Development Research Assistant

About Us
We are a real estate development company based in Canada. We design, permit, and build multi-unit residential buildings — townhouses, duplexes, triplexes, and small apartment buildings in Nova Scotia. We currently have 4 active construction sites and 20+ projects moving through our design pipeline.

Every project starts with a question: can we build what we want on this lot? Our senior feasibility analyst researches each property to answer that question. She's currently handling 20+ properties at various stages, and she needs help.

You would be working directly under our feasibility analyst, handling the data gathering and report assembly that feeds her analysis. Think of it this way: she d ---------- what a property's constraints mean and what we should do about them. Your job is to make sure she has all the raw information she needs, organized and ready for her to interpret. She teaches you the systems, reviews your work, and gradually hands you more responsibility as you learn.

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What Your Week Actually Looks Like

Monday
8:00 AM (your time): Open ClickUp. Three new properties came in over the weekend. Your senior analyst has assigned them to you with a note: "Pull standard package." You know what that means — for each property:
- Look up the PID (Parcel Identification Number) on the Nova Scotia Property Online system
- Download the property deed and check for covenants, easements, and encumbrances
- Find the zoning designation in the municipal Land Use By-Law
- Extract the relevant zone standards: lot coverage, height, setbacks, unit density, parking
- Check municipal servicing maps: water, sewer, storm — or flag that the property is on well and septic
- Pull any available survey, topographic, or environmental data
By lunch, you've assembled the standard data package for all three properties and dropped them into the shared drive in the report template format.

Tuesday-Wednesday
Your senior analyst has reviewed your packages and marked up questions: "Check if this covenant allows multi-unit development." "This zone references a policy in the MPS — find that policy section." "Call the municipal planning department and ask if a development agreement is possible under this designation." You work through her questions, filling in the gaps.

For two properties that are straightforward, she tells you to draft the feasibility report using the template. You fill in the sections: site overview, zoning summary, servicing, constraints, and leave the recommendation section for her. She reviews, adds her analysis and verdict, and the report goes to leadership.

Thursday-Friday
A bigger project comes in — a multi-parcel land assembly. Your senior analyst takes the lead on interpretation, but you handle the legwork: pulling deeds for 8 different PIDs, cross-referencing covenant language across parcels, mapping which parcels have easements, checking which planning area each parcel falls under. You organize everything into a structured summary so she can focus on the analysis rather than the data gathering.

End of week: update ClickUp statuses for all properties. Flag any that are waiting on municipal responses. Send your senior analyst a summary of where everything stands.

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What This Role Is and Is Not

You ARE:
- A research assistant who gathers, organizes, and packages property data for a senior analyst
- Learning the Canadian residential development process on the job — our analyst will train you on the specific systems and databases
- Responsible for speed and accuracy in data collection — pulling the right documents, extracting the right numbers, and not missing anything
- Eventually drafting sections of feasibility reports under supervision, growing your analytical role over time
- Making phone calls and sending emails to municipal planning departments when needed

You are NOT:
- Making go/no-go recommendations on your own (your senior analyst does that)
- Working independently without review — everything gets checked until you've proven consistent accuracy
- Designing buildings or producing architectural drawings
- Doing financial modeling or construction estimating

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Who Should Apply

This is a junior role. You don't need 5 years of experience. You need to be sharp, organized, and fast at finding information.

Ideal backgrounds:
- Urban planning graduates or current graduate students — especially if you've studied community planning, land use regulation, or development processes
- GIS analysts or technicians who've worked with property or land use data
- Junior researchers at development consultancies, municipal planning offices, or environmental firms
- Real estate research assistants who've done site due diligence or property analysis
- Geography, environmental science, or earth science graduates with research experience

Best fit: You understand what zoning means. You've read a land use bylaw before (any jurisdiction — we'll teach you Canadian specifics). You're comfortable pulling information from government databases and legal documents. You can manage 10+ research tasks at once without losing track. And you're excited to learn the development process from someone who will invest in teaching you.

Strong bonus: If you've studied or worked in community planning, subdivision regulation, or development agreement processes — this fills a gap we're specifically looking to address. Our senior analyst is strong on site-level physical constraints (soil, groundwater, environmental). We want someone who can grow into the larger-scale regulatory and planning analysis.

Not a fit: People who need detailed instructions for every task. People who've only done data entry without needing to understand the meaning of what they're entering. People who aren't comfortable reading dense legal or regulatory documents.

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Requirements

- Degree or current enrollment in urban planning, geography, environmental science, GIS, or related field
- Some experience with property research, land use research, or government database navigation (even academic projects count)
- Comfortable reading legal property documents: deeds, covenants, easements — you don't need to be an expert, but you shouldn't be intimidated by legal language
- Clear written English — you'll be drafting sections of reports that go to leadership
- Comfortable making phone calls to Canadian government offices in English
- Able to manage multiple concurrent research tasks (10+ at a time) without things falling through
- GIS proficiency is a strong plus

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Compensation and Conditions

Range: $1,000-1,600 CAD/month depending on experience and performance
Starting: $1,000-1,200 CAD/month during probation
Growth: As you take on more responsibility and your reports need fewer corrections, your compensation grows. Our goal is to get you to $1,400-1,600 within 3-6 months if you're performing well.
Schedule: Full-time, AST 8am-4pm (8pm-4am Manila)
Time off: Weekends off, one paid vacation day per month
Probation: 1 month

This is a growth role. You start as a research assistant and, if you're good, you grow into an analyst. The more you learn about Canadian development regulations and site assessment, the more valuable you become and the more you earn.

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30-Day Proof Point

By day 30, we will know this is working if:
- You can independently pull a complete standard data package (PID, deed, zoning, servicing) for a new property in under 2 hours
- You have assembled data packages for at least 15 properties with fewer than 3 items needing correction per package
- You can navigate Property Online, find relevant Land Use By-Law sections, and read a property deed without step-by-step guidance
- You have drafted at least 3 report sections (site overview, zoning summary) that your senior analyst approves with minor edits
- You are keeping ClickUp up to date and proactively flagging when you're blocked or need input

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How to Apply

Reply with your answers to all 5 screening questions and your resume. Include the word "RESEARCH" in your subject line so we know you read the full posting.

1. Background
Your education, current/recent employer (if any), and what you studied. If you've done any research on land use, property, zoning, environmental assessment, or development — describe it, even if it was for a school project.

2. Research Experience
Describe a time you had to find specific information from government sources, legal documents, or public databases. What were you looking for? How did you find it? How did you organize what you found? This doesn't have to be real estate — any structured research experience counts.

3. Scenario — Property Data Pull
You're given a property address in Halifax, Nova Scotia and told to "pull the standard package." You've never researched a Canadian property before, but you have access to Google and the provincial Property Online database. Walk me through how you'd figure out what to look for and where to find it. I'm not testing whether you know the Canadian system — I'm testing how you approach unfamiliar research. (3-4 sentences)

4. Schedule
Type "YES I CAN COMMIT" for AST 8am-5pm full-time.

5. Resume and Start Date
Link to your resume. If you have any research reports, GIS maps, or analysis work you can share (even academic), include them. How soon can you start?