GiveDirectly Senior Data Scientist, MNO Data Jobs in Kenya
About the Role
GiveDirectly is seeking a Senior Data Scientist to advance its work on location inference using Mobile Network Operator (MNO) data. The role focuses on developing analytical methods that help determine residency, displacement, and poverty indicators from mobile network data while maintaining strict privacy and confidentiality standards.
The successful candidate will improve and expand analytical frameworks used across multiple countries to support humanitarian and poverty-targeting programs.
This position involves close collaboration with mobile network operators, data engineers, cybersecurity teams, and operational staff to design, test, and implement scalable analytical solutions.
Travel Requirement
Significant international travel, approximately 25%–50% of working time.
Travel may occur at short notice, particularly during emergency response operations.
Includes workshops with mobile network operators and support for program implementation in multiple countries.
Key Responsibilities
Improve and expand analytical methodologies used to infer residency status from MNO data.
Design new analytical approaches for displacement detection and poverty estimation where required.
Support technical discussions with mobile network operators regarding data requirements and implementation strategies.
Assess the quality and usefulness of operator datasets across different countries and contexts.
Develop technical specifications, validation criteria, workflows, parameters, and pseudocode for implementation by MNO engineering teams.
Guide operator engineering teams during implementation and testing phases.
Adapt methodologies to accommodate computational limitations and large-scale datasets.
Conduct in-country workshops and implementation support sessions with operator partners.
Standardize successful analytical methods for future deployments.
Apply privacy-by-design principles, data minimization, aggregation techniques, and privacy-enhancing technologies.
Strengthen internal data security processes and confidentiality safeguards.
Develop training materials to help technical and non-technical teams
understand MNO data capabilities and limitations.
Required Qualifications
Bachelor's Degree in a quantitative, analytical, computer science, data science, statistics, mathematics, engineering, or related field.
Strong expertise in mathematical modeling, machine learning, and statistical analysis.
Deep experience working with spatio-temporal datasets and location-based analysis.
Experience working with mobility, transport, sensor, remote-sensing, or telecommunications data.
Ability to develop analytical approaches where validated ground truth data is unavailable.
Experience balancing analytical accuracy with operational implementation requirements.
Experience writing detailed technical specifications for implementation by external teams.
Ability to review and troubleshoot SQL and Python code.
Understanding of large-scale datasets, databases, and data processing constraints.
Strong commitment to data privacy, confidentiality, and responsible data use.
Technical Knowledge
Spatio-temporal analysis.
Geographic Information Systems (GIS).
Probability distributions and statistical modeling.
Machine learning methodologies.
SQL and relational databases.
Python code review and analytical workflows.
Mobility and telecommunications data analysis.
Data privacy and security practices.
Privacy-enhancing technologies such as:
Private Set Intersection (PSI)
Secure Multi-Party Computation (SMPC)
Homomorphic Encryption
How to apply
For more information and job application details, see; GiveDirectly Senior Data Scientist, MNO Data Jobs in Kenya
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