GiveDirectly Data Scientist Jobs in Kenya

GiveDirectly Data Scientist Jobs in Kenya

About GiveDirectly

GiveDirectly (GD) aims to reshape international giving – and millions of lives – by providing cash grants directly to the poorest people in the world.

The Brookings Institution estimates that $100B of cash transfers would be required to eliminate the poverty gap; the aid sector currently spends $135B each year, much of it on evidence-free interventions.

GiveDirectly wants to change that, establishing cash transfers as a benchmark for foreign aid – as the index fund is a benchmark for the financial industry – and in the process accelerating the end of extreme poverty.

GD has raised over $800M since launching in 2011, delivered cash to more than 1 million people, and launched offices in 11 countries.

We’ve also supported 19 large-scale, experimental research projects that indicate strong recipient impact of our programs – including the largest universal basic income experiment in history.

We use concrete evidence to inform the design of our programs: from research results published in leading journals, to in-depth qualitative work.

As a result, GD has been celebrated as one of the most innovative non-profit companies by Fast Company, while the growing cash transfer movement (and GD’s leading role within it) have been featured in the New York Times Magazine, This American Life, Foreign Affairs, and The Economist.

We’re looking for exceptional talent to grow our collaborative, diverse team.

Joining GiveDirectly provides the opportunity to work alongside individuals who come from 21 different countries and speak 69 different languages.

We’re actively working toward an equitable and inclusive environment for all team members, and seek candidates who will bring diverse perspectives and experiences to our organization.

We recruit from organizations across all industries: our team has hailed from sectors including start-ups, government, consultancies, investment banks, and nonprofits.

Across our global offices, our culture is candid, analytical, non-hierarchical, and fast-paced.

We value ability, adaptability, and willingness to learn.

We offer competitive salary and benefits, as well as performance-based bonuses.

About the Field Data Team

As we scale to reach millions of people experiencing extreme poverty, we believe that data can transform cash delivery by:

Improving recipient experience

Increasing operational efficiency

Mitigating risk

Conveying our impact to donors

To realize this vision, we are building a best-in-class data team focused on cash delivery: operations, payments, and recipient safeguarding.

You will be the Field Data team’s first Data Scientist, reporting to the Senior Data Manager and working closely with the Senior Data Architect.

This is an opportunity to join at the inception of the team and guide foundational decisions regarding vision, priorities, and best practices.

We are a small (but growing) group with a startup mentality, applying engineering best practices and a product development approach to data.

Our data infrastructure is built on AWS and Databricks, with dashboards and visualizations in Tableau. We primarily use SQL, Python, and R.

About this Role

You will deliver insights and decision making tools that help shape cash delivery by determining which projects we take on, how we design them, and how we implement them.

Responsibilities Include

Statistical analysis and predictive modeling.

Own process end-to-end: implement statistical methods and build, train, and deploy predictive models to solve problems in cash delivery utilizing code (e.g., Python, R). Current priorities:

Targeting. Implement and improve existing machine learning algorithms predicting poverty level from call-detail records (CDR) and geospatial data.

This work enables us to remotely identify eligible recipients at scale, and has been highlighted in WIRED with findings published by our research partners in Nature.

Risk prediction. Develop new risk prediction models that help us design programs and target recipient outreach to keep recipients and communities safe.

Support data quality assurance. Work with the Senior Data Architect to design processes that ensure key metrics, models, and analysis are built on high quality data.

Communication. Collaborate with leaders throughout the organization to define data product requirements, educate them about solutions, and make recommendations.

This role has a high degree of autonomy and the ability to shape our process from the ground up by determining best practices and informing the data product roadmap.

This role is fully remote but must overlap with an East Africa timezone by at least 4 hours.

Reports to:

Senior Manager, Data

About You

You are an analytical problem solver who knows how to:

Frame a testable question from ambiguous requirements

Gather, clean, and manipulate the required data

Deliver answers that directly inform important decisions

You deliver results that impact real-world outcomes by:

Solving for user needs and constraints

Understanding when to build complex models and when simpler solutions are more appropriate

Communicating takeaways clearly

You are intellectually curious and humble.

You think probabilistically and measure the uncertainty of your predictions.

You are a mid-level to Senior Data Scientist with the following qualifications.

Required Qualifications

5+ years experience working with data querying languages (e.g., SQL) and statistical modeling software (e.g., Python, R)

5+ years experience as a Data Scientist or related position applying statistical and/or machine learning (ML) techniques, with a deep understanding of the key parameters that affect their performance

Deep understanding of ML algorithms – ability to apply the appropriate methods, as well as benchmark and diagnose predictions to rapidly improve performance

Proficient in spark, dask, and/or other packages for distributed computing

Ability to travel and deploy to international, on premise locations for up to 1 month at a time

Preferred But Not Required Qualifications

Bachelor's degree in a STEM or other quantitative field

Helpful qualifications (we do not expect you to have all of these):

Advanced degree in a STEM or other quantitative field

Experience analyzing call-detail records, geospatial (e.g., ArcGIS or Python geospatial stack), and/or social network data

Experience developing an end-to-end machine learning pipeline with a scalable ML framework (TensorFlow, Torch, H2O, Spark MLib, scikit-learn)

Familiarity with cloud-based solutions (AWS, GCP etc.) for storing and processing large, terabyte-scale, datasets

Familiarity with poverty measurement methodologies – e.g., geographic poverty, poverty proxies, common administrative data sources, household survey data

Experience building dashboards and visualizations, preferably in Tableau

Experience mentoring and developing teams of Data Scientists

Level and Compensation

At GiveDirectly, we strive to pay our employees generously and equitably.

We use an accredited third party salary aggregator to ensure that staff’s total compensation package (base compensation + bonus) falls within the 75th percentile of similar roles, at similar organizations.

We also have a no negotiation policy to ensure we are paying staff equitably across roles.

Data Scientist:

The United States base salary for this role is $130,000 with a 10% bonus index.

For non-US candidates, the salary for this role will be adjusted based on cost of living and the local labor market.

A benchmark for your location will be shared during the interview process.

For exceptionally experienced candidates we are open to considering a Senior Data Scientist role for this posting.

Both positions will start as independent contributors with the potential to manage if the team grows.

About The Hiring Process

Format: The hiring process follows the same general outline for all open roles:

First interview (30 mins)

Take home skills assignment (~2 hours)

Second interview (1 hour)*

Third interview (1 hour)*

Final interview (1 hour)

Reference checks (30 mins each)

For some roles, second & third interviews are combined into a panel interview.

If there are adjustments or variations on this process, those changes will be communicated during the first interview.

Venue: We conduct interviews over Google Meet with camera on (unless communicated otherwise).

Accessibility: Closed captioning is available during all Google Meet interviews, and interviewers will also post interview questions in the chat box throughout the call.

If you need assistance accessing either of these features, please let your interviewer know at the start of your interview!

If there are questions or concerns you have about the accessibility of our hiring process, we warmly invite you to reach out to careers@givedirectly.org.

How to Apply

For more information and job application details, see: GiveDirectly Data Scientist Jobs in Kenya

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