Data Scientist (Evaluation) Consultant, 11.5 months, Evaluation Office, NYHQ, USA

Consultant Programme & Policy Monitoring & Evaluation

Overview

Join UNICEF Evaluation Office as full-time data scientist consultant to drive impact and gather insights.

You have:

• Master's degree in Statistics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Applied Mathematics, Data Science, Machine Learning, Economics, or any other related field.
• At least three years of experience in data innovation and analyzing big data preferably in development field relevant for UNICEF work.
• At least one year of experience with applications of data science for research and evaluation, preferably for development agencies.
• Expertise in one of the data science areas e.g., predictive modelling/forecasting, textual data analysis, behavioral modelling.
• Experience performing data extraction, cleaning, analysis and presentation for medium to large datasets.
• Experience using statistical computer languages to manipulate data and draw insights from large datasets (Scala/R/Python), Stata, SPSS and Databricks.
• Ability to gauge the complexity of unstructured dataset problems and willingness to execute simple preliminary approaches and analysis for quick effective solutions.
• Willingness to evaluate and adopt the latest advances in data mining, artificial intelligence and data visualization.
• Ability to work cross-functionally to define problem statements, examine collected data, build analytical models and communicate final recommendations.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills for coordinating across teams, countries and regions.
• A passion for empirical research and for answering hard questions with data.
• Proven record of solving challenging data problems in emergency and humanitarian settings.
• Drive for results and ability to work under high pressure and tight deadlines.
• Excellent project management skills.

Contract

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This is an exciting opportunity to join UNICEF Evaluation Office as a full-time data scientist consultant to support and develop the use of new data and technologies to drive impact, gather insights, strengthen evaluation methodologies and findings, and ensure UNICEF evaluative work stay abreast of innovation and continuous learning.

UNICEF works in some of the world’s toughest places, to reach the world’s most disadvantaged children. To save their lives. To defend their rights. To help them fulfill their potential. Across 190 countries and territories, we work for every child, everywhere, every day, to build a better world for everyone. And we never give up.

For every child, evaluate:

UNICEF works in some of the world’s toughest places, to reach the world’s most disadvantaged children. To save their lives. To defend their rights. To help them fulfill their potential. Across 190 countries and territories, we work for every child, everywhere, every day, to build a better world for everyone. The mission of the UNICEF Evaluation function is to help drive results for children by fostering evidence-informed decision making. We conduct a diverse set of independent, credible and impartial corporate evaluations to ensure UNICEF uses evaluation evidence to improve outcomes for children.

Evaluation and Data in UNICEF

Evaluation in UNICEF supports learning and decision-making which, in turn, support better results for children. Evaluation also helps to hold UNICEF accountable for contributing to results for children, or not doing so. Evaluations make an assessment, as systematically and impartially as possible, of an intervention (e.g., a project, programme component or the Country Programme); they analyse both expected and unexpected results by looking at the results chain, processes and contextual factors prospectively and retrospectively. Evaluations provide credible, useful evidence to enable timely evidence-based decision making in UNICEF programming and operations. Over 100 evaluations and evaluative exercises are completed each year at the country, regional and global levels in thematic areas of child protection, health, nutrition, education, social protection as well as cross-cutting areas of focus.

Evaluative evidence involves getting the right data into the right hands at the right time to impact decisions for children requires the appropriate balance of data demand, supply and use. When all three pieces are functioning well, data can be used to inform strategic planning, to monitor and adjust performance of government systems, and to engage communities in dialogue. The Evaluation Office (EO) will enter a new quadrennial outlined under the new UNICEF Strategic Plan with a commitment to strengthen the rigor of evaluative evidence and improving the technical capacity of its staff. Data plays a key role in this forward-looking agenda.

The growth of big data ecosystems including satellite imagery, mobile phone usage, social media, crowed sourced data, large sets of textual data open opportunities for evaluation and have to be leveraged to strengthen UNICEF and its partners’ decision making for children and programmatic effectiveness in the decade of action. This requires new analytical techniques and approaches such as machine learning, natural language and image processing, AI/deep learning. The use of predictive analytics, behavioral analytics and other cutting-edge data science and geospatial analysis will have to be tested and integrated into UNICEF evaluation work through applications in a variety of contexts, thematic areas and evaluation modalities. Effective use of new data and new data science analytical approaches for UNICEF evaluations can help not only to plan, track and report results for children more cost-efficiently, but also shape those results with better insights about what is working, what is not, which children are thriving, and which are being left behind.

Objectives:

The objective of this consultancy is to apply the recognized data science analytical methods to UNICEF evaluation process, evidence generation and use as complementary analytical tools to strengthen relevance, credibility, cost-effectiveness and utilization of evaluative evidence.

Scope and Responsibilities:

The Evaluation Office is recruiting a full-time data scientist to support the following key areas:

• To assist in the identification, assessment and integration of new sources of data (big and textual data) to inform and contribute to generation of evaluative evidence across all SDG goal areas in which UNICEF is a custodian agency, impact evaluations, institutional effectiveness, and humanitarian evaluation portfolios.

• To identify through consultation with global thematic evaluation teams opportunities to apply big data methods in evaluations such as natural language processing, data mining, predictive analytics, deep machine learning and leverage these means for supporting and enhancing cost-effectiveness, rigorous, and credibility of UNICEF evaluations particularly those conducted in complex environments. For example, textual data analysis using NLP based on the Evaluation Information System Integration (EISI) database – internal database of UNICEF evaluation reports.

  • The task can involve extracting and harnessing textual data from UNICEF’s evaluation reports to produce syntheses outputs on a variety of topics (i.e., SDGs, methodological quality, synthesis of ‘what works’ etc.).data sources and methodological approaches.
  • Use machine learning to assist in topic identification and classification during scoping or systematic review process of evidence on child protection, for example as related to access to justice (and possibly to prevention of violence against boys, girls and women). It is especially relevant for this task to be able to use topic modelling or alternative unsupervised machine learning approaches, or classification modelling, and automatic summarization approaches.

• To perform data discovery studies and applications prototypes for using real-time data sources such as mobile technology as well as online media, social networks, remote imagery, geospatial data, communications logs, administrative and institutional databases. These exercises will be further scoped and determined by the needs by the evaluation managers in the areas of humanitarian evaluations, impact evaluations, SDG Goal Areas, institutional effectiveness evaluations, etc., to ensure that the data sources are the best quality and most appropriate.

• To provide data innovation support in quantitative analysis protocols, including data gathering tools and methodologies. This work will entail working with the Innovation Specialist to scope appropriate innovative methods and data sources for relevant evaluation project. Once determined, the data scientist will manage medium to large structured and unstructured datasets to research and combine relevant mixed data sets from primary and secondary sources to determine the most appropriate analytic plan.

• To develop concise reports that include data visualizations for presentations to inform evaluation managers, evaluation users and other stakeholders and partners. The data scientist will help produce high quality written technical reports and visualize data creatively on digital and non-digital platforms in a variety of formats.

• To provide technical support as needed to developing data needs that assure the highest possible quality data sources for evaluative work.

To qualify as an advocate for every child you will have…

Educational Qualification:

• A Master’s degree in Statistics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Applied Maths, Data Science, Machine Learning, Economics, or any other related field.

Experience:

• At least three years of experience in data innovation and analyzing big data preferably in development field and in areas relevant for UNICEF work and this assignment (e.g., health, nutrition, education, child protection, water and sanitation and social protection).
• At least one year of experience with applications of data science for research and evaluation, preferably for development agencies.
• Expertise in one of the data science areas e.g., predictive modelling/forecasting, textual data analysis, behavioral modelling
• Experience performing data extraction, cleaning, analysis and presentation for medium to large datasets.
• Experience using statistical computer languages to manipulate data and draw insights from large data sets (Scala/R/Python), Stata, SPSS and Databricks. Experience with data visualization libraries such as Matplotlib, Pyplot, or PowerBI is considered an asset.
• Ability to gauge the complexity of unstructured dataset problems and a willingness to execute simple preliminary approaches and analysis for quick effective solutions as appropriate.
• Willingness to evaluate and adopt the latest advances in data mining, artificial intelligence and data visualization.
• Ability to work cross functionally to define problem statements, examine collected data, build analytical models and communicate final recommendations that drive decision making.

Non-Technical Qualifications:

• An inquisitive and creative mindset, as well as excellent written and verbal communication skills for coordinating across teams, countries and regions.
• A Team Player mentality and desire to collaborate in a multicultural and diverse work setting , as well as work independently.
• Ability to communicate complex ideas in data science to non-technical audiences and relevant stakeholders.
• A passion for empirical research and for answering hard questions with data.
• Proven record of solving challenging data problems in emergency and humanitarian settings.
• A drive for results and ability to work under high pressure and tight deadlines.
• Excellent project management skills.
• Desire to join UNICEF at a moment in history when the importance of learning from our data is transforming every aspect of our work.

Process and Reporting:

The consultant will report directly to the Innovation Specialist, working under Methods, Impact, Innovation and Learning section (MIIL). The consultant will collaborate with evaluation managers at the EO, regional evaluation teams and staff from other UNICEF divisions.

Duration and Location:

Duration of this assignment is 11.5 months between December 15th, 2022 and December 1st, 2023. Contractual obligations are based on 21 working days /month. Consultant is expected to be engaged on a full-time basis.

The assignment is based in New York, UNICEF HQ location. A blended approach of remote and face to face (at least two working days per week) working arrangements can potentially discussed with successful candidates. In exceptional cases remote modality can be discussed with obligation to have a sufficient induction period in New York at the beginning of the assignment.

Payment Schedule:

Payments will be processed on a monthly basis upon acceptance of the corresponding deliverable from the manager of the contract, and against an invoice that will refer to the contract reference and deliverable number. Payments will be formally approved by the supervisor in UNICEF, as the organization holding the contract.

How to Apply:

Interested candidates must submit the following documents:

• CV and cover letter.
• The daily rate should indicate expected all-inclusive rate. .
• The application should be accompanied by work examples (through links provided or attached documents) of analyses that show experience and competence to undertake this consultancy in line with the required qualifications described above.

For every Child, you demonstrate…

UNICEF's values of Care, Respect, Integrity, Trust, and Accountability and core competencies in Communication, Working with People and Drive for Results.

UNICEF offers reasonable accommodation for consultants/individual contractors with disabilities. This may include, for example, accessible software, travel assistance for missions or personal attendants. We encourage you to disclose your disability during your application in case you need reasonable accommodation during the selection process and afterwards in your assignment.

UNICEF has a zero-tolerance policy on conduct that is incompatible with the aims and objectives of the United Nations and UNICEF, including sexual exploitation and abuse, sexual harassment, abuse of authority and discrimination. UNICEF also adheres to strict child safeguarding principles. All selected candidates will be expected to adhere to these standards and principles and will therefore undergo rigorous reference and background checks. Background checks will include the verification of academic credential(s) and employment history. Selected candidates may be required to provide additional information to conduct a background check.

Remarks:

Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted and advance to the next stage of the selection process.

Individuals engaged under a consultancy or individual contract will not be considered “staff members” under the Staff Regulations and Rules of the United Nations and UNICEF’s policies and procedures and will not be entitled to benefits provided therein (such as leave entitlements and medical insurance coverage). Their conditions of service will be governed by their contract and the General Conditions of Contracts for the Services of Consultants and Individual Contractors. Consultants and individual contractors are responsible for determining their tax liabilities and for the payment of any taxes and/or duties, in accordance with local or other applicable laws.

The selected candidate is solely responsible to ensure that the visa (applicable) and health insurance required to perform the duties of the contract are valid for the entire period of the contract. Selected candidates are subject to confirmation of fully vaccinated status against SARS-CoV-2 (Covid-19) with a World Health Organization (WHO)-endorsed vaccine, which must be met prior to taking up the assignment. It does not apply to consultants who will work remotely and are not expected to work on or visit UNICEF premises, programme delivery locations or directly interact with communities UNICEF works with, nor to travel to perform functions for UNICEF for the duration of their consultancy contracts.

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Potential interview questions

Added 3 years ago - Updated 1 year ago - Source: unicef.org