Lead, Data Standards

Overview

Common Approach is looking for a Lead, Data Standards to play an integral role in developing and promoting the world’s leading impact ontology. This is an opportunity to join a small team backed by a talented and diverse governance group and network of partners and be part of bringing about a transformative innovation that creates flexible, shareable data.

Responsibilities

You will lead the Common Impact Data Standard and Common Form development work. This includes recruiting and collaborating with technical experts, recruiting and building relationships with users of the data standards and shaping the development of the data standards in accordance with our guiding principles.

Responsibilities will include:

• Facilitating a team of experts to serve on the committees that ensure the Common Impact Data Standard and Common Form are high-quality, well-explained data ontologies. This will include recruiting new committee members as needed. (Committee members are paid for their advisory work).
• Leading the documentation of learnings and development of case studies to support the recruitment and retention of stakeholders, including impact-focused asset managers, software vendors, standard setters and technical experts.
• Building and maintaining relationships with the software vendors that have implemented the Common Impact Data Standard and Common Form. These relationships are important opportunities to learn and collaborate to ensure that the data standards are providing value to them and their end users.
• Recruiting new software vendors to use the Common Impact Data Standard and Common Form. This includes following up on referrals from social purpose organizations and asset managers that want their software vendor to align with the standard. It also includes outreach to software vendors in target markets, such as financial services, farm management and social services.
• Representing Common Approach’s data standards at relevant standard-setting bodies, such as W3C.

Qualifications

A successful candidate will be:

• Enthusiastically aligned with Common Approach’s guiding principles: building impact measurement standards that are shaped by users and that place power with operating charities, social purpose organizations and those they serve.
• Experienced in collaborating and communicating with software developers, data architects, data engineers and computer scientists.
• Familiar with terms like linked data, data ontologies, data schema, graph databases, RDF, JSON-LD, Turtle, and SPARQL.
• Experienced in business requirements analysis.
• Great at building relationships and a sense of community with partners. Practiced at project management in a start-up environment.
• Able and willing to learn new, often technical, skills. Better yet, you find this fun!

Please be sure to review the full description of this role at www.commonapproach.org/opportunities.