Data Scientist
(Preferably South Africa)

Praekelt Foundation's mission is to use open source technologies to deliver essential information and inclusive services to millions of people around the world, especially in Africa.
To achieve that goal, we are working with governments, NGOs and social enterprises to provide people living in poverty with inspiration, education, financial services and health information - driving behaviour change and creating sustainable impact as a result.

We're looking for a Data Scientist to join our team. Someone who blends math, algorithms, and an understanding of human behaviour with the ability to hack together systems to get answers to interesting human questions.

Responsibilities:

• Drive the collection of new data and the refinement of existing data sources
• Help us understand if our projects are achieving their goals by measuring and analysing their impact
• Help provide insight to the Praekelt team, our partners and the public
• Establish and take ownership of data team at Praekelt

Requirements:

• Experience solving analytical problems using quantitative approaches
• Comfort manipulating and analyzing complex, high-volume, high-dimensionality data from varying sources
• A strong passion for empirical research and for answering hard questions with data
• A flexible analytic approach that allows for results at varying levels of precision
• Ability to communicate complex quantitative analysis in a clear and precise manner
• Familiarity with at least one scripting language, preferably Python
• Familiarity with relational databases, including PostgreSQL
• Familiarity with NoSQL databases, including Riak
• A Bachelor's Degree in a related technical field (Statistics, Math, Engineering, Computer Science, Economics) or 2-5 years experience in a relevant roleExperience working with distributed computing tools is a plus (Map/Reduce, Hadoop, Hive, etc.)
   

Interested?:

Please contact [email protected] with your CV along with your thoughts on the high-level important challenges that need to be solved to evaluate impact and understand behaviour change.

Unfortunately, we will not be able to respond to everyone but will reach out to applicants who we want to interview within 2 weeks.

Praekelt is committed to creating a diverse environment and is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, age, gender, sexual orientation, national origin or disability.