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Senior Data Scientist, MNO Data
Contract type
Ongoing
Work mode
Remote · United Kingdom, Kenya
Experience
Senior · Not stated
Level inferred from job title
Job description
Senior Data Scientist role at GiveDirectly focused on developing and extending methods to infer residence and displacement from Mobile Network Operator (MNO) location data, and making those methods repeatable across operators and countries. The role supports cash targeting and emergency response programs.
At a glance
- Employment
- Full-time · Employee (employment agreement)
- Work mode
- Remote · United Kingdom, Kenya
- Languages
- English – fluent
- Pay
- USD 107,070 / year
What you'll do
- Improve and extend the library of analytical method templates for establishing where people live from MNO data, and depending on circumstances, for detecting displacement or estimating poverty; design novel methods when an intervention requires it
- Support colleagues in technical conversations with operators, bringing clarity on the data needed and why, and steering discussions toward technical designs that make the analysis workable
- Assess the information that can be inferred from each operator's data given data types and sparsity, for each geography and targeted area; support intervention design to account for data quality
- Write tests and method specifications for MNO data engineers to implement: steps, parameters, pseudocode, validation criteria
- Guide operator engineering teams through implementation, in writing and in person; adapt methods to accommodate large data volume and computational constraints, balancing accuracy and operational needs
- Run in-country workshops with operators to support the set-up of new analyses and, where feasible, tune parameters based on statistical tests and distributions
- Feed every new analytical and implementation element back into standard templates
- Design for privacy from the start so that as little data as possible has to be shared: aggregation, minimization, and where useful privacy-enhancing technologies such as private set intersection or homomorphic encryption
- Protect the confidentiality of what operators share and improve internal data security processes and tools
- Build internal training material so technical and non-technical teams understand the strengths and limits of this data
What we're looking for
- Strong mathematical modeling, machine learning and statistics
- Deep comfort with spatio-temporal data: temporal filtering, GIS, probability distributions, combinatorial reasoning, and working with sparse, irregular observations
- The ability to reason without ground truth
- Pragmatism about the trade-off between accuracy and implementability
- Excellent communication and relationship-building skills
- Experience writing technical specifications that other teams implemented
- Able to read and review SQL and Python written by others, and to find the logical error in someone else's query
- Enough understanding of large data volumes and databases to judge when analytical simplification is required
- Commitment to privacy by design as a foundational value
- Commitment to confidentiality
- Experience designing training material that changed how non-specialist colleagues used a data source
- Comfort in fast-moving contexts where the brief may often shift
- Comfortable with travel to fragile and post-disaster contexts
- English language
Nice to have
- Direct experience with Call Detail Records (CDRs) or latching data
- Familiarity with privacy-enhancing technologies for shared computation (private set intersection, secure multi-party computation, homomorphic encryption)
- Poverty modeling
- Familiarity with survey data and survey instruments
- Experience inside a mobile network operator or working closely with one
- Open-source contributions in the mobility estimation space
- French, Portuguese, Swahili or Spanish language
Your team
MNO data
Works on location inference from Mobile Network Operator data; reports to Senior Product Manager - MNO data
Benefits
- Annual benefits stipend (may be used to cover benefits or taken as additional taxable income)
- Bonus at target performance: 10%
Apply
About GiveDirectly
Give people money and trust them to decide what they need
GiveDirectly delivers cash directly to people living in poverty and crisis. Since 2011 it has delivered more than $1B in cash to 2+ million people across 15 countries, with rigorous research and randomized control trials evaluating impact. The team spans 20+ countries and 69 languages.
Mission
To fight poverty by delivering cash directly to people living in poverty and crisis, and to make cash the benchmark for aid.
Key facts
- 2011
- International cash transfer aid / nonprofit
- Delivered more than $1B in cash directly to 2+ million people living in poverty and crisis across 15 countries
- Expects to hit $1B in revenue in 2026 with significant growth forecast for 2027
- Team spans 20+ countries and 69 languages
- One of Time100's Most Influential Companies of 2026
- Member of the Misconduct Disclosure Scheme
What they value
- Recipients first
- Team next
- Be proactively candid
- Create positive energy
- Think rigorously; act quickly
- Know yourself and grow
- Accept reality. Propose solutions.
- Be productively ambitious