IDinsight Job Vacancy Application Details

IDinsight is an international development organization that helps policymakers and managers make socially impactful decisions using rigorous evidence. We carefully tailor a wide range of analytical and quantitative tools to enable our clients to design better policies, rigorously test those ideas, and take informed action at scale to improve lives. Our services include experimental evaluation methodologies – including, but not limited to, randomized controlled trials – tailored to the priorities of international development decision-makers; monitoring and performance management systems to facilitate continuous data-driven improvement; policy design consulting and scale-up support.

IDinsight is hiring full-time junior data scientists (0 to 4 years of relevant experience) to grow our machine learning and broader data science capabilities. In this role the data scientist will work with project teams and clients to use advanced analytics to drive social impact. You may build models that help locate out of school children, optimize routing of community health workers, identify infants with high mortality risk, or make credit scoring possible for the unbanked for the first time.

We are a social-impact oriented organization, so can guarantee incredibly meaningful work tackling some of the world’s most complex international development challenges around the world.

About the Role

We are seeking candidates with a strong background in Python and core data science skills and a passion for building solutions to difficult social problems. Most importantly, successful candidates should possess the ability to work independently to solve complex challenges related, both human and technological.

As a junior data scientist, the day-to-day work may include:

• Working with clients to understand their needs: Understanding their current processes and pain points and identifying which of these can be framed as a tractable data science problem.
• Wrangling/cleaning government or client data: from extracting data from SQL databases and making api calls to scraping websites and cleaning survey data.
• Designing, testing, improving various algorithms: From OOTB scikit-learn algorithms to bespoke ones.
• Synthesising, visualizing, and communicating results: Dashboards, plots, interactive viz, presentations and reports
• Working with other team members to test and deploy these solutions.

Required Technical Qualifications

Junior Data Scientist:

• Proficiency working in Python is required. Please do not apply if you are not proficient in standard data science packages in Python (numpy, pandas, scikit learn, etc.). The application will ask you specific questions on your Python abilities.
• Proficiency in understanding and coding standard supervised and unsupervised machine learning algorithms and components of the data science pipeline – data cleaning, feature selection, cross-validation, parameter tuning, etc.
• Sound foundations in statistics and probability.
• Working knowledge of SQL
• B.S./B.S.E. degree in Applied Math, Data Science, Computer Science, Physics, or Similar Technical Field

Other required qualifications:

• Proven ability to work alone and with teams in a dynamic, multicultural environment.
• Passion for improving lives through evidence-informed policy.
• Strong oral and written communication skills in English. Fluency in languages spoken in countries where IDinsight works is a plus.
• Strong values aligned with IDinsight’s stated values.
• Ability and interest in sharing knowledge, mentoring others, presenting work and reviewing the work of others.
• Deeply passionate about global development and improving lives in disadvantaged populations
• Open-minded self-starter who will thrive while tackling new, unusual and unpredictable challenges

Preferred Qualifications

The most competitive applicants will also have experience in one or more of the following:

• Experience living and working in developing country settings.
• Experience working on optimization and unsupervised learning problem.
• Experience working with SQL, custom APIs and AWS products like RDS, EC2, and Lambda.
• Experience working with GIS software such as QGIS.
• Experience working with satellite imagery / remote sensing data.

Locations

This position is located in one of IDinsight’s existing offices, with possibility of extensive travel dependent on project needs. The most likely offices for this position are New Delhi, India; Dakar, Senegal; Nairobi, Kenya; or Lusaka, Zambia. Preference will be given to those with pre-existing work authorization in these countries; however, IDinsight will seek work permits where possible for exceptional candidates.

Due to the COVID-19 crisis, we are currently “working from home” globally. As such, successful candidates would be expected to work from home until it is possible to safely and responsibly work from an IDinsight office.