Job Summary
Position: Research Scientist-Data Analyst/Programmer (1 Post)
Reports To: Team Lead/Technical Lead – MAP EA
Work Station: Dar es Salaam
Apply By: 15th November 2023
Institute Overview
Ifakara Health Institute (IHI) is a leading research organization in Africa with a strong track record in developing, testing and validating innovations for health. Driven by a core strategic mandate for research, training and services, the Institute’s work now spans a wide spectrum, covering biomedical and ecological sciences, intervention studies, health-systems research and policy translation.

Position Summary

Ifakara Health Institute is seeking a Data Analyst to join the East Africa (EA) Node of the Malaria Atlas Project (MAP) team. The Data Analyst will support the team in designing, building and running the software and systems from frontend to backend, that underpin the project’s 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, non-spatial) data i.e., design, build, deploy, and maintain. The Analyst is expected to collaborate with a team of postdocs/modellers to build high quality software and systems that provides a mature user experience, ensuring 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 the project’s 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 production of scientific models that are scalable, robust and high-performing.
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 modelling from academic papers and other reports
Lead the development of web interactive dashboards to examine, manipulate, process data and, to disseminate the results of MAP modelling 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 skills and competences

Master’s degree in computer science, software development or related subject area with at least 1 year of experience in data science. Desirable: PhD degree level in computer/data science, software development or related subject area.
Experience programming in Java and/or Python/R.
Solid expertise and working knowledge with large datasets and relational databases (SQL) Knowledge of web front-end technologies: HTML, CSS and JavaScript.
Excellent written and oral communication skills (in English language) including ability to present complex information in a concise and clear manner to people from different backgrounds.
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.
Desirable
Understanding of malaria epidemiology and public health surveillance in malaria endemic countries.
Experience working collaboratively on code/scripts with version control using e.g. Git.
Experience developing interactive dashboards and handling big data.
Knowledge and experience developing R packages and workflow pipelines.
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.
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 workplace 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.