Senior Data Scientist, MNO Data

About GiveDirectly

What if the most effective way to fight poverty was also the simplest: give people money and trust them to decide what they need? Since 2011, GiveDirectly has proven that idea at scale. We’ve delivered more than $1B in cash directly to 2+ million people living in poverty and crisis across 15 countries, and rigorous research shows the results: healthier kids, stronger businesses, sturdier homes, and more resilient families and local economies. Cash is now widely recognized as one of the most scalable, cost-effective, and dignified forms of aid.

Our ambition goes beyond our own programs. We want cash to become the benchmark for aid, much as the index fund became the benchmark for investing, so that every aid dollar is held to one question: is this doing more good than giving the money directly to people living in poverty? We’re growing fast, and this is a rare and important moment to join. We expect to hit $1B in revenue in 2026 with significant growth forecast for 2027.

At the same time we are building a new technology stack and operating model designed for a roughly 10x change in scale, and we are actively pursuing partnerships with major funders to move even more money in bigger ways, to people who need it. We are known for our extensive integration of technology into field processes; our quantitative approach to performance measurement; and our commitment to rigorous, independent, experimental evaluation of our impact, with multiple Randomized Control Trials completed and others in progress.

How we work

Our team spans 20+ countries and 69 languages. Our culture is candid, analytical, and non-hierarchical. We expect high ownership and give people real responsibility early. Our values are central to how we hire, work, and grow, and they are deliberately opinionated:

• Recipients first. Recipients’ preferences come before those of donors or ourselves.
• Team next. We optimize for organizational success, not individual success.
• Be proactively candid. We say what we believe and share information openly.
• Create positive energy. We aim to be a source of energy for colleagues, not a drain.
• Think rigorously; act quickly. We reason from first principles, then act rather than debate.
• Know yourself and grow. We own our imperfections and seek feedback to grow.
• Accept reality. Propose solutions. We focus on what can change and bring solutions, not just problems.
• Be productively ambitious. We take risks for step-change impact, not incremental progress.

If they describe how you like to work and they energize you, this could be a great fit.

About this role

GiveDirectly gives cash directly to people living in poverty and in emergencies. Both depend on the same question: did this person live in this place, at this time? We ask it when we target the poorest households, and when a disaster displaces a community overnight. Location records held by Mobile Network Operators (MNO) can help us estimate an answer to this question at scale.

We work with MNOs so they can infer, from their own records, whether a subscriber was resident in a target area over a defined period. Robust residence location inference from MNO data requires in-depth analytical work, and the methods we design have to run on an operator's systems - most often implemented by their engineers - under strict data protection and confidentiality rules.

We are hiring a Senior Data Scientist to progress our work on location inference from MNO data, and to make it repeatable. Your job is to improve and extend our library of method templates, adapt them to each new operator and setting, and design new elements when an intervention requires it. You'll assess what can be inferred from a given operator's data, specify the analysis clearly enough for their data engineers to implement, then test it with them remotely or on site. You'll support introductory meetings with MNOs, describing methodologies at a high level, and inform the work of data privacy and cybersecurity teams to ensure only necessary data are shared securely. You'll also help colleagues across GiveDirectly understand the strengths and limitations of this data source, so we design programs around questions it can best answer. This work is live in several countries, and we're expanding it across the countries where we have offices and to low- and middle-income countries anywhere in the world when a crisis hits.

Responsibilities

• Improve and extend our library of analytical method templates for establishing where people live from MNO data, and depending on circumstances, for detecting displacement or estimating poverty.
• Design novel methods when an intervention requires it.
• Support colleagues in technical conversations with operators, bringing clarity on the data we need and why, and steering discussions toward technical designs that make the analysis workable.
• Assess the information that can be inferred from each operator's data given data types and sparsity, and for each geography and targeted area.
• Support intervention design to account for data quality.
• Write tests and method specifications for MNO data engineers to implement: steps, parameters, pseudocode, validation criteria.
• Guide operator engineering teams through implementation, in writing and in person.
• Adapt methods to accommodate large data volume and computational constraints, balancing accuracy and operational needs.
• Run in-country workshops with operators to support the set-up of new analyses and - where feasible - tune parameters based on statistical tests and distributions.
• Feed every new analytical and implementation element back into standard templates, so the next country or intervention starts from a better position than the last.
• Design for privacy from the start, so that as little data as possible has to be shared: aggregation, minimization, and where useful, privacy-enhancing technologies such as private set intersection or homomorphic encryption.
• Protect the confidentiality of what operators share with us and improve internal data security processes and tools as we grow.
• Build internal training material so that our technical and non-technical teams understand the strengths and limits of this data, and design interventions accordingly.

What you’ll bring

• Exceptional alignment with GiveDirectly Values and active demonstration of our core competencies: emotional intelligence, problem solving, project management, follow-through, and fostering inclusivity.
• Strong mathematical modeling, machine learning and statistics.
• Deep comfort with spatio-temporal data: temporal filtering, GIS, probability distributions, combinatorial reasoning, and working with sparse, irregular observations.
• Direct experience with Call Detail Records (CDRs) or latching data is a strong plus.
• Excellent communication and relationship-building skills.
• Experience writing technical specifications that other teams implemented, clear enough that people you don't manage could follow them correctly.
• Commitment to privacy by design as a foundational value and starting point rather than a compliance step.

Language Requirement

• English.

Compensation

At GiveDirectly, we strive to pay our employees generously and equitably. We use an accredited third party salary aggregator to calculate what we believe to be competitive pay based on role, location, and cost of living. We also have a no negotiation policy to ensure we are paying staff equitably across roles.

• United States: Base Salary: $107,070, Bonus at Target Performance: 10%, Annual Benefits Stipend: $21,393
• United Kingdom: Base Salary: £70,250, Bonus at Target Performance: 10%, Annual Benefits Stipend: £2,760
• Kenya: Base Salary: $72,550, Bonus at Target Performance: 10%, Annual Benefits Stipend: $8,454

This role is fully remote, so if you are not based in the US, UK or Kenya, we will share an estimated salary benchmark for the country you are based in during the hiring process.