Data Science (Procurement)
Location: Geneva, Switzerland
Contract type: Consultancy
Application deadline: 22 October 2024, at 11.55 pm CET
Summary
Giga seeks a data scientist to join one of the most innovative and impactful initiatives at the United Nations whose aim is to connect every school in the world to the Internet and every young person to information, opportunity, and choice. The data scientist will support the development of machine learning and/or statistical models to generate new insights that will help Giga’s Procurement Section to better predict global and regional supply and demand of school connectivity to implement a procurement strategy at scale. The data scientist will be part of the Applied Science team, with a primary focus on providing support to the Procurement and Market Influence section based in Geneva. Under the technical guidance of the Applied Science Lead, the consultant will provide applied science support to the Giga Procurement Section and will report to the Market Development Manager.
Your responsibilities will be…
- Gather and document data sources for school connectivity demand and other critical datasets.
- Familiarize and extend Giga ML utils for its use in school connectivity demand.
- Build an ML/statistical model to estimate school connectivity demand in Africa (number schools per country, as well as their location and connectivity status)
- Develop a tool to scrape and vectorize structured data from unstructured data sources (public contracts).
- Build a country-level ML/statistical model to estimate the costs of connecting schools.
- Build country-level model to predict pricing for school connectivity services.
- Build an interactive app or visualization tool for school connectivity pricing data analysis.
- Capture findings in appealing stories and documentation.
Please access the full Term of Reference (ToRs) and read a more detailed description of the assignment in this file in order to prepare your financial proposal and know more about the role: Data Science Consultant.pdf.
To qualify for this position, you will have…
- A master’s degree in data science, computer science, statistics.
- Minimum 5 years of professional work experience in data science, computer science, statistics, or a related field with at least 3 years of experience in machine learning or related fields.
- Strong experience in classical machine learning algorithms such as Regression, Classification, Clustering and Forecasting.
- Strong experience in algorithm development in Python
- Experience with cloud services, like AWS, Azure.
- Experienced and comfortable with remote team dynamics, process, and tools (Slack, Zoom, etc.)
- Excellent communication skills and ability to present complex technical concepts to a non-technical audience.
- Experience in the application of the relevant fields in the telecommunications sector is highly desirable.
- Experience with geospatial data is desirable.
- Developing country work experience and/or familiarity with emergency conditions is considered an asset.
- Fluency in English is required. Knowledge of another official UN language (Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian or Spanish) or a local language is an asset.
Travel:
- The consultant is expected to travel to Barcelona six times (6 trips), for a stay of 5 nights.
- The consultant is responsible for arranging his/her own travel, including visa and travel insurance.
Payment details and further considerations:
- Payment of professional fees will be based on the submission of agreed deliverables. UNICEF reserves the right to withhold payment in case the deliverables submitted are not up to the required standard or in case of delays in submitting the deliverables on the part of the consultant.
- The consultant is responsible for his/her own health and travel insurance.
- The consultant is responsible for arranging his/her own travel, including visa.
- This consultancy is based in Geneva.
- UNICEF will facilitate the process for obtaining local permits exclusively for the consultant, excluding any dependents.
- For more information on Non-staff members IO based in Geneva, you can visit this link
How to apply:
- Interested applicants are required to submit a financial proposal with an all-inclusive fee. Please see the financial proposal template here:
Consultancy Financial Offer template.docx
- Financial proposal must include travel costs (economy class) and daily subsistence allowance, if travel is required as per TOR and any other estimated costs: visa, travel/health insurance.
- Applications without a financial proposal will not be considered.
About our team
We are a fast-paced, multi-disciplinary team of software engineers, finance specialists, data scientists, policy experts, and much more. Our team is a distributed workforce and plans to remain distributed into the foreseeable future. We are growing fast. Our team has grown by over 400% in the last 6 months as we rapidly scale to meet our stated mission.
About Giga
Giga is a joint initiative of UNICEF and ITU to connect every school in the world to the Internet by 2030. Working with corporate and non-profit partners, Giga maps schools’ Internet access in real time, creates models for innovative financing, and supports governments contracting for connectivity. It is part of ITU’s Partner2 Connect Coalition, UNICEF’s Reimagine Education initiative, and the UN Secretary General’s Common Agenda and Roadmap for Digital Cooperation.
Follow Giga on X, LinkedIn, and Instagram.
About UNICEF
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.
UNICEF has a 70-year history of innovating for children. We believe that new approaches, partnerships and technologies that support realizing children’s rights are critical to improving their lives.
About ITU
The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) is the United Nations specialized agency for information and communication technologies (ICTs), driving innovation in ICTs together with 193 Member States and a membership of over 900 companies, universities, and international and regional organizations.