Data Journalism Fellow

The Lawfare Institute

Data Journalism Fellow at Lawfare Institute developing and expanding RAGtime research platform. Collaborating on data journalism and research analysis for national security coverage.

Posted 7/9/2026full-timeRemote • District of Columbia, Washington • 🇺🇸 United StatesMid-LevelSenior💰 $70,000 - $90,000 per yearWebsite

About the role

Key responsibilities & impact

Explore and document how RAGtime engages its existing datasets—federal litigation, statutes, regulations, Office of Legal Counsel opinions, and foreign-relations records—surfacing patterns, strengths, and gaps;
Experiment with new datasets: help identify, evaluate, and onboard new corpora of public records, and assess how they expand what the platform can do;
Develop use cases by working with senior editors and users to craft and refine the prompts and workflows that turn RAGtime into beneficial tools for research, reporting, and analysis;
Conduct data journalism and research analysis using RAGtime—finding stories, evidence, and insight in the primary-source record and helping translate them into Lawfare's published work;
Serve as a thought partner to the editor-in-chief and to volunteer software developers on the platform’s roadmap and capabilities;
Help keep current and new data pipelines up to date using AI-assisted (“vibe coding”) approaches—formal software-engineering experience is not required;
Gather and synthesize feedback from users to inform improvements and new features;
Contribute to platform documentation, user guidance, and, as needed, reporting on platform use for funders and stakeholders;
Take on other responsibilities as the platform grows.

Requirements

What you’ll need

Strong research, analytical, and writing skills—ideally with a background in journalism, data journalism, research, law, public policy, information science, or a related field;
Comfort using AI and large language models in daily work, and enthusiasm for “vibe coding”—using AI tools to write lightweight code and scripts—even without a formal technical background;
Curiosity and rigor: an eagerness to explore a new tool, form hypotheses about how it can be used, and test them;
Comfort working with data—finding, evaluating, organizing, and drawing insight from structured and unstructured sources;
An interest in law, government, national security, or the public record (a strong plus).

Benefits

Comp & perks

health and dental care (with premiums fully paid by Lawfare)
flexible hours
participation in Lawfare's 401(k) plan with up to 4% employer match

ATS Keywords

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Applicant Tracking System Keywords

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Hard Skills & Tools

Data AnalysisVibe CodingDataset EvaluationUse Case DevelopmentData Organization

Soft Skills

CuriosityRigorCollaborationCommunication