Nick Tallant

About

Software Engineer & Civic Technologist.

I'm a software engineer centered around building tools and systems for social good. I've been fortunate to work in education policy, international security, misinformation, and criminal justice reform. I am currently a Senior Software Engineer at Recidiviz—a company bettering the criminal justice system. Outside of work you can find me doing yoga, cooking, bouldering, and playing the drums.

Resume

Professional Experience

Senior Software Engineer

Current

Recidiviz, Remote

Recidiviz is building a common, open-source, technical infrastructure to help the criminal justice system achieve better outcomes (both for the public and those within the system). With the right tools, we can surface earned releases for incarcerated people, prevent avoidable admissions, and reduce racial disparities.

Lead Software Engineer

March, 2023-October, 2023

Omelas, Remote

  • Maintain the ingestion and ETL of hundreds of thousands of propaganda documents a day.
  • Deploy and maintain machine learning models through REST APIs and containerized batching services. Models are fine tuned from HuggingFace transformers, PyTorch, and spaCy open source models.
  • Directly manage and mentor other members of the team.

Senior Data Engineer

2020-2022

Omelas, Remote

Construct and maintain serverless data ingestion pipelines for global online propaganda, as well as deploy machine learning models into production for analysis of media.

Civic Innovation Fellow

2020

US SOCOM, Washington D.C.

Created data science products for US Special Operations Command utilizing media of interest to special operations.

Geospatial Data Scientist

2019 - 2020

UChicago Political Science, Chicago, IL

Created and combined spatial data concerning land reform policies in post-WWII Italy, and evaluated those policies through a spatial regression discontinuity design.

Data & Governance Fellow

2018 - 2019

UChicago Consortium on School Research, Chicago, IL

Researched the implementation of Common Core State Standards within Chicago Public Schools by utilizing hierarchical linear modeling and a decade administrative data.

Education

M.S. Computational Analysis & Public Policy

2017 - 2020

University of Chicago, Chicago IL

A rigorous study of statistics, computer science, and economics to prepare policy minded data scientists, civic technologists, and researchers.

B.S. Liberal Studies in Music & Science

2013 - 2017

Texas A&M University—Commerce, Commerce TX

A development of the "not-so-soft" skills through performance art and music education, as well as research training in social psychology and physics.

Contact

Location:

Chicago, IL