Senior Data scientist

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) is the leading global environmental authority that sets the global environmental agenda, promotes the coherent implementation of the environmental dimension of sustainable development within the United Nations system and serves as an authoritative advocate for the global environment.

The focus of this job is to use internal and external data for evidence-based decision support by looking at trends, current data and predictions. The Data Scientist will support in accelerating and scaling environmental sustainability through digital transformation, and in the digital transformation of UNEP`s business processes and culture. The position is based in Nairobi. 

Duties: 

Plans and directs the work programme on data science, providing both methodical and managerial supervision of all activities; Plans, organizes and manages staff and evaluates their performance. 

•Takes the lead in exploration, identification, and acquisition of data sources to determine their suitability for use in decision making and advancing the goals of the organization. Enables broader use of data sources by applying quality methods to structure, clean, format, parse, and standardize for analytical use. 

•Ensures close working relationships with key stakeholders to leverage the use of data science methods to support their programmatic areas with solutions that assist them in accomplishing their mandates. 

•Coordinates the design and development of data science products to reveal insights and provides an understanding or knowledge of the data that would otherwise not be detected without the application of advanced analytical methods such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, predictive analytics, data and text mining, natural language processing, statistics, and use of relevant algorithms and computational approaches. 

•Orchestrates the liaison with technology stakeholders to access infrastructure, software and services needed to develop and deploy data science products. 

•Coordinates the design and development of customized visualization and presentation products to reveal the findings of analysis for clients, suitable for all forms of production to include briefings, reports, documentation to oversight bodies, interactive interfaces, and publication quality outputs. 

•Guides, trains and supervises staff in the function. 

•Represents the organization and the Chief Digital Officer at international and regional meetings and inter-agency activities, as well as internal meetings as needed.

 •Advises senior management on trends and developments in data science and recommends appropriate courses of action.

Requirements: 

A minimum of 10 years of experience in data science, data analytics, applied mathematics, information management, data analytics, or related area is required. Experience in statistical and computational methods, such as clustering, classification, correlation, dimension reduction, forecasting, machine learning, detecting outliers, and regression is desirable. Experience in the field of environmental or climate science or digital transformation with a focus on data is desirable.

Languages: 

For the position(s) advertised, fluency in English language is required. Fluency in French language is desirable. Knowledge of another official United Nations language, including Russian is desirable.

Please, apply via UNEP website: ​

DDL: 17/10.