Research Scientist (Data Scientist)

Position Summary

Ifakara Health Institute (IHI) is seeking a Research Scientist (Data Scientist) who will support in designing, building and running the software and systems from frontend to backend, that underpin our large-scale solutions to support advances in the study of malaria and associated topics. The role requires both, the business thinking approach and technical expertise around several steps on the development of the analytical tools and architectures for the processing of large amounts of spatial and non-spatial data i.e., design, build, deploy, and maintain. The data scientist is expected to collaborate with postdocs and other modelers within the team to build up the software and systems that provides mature user experience and to a high quality, ensure the smooth delivery and update of production service with no user impact and create world class, robust APIs to enable internal and external users to access our data.

Duties and Responsibilities

Business Analysis

• Proactively work with researchers across the team through all stages of design and testing to ensure that developments meet user requirements.
• Communicate directly with external stakeholders to present options for technical solutions using prototypes, walkthroughs and software demonstrations where appropriate.

Technical Development

• Design, build, test and document developments, working from functional specifications or detailed change requests.
• Provide support and maintenance for production systems.
• Proactively support the productionising of scientific models so that they are scalable, robust and performant.
• Maintain an understanding of data models and technical designs of applications being developed.
• Make performance improvements to models so that we can reach improved levels of scale.
• Identifying and implementing generalizations and abstractions of existing and new data models.

Data Lifecycle

• Develop and maintain pipelines to extract, synthesize and integrate data from various sources, making it available to computational scientific models and user interfaces.
• Develop and maintain tools to facilitate the extraction of needed metrics for malaria modeling from academic papers and other reports.
• Lead the development of web interactive dashboards to examine, manipulate, and process data.
• Lead the development of web interactive dashboards to disseminate the results of MAP modeling efforts.
• Support the process of selection, and implementation of data extraction and manipulation protocols.
• Maintain an understanding of data models and technical designs of applications being developed.

Workplace Safety

• Take reasonable care for your own safety and health and avoid harming the safety and health of others through any act or omission at work.
• Identify and assess workplace hazards and apply hazard controls.
• Report every workplace injury, illness or near miss, no matter how insignificant they seem.
• Abide by institutional policies and procedures.

Qualification and Experience

Essential

• Master’s degree in computer science, software development or related subject area with at least 1 year of experience in data science.
• Experience programming in Java and/or Python.
• Solid expertise and working knowledge with large datasets and relational databases (SQL).
• Knowledge of web front-end technologies: HTML, CSS and JavaScript.
• Solid understanding of relational and non-relational database design principles.
• Strong understanding of web services or clients consuming web services.
• Ability to pick up new software, frameworks and APIs quickly.
• The ability to communicate effectively with both technical and non-technical colleagues at all levels in both verbal and written communications.
• Careful attention to detail and an ability to demonstrate an understanding of the need for source control, continuous integration, coding standards, development methodologies, and documentation in development work.

Desirable

• An understanding of the malaria epidemiology and public health surveillance in malaria endemic countries.
• Master’s degree level in computer science, software development or related subject area.
• An understanding of distributed data processing methodologies and frameworks.
• Experience with clustering and containerization technologies (e.g., Kubernetes, Docker etc).
• Experience with at least one public cloud environment (e.g., Google Cloud Platform, AWS, etc.).
• Knowledge of other languages including Swahili, French, Spanish, Portuguese.

Skills and Competencies

• Excellent communication skills (oral and written) in both professional and courteous manner.
• Strong software engineering skills.

Remuneration

An attractive and competitive remuneration package will be offered to successful candidates as per IHI salary scales.

Equal Opportunity

IHI is an equal opportunity employer. We prohibit intentional biases or discrimination and harassment of any kind at the work place and during recruitment. All employment decisions are based solely on job requirements and individual qualifications, and our recruitment process is governed by the labour laws of Tanzania.

Mode of Application

All candidates who meet the above job requirements should send their application letters together with their detailed curriculum vitae (CVs) showing contact addresses including email, telephone/cell phone numbers and copies of academic and professional certificates to the email address below.

The deadline for this application is 17:00 hrs on Friday 8 November 2024. All e-mail application subject lines should include: [Research Scientist (Data Scientist) – MAP EA Node]. Only shortlisted applicants will be contacted for interview.

Human Resources Manager

IFAKARA HEALTH INSTITUTE

Plot 463 Mikocheni

P.O. Box 78,373

Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

Email: recruitment@ihi.or.tz