Background on IMPACT and REACH

REACH was born in 2010 as a joint initiative of two International NGOs (IMPACT Initiatives and ACTED) and the United Nations Operational Satellite Applications Programme (UNOSAT). REACH’s purpose is to promote and facilitate the development of information products that enhance the humanitarian community’s decision making and planning capacity for emergency, reconstruction and development contexts. REACH facilitates information management for aid actors through three complementary services: (a) need and situation assessments facilitated by REACH teams; (b) situation analysis using satellite imagery; (c) provision of related database and (web)-mapping facilities and expertise.

IMPACT Initiatives is a humanitarian NGO, based in Geneva, Switzerland. The organization manages several initiatives, including the REACH Initiative. The IMPACT team comprises specialists in data collection, management and analysis and GIS. IMPACT was launched at the initiative of ACTED, an international NGO whose headquarter is based in Paris and is present in thirty countries. The two organizations have a strong complementarity formalized in a global partnership, enabling IMPACT to benefit from ACTED’s operational support on its fields of intervention.

We are currently looking for a Data Specialist to support the Global Inter-Sectoral Unit.

Department: REACH

Position: Data Specialist

Contract duration: Open-ended

Location: Geneva

Starting Date: September 2021

Under the supervision of the Inter-Sector Unit Manager and as part of the Global Inter-Sector Unit (ISU), the Data Specialist will provide technical support and advice on the implementation of inter-sectoral research cycles at country level and provide support to global research and development activities within the inter-sectoral work stream. REACH inter-sectoral programs under the portfolio of the global ISU include: Multi-Sector Needs Assessments (MSNA), Humanitarian Situation Monitoring (HSM) in hard-to-reach areas, rapid assessment and analysis support for Rapid Response/Emergency Response Mechanisms (RRM/ERM), Cash and Markets assessments, and cross-cutting Accountability to Affected Populations (AAP) research.

Responsibilities

The Data Specialist (DS) will play a lead role in the technical design and development of humanitarian and assessment activities that inform humanitarian response planning across multiple sectors of assistance, with a particular focus on the data collection, processing, cleaning, and analysis stages of the research cycle.

Specific responsibilities will include:

the DS will provide expertise on developing sampling methodologies and designing sampling frameworks; reviewing data cleaning protocols and processes developed at field level; guide quantitative and qualitative data analysis,

Responsibilities will include:

Technical support to REACH country teams:

· Development of guidance and toolkits on good practice regarding inter-sectoral research cycles

· Developing, maintaining, and documenting inter-sectoral R scripts and packages

· Provide expertise and advice regarding:

o Research methodology design

o Sampling frameworks and methods, including direct support in drawing samples

o Reviewing data cleaning protocols and processes developed at field level

o Data analysis, especially quantitative methods

o Output creation (e.g. summary tables, data visualizations)

o Automation of processes

· Surge support: fill capacity gaps at field level on a short-term basis to ensure timely and high quality completion of data-focused tasks: sampling, data collection, data cleaning, data analysis, outputs creation, and automation of processes

Oversight of global R&D activities for inter-sectoral work streams:

· Technical support to the Joint Inter-Sectoral Analysis Framework (JIAF) on behalf of REACH, e.g.:

o Development and review of technical guidance

o Support to the methodology Working Group

o Support to the JIAF helpdesk

· Test and develop innovative data science techniques to implement global comparative analysis of humanitarian crisis and severity of humanitarian needs.

· Test and develop innovative data collection and analysis methods for assessing inaccessible or hard-to-reach areas within crises experiencing high insecurity, e.g. piloting proxy mortality indicators, testing and validating remote data collection methods, among others

· Increase automation of inter-sectoral research cycle data analysis, including compilation and aggregation of complex and varied data sources, transformation and manipulation of data for inclusion in analysis, visualisation of time series of spatial trends.

Requirements

· Advanced quantitative degree in data science, statistics, physics, mathematics, economics, computer science, engineering or related subjected

· Minimum 5 years of relevant working experience

· Proficient with R, particularly the tidyverse (dplyr, tidyr, rlang)

· R package development experience

· Strong experience in data collection/compilation, cleaning, processing, and applied analysis

· Proven track record of working with and compiling data of varying quality, type, and structure from multiple different sources

· Experience in working with complex surveys and other categorical data

· Knowledge of ArcGIS and spatial analysis an advantage

· Commitment to humanitarian principles required, but no previous experience in the humanitarian or development sector necessary

· Fluency in English required, competency in French an asset

This vacancy is archived.

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