TLDR;

Are you fascinated by applying Data Science to the real world and noble purposes? Don’t wait, we have a challenging opportunity for you at Qomon!

Quick disclaimers:

• ⚠️ This internship is not focused on models / AI / ML / DL / “Big Data”, there is plenty of stuff to do besides that in the data-science world 🤗 Let us really emphasize on the full-stack words in the title (tech / dev wise) first, data(-scientist) part second.

• We welcome applicants that are looking for (end-of-studies) internships! 🎓 (with sharp software engineering knowledge but not necessarily experience)

• We really are into building a diverse, inclusive and authentic workplace! We don’t expect candidates to match and feel at ease with every line of this lengthy job description 🤗

We do believe it’s a one-of-a-kind opportunity

• You will be taking part in a growing startup (and B-Corp), human-sized, with an experienced staff, supporting entrepreneurial mindsets, ownership, and with a very open / transparent / 0 bullshit company culture.

• (big) Cherry on the cake, you will be with us at an exciting and rare time, during the 2024 European Elections 🚀

• We are committed to a challenging, diverse and meaningful sector: citizen-driven organizations, NGOs, movements, campaigns, etc. all over the world. Qomon R&D team is at the forefront of our actions.

• Code & data quality / maintainability is highly valued, while keeping a startup / pragmatic spirit.

• We don’t do shady / micro personalized / micro targeted / big data stuff; we actually mainly work with (small) Open Data!

The internship

We are opening an internship to work on our “Strategic Reporting Builder”. It can sound bullshit, but it’s not! 🤓

In the last 1.5 years we have been generating reports in bulk covering geographic areas (for instance circonscriptions in France). Those reports would include fine electoral maps, results, census data, etc. They are of great values for our clients and prospects.

The objective here is to streamline and industrialize as much as possible this generation process. An end goal would be to have this integrated directly in our product, so that clients can directly preview and generate reports of their own.

This will include Software Engineering (new APIs, tests, etc.), Scripting if necessary, Data-Engineering & Dev-Ops (to deploy it and make sure it’s scalable), Frontend development to include it in our product. Depending on how fast you move, we could also add more fancy stuff or move to another subject 🚀

You will also likely be involved in other missions of the Data / R&D team related to your core mission.

In the end, we are looking for someone who wants to hone their tech skills, who’s bringing a little something more (anything), and who’s willing to do the whole work, actually code a lot, and not just do the fancy math thinking :)

Team: Qomon

Here are some quick information about the team.

We currently are 20+ full-time employees and growing at a reasonable and organized pace:

• Paris: CEO, Head of operations, 3 sales, 1 marketing intern, 1 CSM / AM, Data / R&D team lead + 1 Full-Stack Data Scientist, 2 Backend developers

• Bordeaux: CTO (/backend dev) + 1 dev Backend, 5 frontend devs + 1 intern, 1 CSM.

• (partial) Remote: Marketing Lead (Burgundy), Marketing (Sevilla), Sales (Brussels & Vancouver) and Product Marketing (Berlin).

We are moving more and more towards English as our main language in the company.

We meet (virtually) on a weekly basis for half an hour during our “Monday Digest” where we demo our latest features, etc.

We gather IRL for each quarter during the “100 days”.

We have a 0 useless / unprepared meeting policy, even if can still improve.

We are a small team, the hierarchy is rather flat and there is no micromanagement. But this doesn’t mean that there is 0 management: team leaders, more senior members, and the CEO / CTO are always available on demand to discuss objectives, carriers, everyday life issues, etc. It really is a collective adventure and we want everyone to feel at ease 🚀

Team: Tech / Product

The tech team used to be mostly in Bordeaux 🍷 In 2023 we have expanded a lot in Paris as you can see above. It has a strong team spirit, it is composed of individuals with a diverse set of expertise, backgrounds and motivations which makes things interesting! 🔥

The current situation is that the product team works on 2-week sprints and we do quick writen dailies to understand everyone progress and challenges.

In terms of general tooling we are using Gitlab, Slack, Discord, Clickup & Notion.

Team: Data / R&D

Our main focus is to deliver value & actionable insights to our clients. Those should resonate as “calls to action”. For this matter, we are working closely with the Product team to make our innovations accessible and usable by everyone.

The Data / R&D team is still kind of on the side of the Product team (we tend to have less estimable task to perform and are more involved with clients or during the client lifecycle, so we don’t have the exact same rhythm).

👉 2 Full-time members!

Florent

Note: yes, I am the one writing this job post. You can check my LinkedIn to better understand who you are / will be dealing with. I have joined this unique adventure at Qomon in May 2021, and I have been truly enjoying my time here 🚀 I am driven by Data-Science for good and ownership.

PS: yeah, this is a lengthy job post, but it’s the way I like job posts; let’s avoid surprises!

Finally, my vision for the data / R&D team is:

Here is the non-negotiable order of priorities in the team.

1. Deliver correct data (do all the QA needed, never trust yourself and never trust the reviewer)

2. Everything else (meeting deadlines included)

3. Still, do our best to meet deadlines.

The challenge here is not only to deliver working things, but to deliver correct stuff! 🤓

Lou

Hey! I’m Lou, and I joined Qomon in March 2023. It is important to me that my work has a positive impact on society. I believe Qomon has everything to achieve this, as it promotes democratic mobilization, is a certified B-corporation, and is full of passionate people. I’m always down to go bouldering or to play board games (we often organize game nights after work).

A team of Full-Stack Data-Scientists

Just so you know a bit more about the context you will be joining, we want to emphasize that the Data / R&D team works on a very diverse set of areas / skills:

• Software engineering: Develop, test, improve our production pipelines, utils & APIs (REST web services to make our data & algorithms public).

• Data engineering: with performance and data size considerations automate data ingestion, data production, quality assurance.

• Database engineering: tune database models / requests / configurations.

• Applied research: work on unique geo-based datasets to help our clients and the public better understand their territories or develop specific algorithms / statistical pipelines. This research will most often apply to all our clients but we might do custom research for specific clients or Public Relations purposes.

• Geo data engineering: Create & update internal countries geo referentials.

• Frontend development: improve our data visualizations (mostly as maps for now) and the general User Experience on parts of the Qomon WebApp under the responsibility of the R&D team.

• DevOps: work on CI/CD, monitoring, etc.

• ML: we have started experimenting with ML for some specific things (don’t expect to do any during your internship).

NB: we don’t expect the “deep abstract math” oriented research to account for 5 to 15% of our work at most. It’s important to be able to do math, but you will not be building models all day long. You shouldn’t be joining us while having in mind that you’ll be applying the latest ML algos on some random data.

Data / R&D stack

Here is a bit of name-dropping regarding our stack in the team: Unix, Python (and its scientific stack — Pandas, Numpy, Scikit-Learn, …), Jupyter, PostgreSQL + PostGIS, Sqlite + Spatialite, Apache Avro, Redis, Celery, Dagster, Docker, Kubernetes, QGIS, FastAPI, Pydantic, Vue.JS, Mapbox GL JS, Gitlab, Gitlab-CI, Ansible, Terraform, Helm, PySpark.

What we have to offer 🎁

🗣️ Join a team in a hand-on and international environment
🏢 Paris office in “Le Marais”
🫂 Take part in a small team with a huge ambition
🔥 Freedom to act and to develop your skills within an experienced & growing team
🚄 Regular team offsites every quarter to stay trained and aligned (but also have fun) (les “100 jours”)
🚉 50% coverage of your transport tickets
💻 A computer, and what you need to work
🏠 Possibility of remote
📱 Product first team with huge ambitions in an incredible momentum
🅱️ Qomon is certified B-corp. Certified B Corporations are a new kind of business that balances purpose and profit.

Paris only for now: 🍓 Fruits and Candies on Mondays at the Office 🧘 Yoga class on Wednesdays

NB: keep in mind the quick disclaimers written at the top of this job post.

• You are completing a master’s degree in Mathematics, Statistics or Computer Science, or equivalent, with notable success & happiness. You do enjoy (and know about) Maths and Data Science and Computer Science (algorithms, data structures, etc.)

• You are close or feel ready to write production code (no worries, you won’t be let loose) — preferably in Python & JavaScript. You know LaTeX and you are not afraid of it (this is a clear requirement for this internship),

• Open-minded about and attracted by our view of full-stack data science,

• Willing to join the team in the beautiful city of Paris,

• Interested in working / ok to work with a wide range of (political) organizations,

• Used to sharing your opinions and continuously improving,

• You have a professional level of English (>= C1 in Reading / Writing / Speaking),

• Flexible enough for the evolving nature of a startup & rigorous enough for working with data in general,

• Ability to self-motivate and finish things,

• Interest in citizen-driven organizations.

Subject to changes.

• A brief screening call with Florent (Data / R&D Team Lead @Qomon) & quick technical discussions

• Remote Qomon demo & talk with Lou or another team member

• Remote dive into some code of your own with Florent & Lou

• Technical / science test done live in our Paris office