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Job Title:  Data Scientist

Organisation: Management Sciences for Health (MSH)

Duty Station:  Kampala, Uganda

About US:

Management Sciences for Health (MSH) is a global health nonprofit that makes foundational changes to health systems to protect people from diseases and improve their health. MSH collaborates with local partners, from the Ministry to the community, to strengthen and complement existing health systems. Since 1971, MSH has worked in more than 150 countries to help ensure sustainable, resilient, and equitable access to quality health care around the globe.

Job Summary:   The Data Scientist provides advanced technical support in Data and Digital Health (DDH) within the Program Delivery Group (PDG) and Strategic Information (SI) Unit, on the Data and Digital Health (DDH) team and in collaboration with the Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEL) team.

The incumbent will work with the Data Analytics and Digital Health Team lead to design and implement MSH’s data analytics strategy, integrating advancements such a machine learning and predictive analysis into our day-to-day data practice.

The Data Scientist will lead the development of appropriate data outputs for MSH’s home office (HO) and project teams, in line with industry best practices. S/he will work across departments and teams, identifying opportunities to leverage data science and advanced analytics within specific technical areas, identifying appropriate and high-quality data sources, ensuring effective storage/maintenance of various data sets, supporting the preparation of data for advanced analysis, and developing and maintaining relevant information systems in collaboration with IS/IT Team. S/he will also provide technical assistance to projects in interpreting and using the results of advanced analyses.

Key Duties and Responsibilities:

• Proactively identify new data sources to support analysis requests, such as data sources related to climate and weather, road conditions, sociodemographic characteristics of key population, national survey data, etc.
• Develop data pipelines for preparing, ingesting, and mapping data to include in project or technical area analyses
• Engage with project teams to review HMIS, eLMIS, IHRIS and other data sources and make decisions on how to transform data, what approaches to apply when analyzing data, and recommendations for data cleaning and quality assurance.
• Lead the maintenance and development of machine learning models for technical use cases, such as supply chain stock out analyses or climate resilience analysis, ensuring both data sources and models are functioning properly, annotated, and used appropriately.
• Share data insights across teams and provide technical assistance in interpreting and using results from data analyses.
• Contribute to the knowledge products for data science by capturing, documenting, and sharing key successes, promising practices, and lessons learned.
• Participate in the training of the SI team members and other MSHers in advanced data sciences.

Specific responsibilities include:

Project management/Technical Assistance (50%)

• Manage complex information system and data analytical projects.
• Design and implement solutions to support interoperability across multiple data sources.
• Support design and build processes for evaluating and incorporating a variety of new incoming datasets.
• Partner with subject matter experts to develop and deliver robust and scalable solutions across a diverse set of low- and middle-income country scenarios. Solutions must take into account unique aspects of working with health data such as patient confidentiality and/or organizational privacy concerns.
• Provide architecture guidance and support to technical leads involved in data analytics activities.
• Perform ad-hoc exploratory statistics and data mining tasks on diverse datasets from small scale to big data.
• Implement approaches to harmonize unaligned datasets to support analysis and data-driven decision making.
• Process, clean, and verify the integrity of data used for analysis.
• Provide ad-hoc analysis and present results in a clear manner

DDH Data Governance (15%)

• Lead establishment and management of data governance structure, data security, confidentiality, coding, etc. to facilitate data analytics and use across analysis projects and initiatives.
• Co-lead development of DDH’s data analytical strategies and approaches in partnership with SI Technical Director and DDH Team lead
• Represent DDH in MSH wide initiatives and discussions around information systems and digital health.

Business Development Support (20%)

• Represent at technical meetings/conferences on relevant topics to increase visibility of MSH/DDH’s expertise and strategic approaches.
• Contribute to proposal development in the area of data analytics and use, health information management systems, and digital health.

Staff Management and Capacity Strengthening (15%)

• Supervise data analyst and visualization specialist and other relevant staff members and consultants as required
• Provide mentorship to junior and mid -level staff on data science and data visualization techniques

Qualifications, Skills and Experience:

• Required: BS or master’s in computer science, statistics, or data science
• Preferred: Master’s degree in mathematics, statistics, or data science
• Minimum 5 years of work experience as a data scientist or data analyst
• Demonstrable experience with probability theory, and statistical inference
• Demonstrable programming experience with Python or R
• Demonstrable experience with machine learning algorithms and ability to solve complex data problems
• Demonstrable experience with data visualization software, like Power BI or GIS mapping software
• Preferred: Management of information system projects in low- and middle-income countries, including prioritization and management/completion of simultaneous projects.
• Experience with pharmaceutical information systems and health technologies is highly desirable.
• Superior analytical skills, inductive and deductive reasoning, with the ability to autonomously conduct evaluations and assessments.

Competencies

Core Job Competencies:

• Demonstrated ability to collaborate effectively with professional colleagues from multiple units and within various socio-cultural contexts
• Demonstrated ability to build capacity of teams in LMICs and at the home office
• Demonstrated flexibility and openness in responding to changing work priorities and environment and working under tight deadlines
• Demonstrated competence to assess priorities and solve problems using innovative, evidence-based solutions
• Highly detail-oriented, meticulous, and consistent in the execution of his/her work
• Demonstrated ability to manage multiple priorities and projects at a time
• Demonstrated ability to proactively identify areas that need support and constructively come up with solutions to address these
• Strong strategic, analytical, problem-solving and systems thinking skills
• Very strong written and oral communication skills, particularly in terms of communicating complex technical approaches to non-technical audiences
• Very strong presentation, facilitation, training, mentoring, and coaching skills

The expected salary range for this position is: $84,200.00 – $125,000.00 annually (U.S. locations only).

MSH considers multiple job-related factors when determining an offer, including but not limited to, business and organizational needs, candidate qualifications, internal equity, location, and internal budget.

How to Apply:

All candidates who wish to join Management Sciences for Health (MSH) in this capacity should apply online at the link below.

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