
Website The Athletic
About the Role
The Developer, Graphics will play a crucial role in the growing data and explanatory visualization efforts of The Athletic’s newly formed Graphics team.
In this role, you’ll work closely with other graphics developers, designers, engineers, data analysts, editors and reporters to create interactive storytelling, daily sports news graphics and destination pages that inform and inspire our readers. You’ll be expected to pitch and execute your own data and visual-driven stories and graphics, as well as collaborate with our newsroom to elevate our reporting across all of our sports coverage.
You will also contribute to our team’s technical infrastructure for developing graphics, including building and maintaining tools, templates and style libraries.
To succeed, you should feel comfortable with every part of the graphics creation process, including story pitching, project planning, design, data analysis, development and quality assurance. You’ll be working in a collaborative environment and being able to communicate your vision with other creatives and stakeholders is important to this role.
You should be patient and flexible, willing to dive into any stage of a project to help level up the work. You should be perceptive and detail-oriented with a great mind for conceptual thinking and realizing the vision of the project at hand.
This role will report to the Managing Editor, Graphics and is a fully remote position for candidates based in the United States or Canada.
Responsibilities
Design and build data and visual driven graphics, both interactive and static for all of our sports coverage.
Collaborate with our newsroom, engineering and product partners to innovate and elevate our visual storytelling.
Pitch and execute your own visual and data-driven story ideas alongside the Graphics team.
Help field incoming graphics pitches from the newsroom, communicating clearly and thoughtfully with reporters and editors throughout the entirety of an assignment.
Thrive in a dynamic, fast-paced environment.
Requirements
At least 2 years of relevant experience, including time working as a graphics developer, visual journalist, or similar position in a newsroom or similar environment.
Experience designing and building graphics using tools and libraries such as D3.js, Datawrapper, Adobe Illustrator, and Figma.
Experience building graphics and news apps in Svelte or similar frameworks
Understanding of web technologies (HTML, CSS, JavaScript)
Experiencing conducting data analysis using Python, SQL, R or other similar frameworks
Experience working on concurrent, on-going projects.
A deep knowledge of and an appreciation for journalism, design and data, including data analysis languages and methods of acquiring data, like coding and scraping.
The ability to shape data-based journalism using innovative approaches to storytelling.
An outstanding portfolio showcasing relevant work.
The ability to adapt and think quickly when projects change, timelines shift or scopes vary.
Experience working and collaborating with Product and Engineering teams is a plus.
Experience working in JIRA and Github is a plus
Knowledge of GIS software (e.g., ArcGIS, QGIS, Mapbox) and geospatial data analysis techniques is a plus.