Associate Operations Officer – Data Scientist

IFC — a member of the World Bank Group — is the largest global development institution focused on the private sector in emerging markets. We work in more than 100 countries, using our capital, expertise, and influence to create markets and opportunities. Our mission is to leverage the power of the private sector to end extreme poverty and boost shared prosperity on a livable planet.

Within IFC, the Corporate Portfolio Management (CPM) Department, under the IFC Senior Vice President of Operations, is responsible for: (i) providing corporate and strategic level reports and reviews of IFC’s investment pipeline, program and portfolio, including granular data and historical and forward looking analytics of trends, risks, and profitability; (ii) providing thought leadership on how IFC can create a portfolio that balances profitability, risk and development impact; (iii) systematically capturing lessons of experience, with the goal of these being incorporated into IFC’s strategy and new investments, in order to improve IFC’s performance and outcomes; (iv) developing, and supporting the management of, portfolio systems as well as portfolio related knowledge tools.

The Reporting, Analytics & Integrity Due Diligence Research team (CPMRA) oversees provision and update of accurate, consistent, and timely operational reports and data.  CPMRA’s key accountabilities are: 

• Lead the design and preparation of IFC operational reports and analytical products relevant to IFC Management and the Board.
• Develop reports, analytical tools and dashboards that provide data-driven insights on IFC Operations.
• Ensure high quality, timely and efficient process with delivery of all operational and IDD research reports.
• Support corporate reporting and data management initiatives.
• Help IFC optimize and promote the use of accurate, consistent, and timely operational data.

CPMRA is seeking a self-starter, entrepreneurial data scientist to provide leadership in the adoption of AI/ML in IFC operations. CPM department is the business sponsor for key IFC operating systems, and CPM teams design and develop solutions for self-service access to information and data.  The CPMRA team is responsible for providing impartial analytics and tools to support management decisions as well as reporting for the Board, IFC Senior Management and investment staff.  The position requires close communication and interaction with staff and management at all levels with a concentration in the Regional and Global Industry teams as well as in the Corporate IT Department.

Note: If the selected candidate is a current Bank Group staff member with a Regular or Open-Ended appointment, s/he will retain his/her Regular or Open-Ended appointment.  All others will be offered a 3-year term appointment.

Duties and Accountabilities

The data scientist role will play a critical entrepreneurial role and will be responsible for developing advanced analytics and deep insights from IFC operations. You will work closely with the network of data scientists in the World Bank group, IT department, process owners and business stakeholders to deliver impactful data science solutions. You will have the opportunity to do your best work every day and deliver disruptive innovation by tapping into new datasets, leveraging the latest cloud technologies, and being supported by a robust analytics and IT team.  Specifically, the position will: 

• Partner with business and technical stakeholders across the organization to translate challenging business problems into impactful data science solutions.
• Recommend and pursue data science solutions to discover business insights and enable business functions to be data driven.
• Collaborate with data engineers, data stewards, product owners and business users to support projects through the end-to-end data science lifecycle exploratory analysis, hypothesis testing, modeling, rapid prototyping, business validation/testing, and operational deployment.
• Leverage a diverse set of structured and unstructured data to derive meaningful insights and information sets for modeling.
• Communicate complex analytical work to a variety of technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Maintain expertise and awareness of emerging data science techniques, technologies and potential business applications for ML/AI.
• Provide internal knowledge-sharing and learning to members of the larger team to broaden the general data science capacity and bring about an innovative research & development culture.
• Assist with production of visualizations and data to support and strengthen the Pipeline, Program and Portfolio Reviews.
• Handle ad hoc queries for information, perform various user testing activities, and provide ongoing application maintenance and end-user production support.

Selection Criteria

Candidates should be professionals with experience in data science skills and technical knowledge of portfolio and asset management related topics, ideally in the private sector.  The candidate should meet the following criteria: 

• Bachelor’s degree from an accredited college/university in Computer Science, Data Science, Engineering or related field.  Master’s degree would be preferred, as well as equivalent combination of education (e.g. Bachelors in Computer science disciplines and a Master’s in business (e.g., Business Administration, Finance, Economics).
• Minimum of 1-3 years prior experience working in teams of data & analytics professionals to deliver on business-driven analytics projects.
• Demonstrated understanding of financial concepts, and application of data science in financial, corporate or investment operations domains.
• Strong analytical skills to critically evaluate gathered data and ability to link or associate with other datasets and data needs.
• Knowledge and experience in scripting and programming with Python, R and SQL.
• Knowledge and experience with relevant technologies, preferably in cloud environment and tools provided within Azure and AWS.
• Aptitude for learning and applying new technologies related to Data Science and Data Management.
• Demonstrated self-starter with a high degree of responsiveness and proactivity.
• Strong written and spoken communications skills in English; ability to communicate ideas clearly and confidently, articulate issues and recommend solutions.

Source: https://worldbankgroup.csod.com/ats/careersite/JobDetails.aspx?id=29305&site=1