Posting number: 17091
Department: Public Defender's Office
Job classification: Database Analyst/Programmer
Posting type: Open
Categories: IT and Computers, Legal, Database Administration
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About the Harris County Public Defender's Office:
The Harris County Public Defender's Office is committed to providing high-quality, client-centered representation to individuals accused of criminal offenses who cannot afford counsel. Our office works collaboratively across legal and support teams to advocate for our clients, protect constitutional rights, and promote fairness within the legal system. We value professionalism, integrity, teamwork, and compassionate public service.
The Harris County Public Defender's Office seeks a full-time Data Specialist to help build and maintain the office's law enforcement accountability database through Techtivist. This is a data-focused position requiring strong skills in data collection, organization, quality control, and analysis. The Data Specialist will work with complex records and bulk data related to law enforcement accountability. This position is responsible for transforming large, inconsistent, and often fragmented sources of information into accurate, structured, and searchable data. This work is critical to supporting attorneys, investigators, and policy staff in identifying officer credibility issues, patterns of misconduct, impeachment information, and other data that assists in client representation and broader efforts to improve the criminal legal system.
Duties and Responsibilities:
Maintain and update the office's Techtivist database.
Collect, clean, structure, and validate data from public records, court records, civil lawsuits, agency rosters, disciplinary records, attorney submissions, case materials, and online sources.
Work with spreadsheets, databases, PDFs, scanned records, and other structured and unstructured data sources.
Extract and parse information from documents using OCR, PDF extraction, and other data-processing tools.
Identify and resolve duplicate records, inconsistent officer names, missing identifiers, conflicting information, and other data-quality issues.
Link records across datasets, including rosters, lawsuits, complaints, disciplinary records, Brady disclosures, and case-related information.
Write or run scripts, when appropriate, to clean, transform, match, or import data into usable formats.
Assist with database structure, data-entry protocols, source tracking, confidentiality designations, and quality-control workflows.
Prepare, track, and organize public information requests for law enforcement rosters, command structures, policies, misconduct records, and related data.
Query data and prepare reports, spreadsheets, summaries, visualizations, and other work products for attorneys and staff.
Protect confidential, privileged, sealed, or otherwise sensitive information.
Assist with user support, troubleshooting, documentation, and other Techtivist-related tasks.
Perform other tasks as assigned.
Harris County is an Equal Opportunity Employer
https://hrrm.harriscountytx.gov/Pages/EqualEmploymentOpportunityPlan.aspx
If you need special services or accommodations, please call (713) 274-5445 or email ADACoordinator@bmd.hctx.net
This position is subject to a criminal history check. Only relevant convictions will be considered and, even when considered, may not automatically disqualify the candidate.
Supporting Documents:
Applicants should submit a resume and cover letter describing their interest in the position.
Applicants are also encouraged to submit a data project, code sample, dashboard, spreadsheet, research memo, writing sample, or other work product demonstrating relevant skills.
Education and Experience:
Bachelor's degree from an accredited college or university in data science, computer science, statistics, information science, public policy, sociology, criminology, criminal justice, journalism, public administration, or a related field.
At least two (2) years of experience working with databases, spreadsheets, public records, research data, or other structured datasets.
Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities:
NOTE Qualifying education, experience, knowledge, and skills must be documented on your job application. You may attach a resume to the application as supporting documentation but ONLY information stated on the application will be used for consideration. "See Resume" will not be accepted for qualifications.
Preference may be given to candidates with experience in:
Position Type and Typical Hours of Work:
Regular Full-time | The anticipated start date is October 2026 - S ubject to final fiscal year funding. A contingent offer may be extended prior to that date
Monday - Friday | 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
Salary:
Depends on qualifications
Based on 26 pay periods
Employment may be contingent on passing a drug screen and meeting other standards.
Due to a high volume of applications positions may close prior to the advertised closing date or at the discretion of the Hiring Department.
Harris County is a county located in the U.S. state of Texas within the Houston–Sugar Land–Baytown metropolitan area. As of 2000 U.S. Census, the county had a population of 3,400,578 (though a 2007 estimate placed the population at 4,011,475), making it the most populous county in Texas and the third most populous county in the United States. Its county seat is Houston.
