Text Mining / AI Specialist

Location: Remote or Amsterdam

Application deadline: Rolling deadline basis

About OCCRP

With staff across six continents and hubs in Washington, D.C., Amsterdam, and Sarajevo, OCCRP is one of the largest investigative journalism organizations in the world. We are a nonprofit, mission-driven newsroom that partners with other media outlets to publish stories that spur action. OCCRP is also a media development platform that advances investigative reporting worldwide.

Our mission is to spread and strengthen investigative journalism around the world and expose crime and corruption so the public can hold power to account. Our work has three main pillars: We collaborate with investigative journalists to publish hard-hitting stories that spark change; we provide training, tools, and infrastructure so nonprofit media outlets can thrive; and we develop technology and innovations that advance the entire industry.

Position Overview

We are looking for an experienced Text Mining Specialist who wants the opportunity to work on challenging projects. You’ll be working on a new project as part of our product development team and will help to design and build a next generation data analysis tool.

The software you build will allow users to collect and organize information about politically exposed persons. This project is particularly aimed at supporting investigative journalism, providing valuable insights that allows OCCRP and other organizations to hold the powerful accountable.

In this role, you will leverage Artificial Intelligence techniques to address complex issues such as entity extraction from unstructured data. Your expertise in LLMs and/or other text mining methodologies will be crucial in transforming unstructured text, such as news articles, into leads that can drive investigative journalism.This is a contract position tied to the specific project. You should be interested in the field of data analysis and in the architecture and interplay of the tools used to create complex data systems.

Job Description

Your responsibilities include:

• Working with experienced investigative engineers to scrape data from websites and process it in order to extract people and relationships.
• Building a text mining pipeline that allows us to input unstructured documents, such as PDF files or text documents, and output information in a structured form.
• Establishing a verification mechanism to assess the accuracy of the extracted information.
• Working with experienced investigative engineers to process the collected data in a way that it will be usable in the OCCRP ecosystem.
• Designing an internal database to store the information with the help of the team.

Person Description

We value the following soft skills:

• Documenting and discussing ideas and approaches to technical solutions.
• Designing and Building scalable and maintainable solutions.
• Working closely with other team members and being open minded.
• Being on top of emerging technologies in the field of text mining.
• Supporting the idea of open source software development and engaging with an active community that we build around OCCRP’s tooling.

We are looking for a person who demonstrates experience in:

• Extracting information from unstructured data.
• Working with LLMs or other artificial intelligence technologies.
• Building stable data processing pipelines that are scalable.
• Candidates who have worked in a journalistic environment have an advantage.
• Candidates who are familiar with Python have an advantage.

To Apply

To apply, please email a cover letter and resume to jobs[at]occrp.org

All applications must be submitted in English. Incomplete applications will not be considered.

Whilst we have internal goals to reply to unsuccessful candidates, we regret that the high number of applicants greatly exceeds our capacity to respond to each person. We apologize that we will not be able to reply to any unsuccessful applicants.

As an equal opportunity employer, OCCRP values having a diverse workforce and continuously strives to maintain an inclusive and equitable workplace. We offer competitive compensation and benefits and encourage people with a diverse range of backgrounds to apply. We do not discriminate against any person based upon race, religion, color, national origin, sex, medical conditions, family status, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, disability, genetic information, or any other legally protected characteristics. If you are a qualified applicant requiring assistance or an accommodation to complete any step of the application process, please contact hr[at]occrp.org