even if you don’t believe you meet every one of the job qualifications listed. We’re committed to maximizing the diversity of our team and want to hear from anyone who is passionate about our efforts and interested in supporting our work for riders.
