GIS Research Specialist II

The County of Riverside Housing and Workforce Solutions (HWS) Department’s Continuum of Care (CoC) Division has an opportunity for a GIS Research Analyst II in Riverside, CA.

The candidate will be responsible for reviewing and analyzing data sets, policies, and research related to the homeless community. The GIS Research Analyst II will utilize the Homeless Management Information System (HMIS), map GIS data, and analyze results from the Homeless Point‑in‑Time Count to extract, interpret, and assess data for homeless trends that will help guide the delivery of Continuum of Care services and the development of homeless programs aimed at reducing homelessness.

The incumbent will also build dashboards displaying homeless data for public review; prepare reports and presentations to be shared with the County Board of Supervisors, City Councils, and other stakeholders; and assist with grant proposals and budget preparation. Travel throughout the county for off‑site events is required.

The department is seeking candidates with a passion for and experience supporting CoC, housing, homeless, and other human services, as well as demonstrated experience with geospatial data analysis. Competitive candidates will have experience with HMIS, ArcGIS, Tableau, Power BI, Python, and the Microsoft Office Suite; the ability to gather and interpret large data sets, including cleaning data and assessing data quality;

and strong community engagement and public speaking skills.

A master’s degree and Spanish bilingual skills are preferred but not required.

• Initiates research and statistical investigations and plans, designs, and conducts the activities of such investigations; recognizes the need for research and statistical investigations related to the development of demographic estimates and forecasts.
• Coordinates with staff and outside agencies to obtain data; designs, organizes and develops research evaluation plans, develops regulatory waiver requests, prepares budgets, and submits grant proposals.
• Defines sample populations and selection criteria; designs, develops and maintains databases; writes queries to extract data for ongoing and unexpected management reports; creates, tests and administers surveys and questionnaires; conducts focus and personal interviews; develops forms, procedures, schedules and sampling criteria for field data collection; and performs random assignments.
• Advises research specialists and administrators of research findings and/or procedures; prepares narrative reports of findings with valid conclusions and statistical significance, projects impacts, and provides trend analysis.
• Identifies problems in inter‑organizational operations and procedures with implications for plan development and implementation and recommends alternative solutions for use in management decision‑making.
• Conducts research to develop population, housing, and employment estimates and forecasts.
• Analyzes and interprets small area socio‑economic and land use data using geographic information systems.
• Assists the supervisor in developing and coordinating planning activities and in directing assigned project staff; and preparing annual budgets for research projects.

• Option I:
  Graduation from an accredited college with a Master’s degree in social science, statistics, mathematics, economics, business/public administration, data processing, or any of the natural sciences, which included graduate level courses in research design, data collection methods, and advanced statistical analysis. While a Master’s degree is preferred, additional qualifying experience may be substituted for up to two years of the required education, on the basis of 10 semester or 15‑quarter units of graduate level coursework in the areas previously cited equaling 6 months.
• Option II:
  Additional qualifying education may be substituted for up to two years of the required work experience such that a Ph.D. degree, with qualifying coursework, meets the minimum education and experience requirement.

• Option I:
  Two years of progressively responsible experience in administrative, professional, investigative, technical or…