Data Scientist

Contract length: 6 months, with possibility of extension
Hours: Full-time
Location: Home-based
Travel: None anticipated
Reporting to: Chief Technology Officer
Deadline for applications: 30 October 2020

The role

Responsibilities

• Inform and implement TWB Data Strategy
• Coordinate TWB’s approach to data analysis and data-driven decision making in programs
• Identify and evaluate data visualization platforms that could be used for the Chatbot.
• Input into the decision making process that determines the technology approach that would work best for the Chatbot program.
• Work with the Product Team to ensure that the data visualization provides an accurate representation of usage of the product and provides critical insights into how its being used.
• Use data and data visualization to advocate for language to be considered in our programs and the broader COVID-19 response.
• Work across teams (Crisis, Tech and Special Projects) to support data processing needs in creating and evaluating language technology datasets and tools to serve the needs of TWB’s Chatbots and the global COVID-19 response.
• Support in designing data infrastructure for TWB country programs and partners.
• Conduct NLP analysis on multilingual content gathered by partner organizations.

Qualifications

The Data Scientist should be enthusiastic about the importance of increasing access to knowledge through improved language data. The right candidate is an energetic team player and leader who agrees with TWB´s basic beliefs and values and who can work virtually with team members based throughout the world.

Required skills and experience

• Fluent in spoken and written English.
• Strong skills in Python, R, or specialized data processing languages.
• Strong skills running SQL or other data query languages to process relational data.
• Advanced skills with Google Sheets, including data imports and vlookups.
• Data visualization experience, including experience with platforms such as Microsoft PowerBI, Tableau, or open source integrations.
• Machine learning experience, especially with Natural Language Processing tasks.
• Experience developing semi-supervised and supervised approaches to machine learning, including designing annotation frameworks using tools such as Prodigy.
• Experience working with demographic and geospatial data.
• Communication skills, particularly the ability to communicate complex concepts to a non-specialist audience
• Experience of designing data visualization and/or data management systems to inform decision-making

Preferred skills and experience

• Working competency in other languages, especially French.
• Experience with GIS and web mapping, specifically through Carto, MapBox, QGIS, and/or ArcGIS Online.
• Graphic design skills in data visualization.
• Experience working with interactive data visualization softwares such as Datawrapper or Flourish.
• Experience working with big data and/or web crawling of multilingual content.
• Experience working with machine learning training data, especially language data.
• Humanitarian or international development experience.

About Translators without Borders

Translators without Borders believes that everyone has the right to give and receive information in a language and format they understand. We work with nonprofit partners and a global community of language professionals to raise awareness of language barriers, build local language translation capacity, and develop language technology.

Multilingual data aggregation: data gathered from a range of partner outreach efforts is aggregated to provide an analysis at scale of which content, channels and languages are needed to plug information gaps.

Targeted content curation: TWB supports partner organizations to use that information to refine content, developing localized products in appropriate languages for the channels that people can access.

Custom dissemination and data collection tools: to expand the reach of content to more marginalized groups, TWB develops chatbots and SMS messaging systems in relevant languages.

Language technology: we leverage machine translation capacity and process automation to increase the volume, speed quality of content translation. We utilize language technology for languages where it exists, and develop it for under resourced languages, building capacity to meet future communication needs.

Learning and impact tracking: we integrate the data on the uptake/sharing of new content and questions and comments generated in response to it into our data aggregation, in turn informing further content development. In this way partners can continuously refine their outreach to communities on the basis of evidence of impact from their audiences themselves.

Core Values

Translators without Borders employees and volunteers are made of people who believe passionately about the value of this work and take personal responsibility for achieving the mission. Translators without Borders’ mission and organizational spirit embody the core values established in its strategic framework:

Excellence: As the leading voice for communicating humanitarian information in the right language, Translators without Borders is a leader in the translation industry and in the non-profit sector.

Integrity: Translators without Borders believes that every person, whether it is the people who we serve, our volunteers or our staff, has value, deserves respect and has inherent dignity.

Empowerment: Translators without Borders believes in using language to empower people around the world to control their own development and destiny.

Innovation: Translators without Borders recognizes and celebrates the power of innovation to address humanitarian and crisis issues around the world.

Sustainability: Translators without Borders recognizes that meeting our mission necessitates establishment and maintenance of a solid financial and organizational infrastructure.

Tolerance: Our staff and volunteers are highly knowledgeable and skilled; value each other, our partner and our recipients; create a supportive work environment; and, conduct themselves professionally at all times.

Translators without Borders is an equal-opportunity employer, committed to diversity and inclusion, and encourages qualified candidates of all genders and from all national, religious and ethnic backgrounds, including persons living with disabilities, to apply to become a part of our organization.

How to apply:

Please apply here