Data Scientist (Individual Consultant)

Who We Are

Girl Effect is an international non-profit that builds media that girls want, trust and need.

From chatbots to chat shows and TV dramas to tech, our content helps adolescent girls in Africa and Asia make choices and changes in their lives, igniting their confidence to act differently at a time that can define their future.

We create safe spaces for girls, sharing facts, and answering questions about health, nutrition, education, relationships, and so much more. To arm girls with the skills to negotiate and redefine what they are told is possible “for a girl”.

Our reach is 50 million and counting. And we’re using technology to reach girls at scale so every girl can choose to be in control of her body, health, learning and livelihood.

We believe that by connecting girls on a common journey, they can support and inspire each other to unlock change within their reach. When enough girls do this, the world for girls starts to change.

That’s the Girl Effect.

Background

For over a decade, we have been building technology that aims to create a safer, more accessible world for women and girls, using the insights and experiences girls share with us. Innovation for us is about using the right tech in the best way to reach girls and meet their challenges. As technology evolves and girls’ habits change, we adapt and improve the platforms, processes, and infrastructure that underpin everything we do. We are an evidence-based learning organisation, collecting and using data and insights to understand how we can maximise our reach & impact and feed that learning back into the organisation.

Girl Effect’s mission is to inspire and equip girls to make life-changing choices – for themselves and those around them. Girl Effect’s approach continues to evolve as we learn more about how adolescent girls make decisions and as the sector adapts to a continuously changing sociopolitical and media environment.

We aim to build a unified approach that is adaptable over time and across different sociocultural contexts but based on a shared Theory of Change.

Context of Assignment

Girl Effect’s chatbots today are menu-based, with classification systems integrated for natural language understanding. These classification systems enable Girl Effect’s chatbots to handle freeform input and direct the user to the most relevant message set based on the category detected but do not allow Girl Effect’s chatbots to generate answers that directly address user’s freeform input. Recent developments in GenAI highlight the limitations of classification intelligence and, at the same time, expose the potential to unlock opportunities that were once considered impossible.

Our programs are rooted in our theory of behavioral change, and our research shows that discussion is an important contributor to behavior change. To apply our behavioral change research to our chatbots, we must first advance the capabilities of our technical ecosystem. To accomplish this, we must connect our data infrastructure and analytical pipelines to our Theory of Change to develop a behavioral understanding of our users.

We are on a journey to make safe, reliable and engaging conversational chatbots that deliver on our theory of behavior change a reality.

Requirements

We are seeking an inquisitive and innovative Data Scientist to play a pivotal role in enhancing our data ecosystem and employing advanced AI and ML techniques. The ideal candidate will delve into the complexities of user data to extract meaningful insights that drive our chatbots’ ability to deliver impactful, behavior-changing conversations. This role is essential for bridging our data infrastructure with our Theory of Change, creating a foundation for our chatbots to understand and influence user behavior at a deeper level.

Expected commitment:

• The consultant is expected to be available 4-5 days (32-40 hours) weekly from June 2024 to December 2024.

Location

The consultant will be remote and must be conducive to working with teams in the UK, USA, Sub-Saharan Africa & India synchronously and asynchronously.

Management

The consultant will report to the Senior Director of Technology and work closely with the Data Scientist and Fractional CTO. The language of the materials and reports shall be English. The contract supervisor shall approve all deliverables submitted by the agency before any payment is made.

Tentative Timelines:

● Terms of reference published: May 3, 2024

● Deadline for responses:May 17, 2024

● Project commencement: June 2024

Key Responsibilities

• Data Exploration and Analysis:
  • Conduct comprehensive data exploration to understand the intricacies and patterns within user interaction data. Map this data to our users’ journeys.
  • Identify and analyze the distributions of independent variables, outliers, missing data points, and calculate standard deviations to ensure data quality and reliability.
  • Use visual and quantitative methods to represent and understand the underlying data patterns.
• Descriptive and Inferential Statistics:
  • Apply descriptive statistical methods to summarize data sets, providing a clear understanding of user behaviors and interactions.
  • Utilize inferential statistics to draw conclusions and make predictions about user behavior, based on sample data.
• Supervised Learning for Predictive Modeling:
  • Design and implement supervised learning models to predict user responses and behaviors, that will enhance the chatbot’s ability to engage in meaningful and impactful conversations.
  • Test and validate models to ensure accuracy and efficiency, continually iterating to improve performance.
• Clustering for Personalization:
  • Employ clustering techniques to segment users into distinct groups based on their behavior and preferences.
  • Leverage segmentation that will tailor chatbot interactions, making them more personalized and relevant to each user group.
• Data-Driven Decision Making:
  • Collaborate with cross-functional teams to integrate data insights into the chatbot development process, ensuring that chatbot interactions are informed by robust data analysis.
  • Participate in strategic planning to use data insights for continuous improvement of chatbot effectiveness and user engagement.

Who You Are

Skills, Knowledge and Experience

• A Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Data Science, Computer Science, Statistics, Mathematics, or a related field, demonstrating a strong foundation in quantitative analysis.
• Minimum 4 years of experience in data science, machine learning, or a related field, with a strong portfolio of projects demonstrating expertise in data exploration, supervised learning, and clustering.
• Proficiency in Python and relevant ML libraries and frameworks.
• Experience working with database infrastructures and understanding how such infrastructure fits into data modeling
• Experience with data visualization tools (e.g., PowerBI, Tableau).
• Knowledge of natural language processing (NLP) and natural language understanding (NLU) techniques
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, with the ability to analyze large datasets, extract insights, and translate these into actionable strategies.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to work effectively in a multidisciplinary team and communicate complex data insights to non-technical stakeholders.
• Excellent organisation and project management skills; able to develop and drive research processes and timelines.
• A passion for social impact, with a commitment to Girl Effect’s mission of empowering girls and women worldwide.
• Experience coordinating work-streams across multiple geographies and ability to work effectively in multicultural teams with varying expertise, skills and backgrounds.

Proposal submission

Your proposal should be 5 pages max and cover the following:

• Cover letter -Please tell us why you feel you are well-placed to advise us on this
• Credentials/Profile/CV – Please showcase any previous work that you consider relevant to what we are trying to achieve, how we approach our work, and the audience we cater to. Describe the qualifications, experience, and capabilities of the firm or consultant in providing the requested services.
• Reference- Provide at least three references for similar contracts with a description of the service provided, the value of the contract, and the contract periods of performance.
• Breakdown of Costs with applicable taxes and other charges clearly identified in USD. Consultants should provide their daily or hourly billing rate or their proposed fixed fee for the requested deliverables.
  • All applicable taxes should be quoted separately;

In their proposal, the bidder must demonstrate an understanding of the requirements described in the RFP and demonstrate how the bidder will meet the requirements of the evaluation criteria.

GE is not liable for any cost incurred during the award/contract preparation, submission, or negotiation of the award/contract. All submitted documentation and/or materials shall become and remain the property of GE.

VALIDITY of the proposal shall be for 90 days from the date of bid closure

Evaluation Criteria

The criteria against which proposals will be evaluated are listed below.

Technical Evaluation

• Interpretation and understanding of this TOR – 10%
• Showcases relevant experience in having done previous similar work with relevant agencies or organizations – 25%
• Professional Qualification and Technical Experience/Knowledge (Share CV/Profile)- 25%
• Evidence of a minimum of three contactable references – 10%

Financial Evaluation

• Value for money/proposed budget breakdown – 30%

Equal Opportunities

Girl Effect is committed to equal opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, marital status, disability, gender, gender identity, or expression. We are proud to be an equal opportunity workplace.

We are committed to building an organization that is truly representative of the communities that we serve. To this end, due regard will be paid to procuring consultancy services of organizations and individuals with a deep understanding and experience of our programming markets and diverse professional, academic and cultural backgrounds.

Safeguarding

You may be required to undertake safeguarding checks. Shortlisted consultants will be assessed on our organizational values at the interview stage. The successful consultant will be expected to adhere to our safeguarding policy. We encourage you to read and understand our safeguarding policy, the executive summary of which can be found here. We have zero tolerance for all forms of violence against children, beneficiaries and staff.

Copyright

All materials/documents arising from this consultancy work shall remain the property of Girl Effect.

Tax

Girl Effect is obliged by the relevant tax authorities to ensure all taxes are charged where applicable. Applicants are advised to ensure that they have a clear understanding of their tax position with regards to provisions of their local jurisdiction tax legislation when developing their proposals.

Disclaimer

GE reserves the right to determine the structure of the process, the number of short-listed participants, the right to withdraw from the proposal process, the right to change this timetable at any time without notice and reserves the right to withdraw this tender at any time, without prior notice and without liability to compensate and/or reimburse any party. GE shall inform the ONLY successful applicant(s). The process of negotiation and signing of the contract with the successful applicant(s) will follow.

Please note: We will evaluate only proposals submitted following the application process outlined in the TOR and using our specified email address ([email protected]).