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Technical Advisor for Data Science
About Palladium
Palladium is a global company working to design, develop and deliver positive impact on the lives and livelihoods of people around the globe; broaden access to health, water, power, and infrastructure; build enduring, sustainable, and transformative institutions and market systems to address global challenges; and conserve the natural world. We operate in over 90 countries and have a workforce of 3,000 talented, motivated, and diverse staff of all religions, races, languages, and gender identities.
Palladium Americas
Our Americas’ business team has brilliant and passionate colleagues working in Asia, Africa, Europe, the Middle East, and North and South America as well as the Caribbean, fulfilling projects and assignments for clients from institutions, corporations, governments, and foundations based in the Americas. We have offices in Washington, DC, New York City, and Raleigh-Durham, NC.
This Opportunity
The Technical Advisor for Data Science will support the growth of Palladium’s data science portfolio through implementation of data science projects, support for business development, internal capacity building, and thought leadership. This position will report to the Senior Technical Adviser for Data Science in the Data, Informatics, and Analytical Solutions (DIAS) practice. The position is expected to be 50% implementation, 30% business development and strategy, and 20% thought leadership.
Palladium’s data science footprint is largely in the public health sector. Recent projects include the application of machine learning to predict patient outcomes, optimization of COVID-19 vaccine allocation in a West African country, and the use of unsupervised machine learning for anomaly detection in public health data. Other projects have included geospatial analytics and social listening. We are looking to build on this foundation to expand into other sectors, including data science for economic growth and climate.
We are looking for someone entrepreneurial for this position. This role requires the ability to work independently, with a test-and-learn mentality, and to dive deep into new technical and domain areas. If you’re looking to join a small but growing team of data scientists passionate about global development, and if you’re looking to work hard in a fun and collaborative atmosphere, we want to hear from you!
Primary Duties and Responsibilities:
· Plan and implement data science projects within our existing public health portfolio in collaboration with senior data scientists
· Contribute to proposals, often by describing Palladium’s relevant data science capabilities and defining project data science strategies
· Contribute to thought leadership, including articles and conference presentations, that demonstrate Palladium’s thinking on critical topics in data science
· Collaborate with leaders in Palladium’s other domain portfolios to identify and craft opportunities to use data science to improve project outcomes
· Support internal quality assurance, use of inclusive methods (e.g. identification and mitigation of bias), and tool development across the company
Key competencies:
· Degree in data science, computer science, math, statistics, or similar field (preferred)
- Proficiency in understanding and coding standard supervised and unsupervised machine learning algorithms and components of the data science pipeline – data cleaning, feature selection, cross-validation, parameter tuning, etc.
- Sound foundations in statistics and probability
· Strong R skills required; experience in Python is a plus
· Experience in ML Ops is preferred
· Strong strategic thinking, leadership, and people skills with ability to engage a broad range of stakeholders
· Self-reflective, ability to work independently, seeks feedback and professional growth
· Strong business development and client relationship management skills and sound problem solving and decision-making skills
Diversity, Equity & Inclusion – We welcome applications from all sections of society and actively encourage diversity to drive innovation, creativity, success and good practice. We positively welcome and seek to ensure we achieve diversity in our workforce; and that all job applicants and employees receive equal and fair treatment regardless of their background or personal characteristics. These include: (but are not limited to) socio-economic background, age, race, gender identity, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability, nationality, veteran, marital or Indigenous status.
Safeguarding – We define Safeguarding as “the preventative action taken by Palladium to protect our people, clients and the communities we work with from harm”. We are committed to ensuring that all children and adults who come into contact with Palladium are treated with respect and are free from abuse. All successful candidates will be subject to an enhanced selection process including safeguarding-focused interviews and a rigorous due diligence process.