Posted over 2 years ago

Imagine you live in Montreal, you are about to go to work. Too many service interruptions on the Orange line lately and it seems like your bus is never on time, so you want to know if you need to leave earlier than usual. You take out your smartphone to check your favorite mobility app. What are my options to get to my destination? Mobility data standards are a fundamental part of the puzzle to give you the information in a travel planning application to get you from point A to point B. 

The data behind that traveler information is the language in which the information is processed and transmitted. We believe high quality trip planning apps require standardized high quality data, and this is why MobilityData creates, facilitates and influences the collaboration space with international stakeholders to support and accelerate the development of two international data standards: the General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS) for public transit passenger information, and the General Bikeshare Feed Specification (GBFS).

Hundreds of millions of public transit passengers around the world rely on apps to get information on how to get around. These apps and transportation providers rely on data standards to structure and exchange this information on things like subway routes, bus schedules, network disruptions, fares, and many other useful pieces of passenger information. GTFS is the open standard in broad use by transit agencies like New York MTA, Tokyo Metro, and Paris RATP among several thousand other agencies, to get information to their passengers via apps like Apple Maps, Google Maps, Transit, and Moovit. MobilityData is working to improve the usability of GTFS. Our work on Public Transit Data Specifications involves structuring discussions to move standardization efforts forward, primarily through the online GTFS community of transit agencies, technology vendors, and consumer applications on GitHub (github.com/google/transit) and Slack.

As a Data Analyst you are responsible for understanding how various attributes of transportation systems might best be represented in data standards. You will help shape ease of representing additional features of public transit systems in data for use in apps used by the traveling public.

Within MobilityData's ecosystem, this position is under the supervision of the community lead and does not have a manager profile. You will be collaborating mostly with a team of a Product Manager and an open source community facilitator to identify needs and assist in systematically evaluating various options for improving data standards.

• Suggest Specification Improvements (30%)
  • Build specification change proposals to address issues prioritized by the group.
• Transfer Technical Knowledge of Specification Changes to other Product Areas (20%)
  • Contribute technical content and data examples to the documentation (gtfs.org)
  • Support Data Quality (GTFS Validators) development efforts with technical expertise.
• Provide Technical Assistance (50%)
  • Build and share domain expertise in various open transit data specifications, their features, and useability.
  • Provide timely technical assistance and respond to questions and comments on the GTFS GitHub repository, MobilityData Slack, and GTFS Google Groups.
  • Document needs for improvement of implementation guides and documentation such as gtfs.org and the GTFS Best Practices.

• Curious. Impact-driven. Collaborative. Flexible. Open. Go-getter.
• Experienced. You have 4+ years experience in designing solutions that leverage data.
• Qualified. You possess a Bachelor's degree in a related field or comparable professional experience.
• Knowledgeable. You know diverse, international public transportation systems.
• Communicative. You have excellent written and verbal communication skills in English.
• Organized: you can find, follow up and track tasks and results. You can find and share information with collaborators.
• Assets: Specific experience with GTFS is highly desirable. Experience with GTFS Realtime or work using Protocol Buffers is especially  advantageous.

If you mostly recognize yourself in this section, we strongly encourage you to apply even if you don't feel you tick all the boxes.

• Full time, 40h/week
• Permanent
• Location: Ideally, you would be located in an Eastern region-friendly time zone (For example, provinces of Quebec and Ontario or from the state of New York), as most of the job is remote, with quarterly in-person team meetings likely in Montreal, and potential additional business trips
• Perks and benefits:
  • Open-minded and inclusive team that values diversity
  • 4 weeks of yearly vacation and additional paid time off: 5 sick days, 5 days of parental obligation, bereavement, parental leave top up, etc.
  • Health insurance premiums paid up to 90% by the employer
  • Virtual health care service
  • Compensations for your public-transit and shared-mobility passes, home office material and for coworking space.

1. Applications will be collected until September 26st, 9am EST or until the ideal candidate has been found.
2. All candidates should be contacted in the 4 weeks after applications are closed, whether the application is moving forward or not.
3. Our hiring process is usually spread out over 2 to 3 weeks, and includes: 1 test, 2 interviews, reference check and possibly additional evaluations if required for the position.