Senior Data Scientist at UpEnergy

About the role:

• UpEnergy seeks a Senior Data Scientist familiar with Customer & Market Research, behavioural science and impact evaluation within the retail industry. The main objective for the role is to enhance our ability to design and execute tests of products, distribution methods, communications and any other initiatives within the Go-to-market activities to improve interactions and outcomes for the users of our products that will impact the overall performance of the business metrics.
• UpEnergy runs both large scale distribution, tests and pilots across 7 African markets and will expand to new markets and products in the coming years. For UpEnergy to generate the maximum possible impact, we constantly seek new methods to increase the adoption and usage of our products as well as testing methods that will help us to distribute cost efficiently on each market.
• Occasionally, The Senior Data Scientist will also partner with researchers to facilitate the implementation of Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs) on UpEnergy interventions, entrepreneurial and proactive attitude is key to always maintain a culture of improvement.  
• You will have the exciting opportunity to design and execute tests and trials to continuously improve the efficacy of interventions and products we deploy in households and schools across Africa and soon on other continents. The ideal candidate will possess a deep understanding of continuous testing and optimization methodologies including A-B testing frameworks to deliver actionably, statistically significant insights. You’ll be using data science to tackle one of the world’s most pressing challenges – alleviating energy poverty and ensuring that a climate transition helps those most affected by climate change.

Key Responsibilities:

Research and Documentation

• Lead the research efforts to improve the understanding of end users of Upenergy’s products across different markets.
• Conduct literature reviews and staying up to date with relevant research advancements in the clean cooking, safe water, and other relevant focal areas.
• Documenting experimentation methodologies, procedures, and findings for internal and external stakeholders.
• Develop an internal strategy for rigorous, powered, and publishable RCTs including serving as principal investigation.
• Analyzing and interpreting RCT data to drive the global conversation on clean cooking and provide actionable insights and recommendations.
• Publish and communicate the results of evaluations and RCTs

Pilots, Intervention testing and methodologies.

• Work with implementation teams to design testing, sampling, data collection, and protocols that balance experiment quality, feasibility and economic viability of implementation at scale.
• Design and develop continuous testing and optimization methodologies including A-B testing frameworks to drive the continuous testing of hypotheses and evaluation of interventions and treatments.
• Collaborate with product and in-country teams to identify suitable research questions and objectives for implementing interventional tests and pilots.
• Build and support a culture of smart experimentation with UpEnergy and partner organizations such as Community Carbon
• Develop and implement statistical analyses for evaluation and inference in experiments.
• Collect, clean, and process datasets for experiments using appropriate software tools.
• Collaborate with the country field teams to ensure high-quality implementation of experiment protocols and procedures and to rapidly respond to inevitable issues and errors
• Support the design and development of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) with leading global academic micro-economists
• Support the design and development of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) to test hypotheses and evaluate interventions or treatments
• Conducting data audits and quality assurance checks on collected data.
• Structure the learnings on end-users and testing (any type) in a manner that can help the business to make informed decisions that affect country-related business metrics.

Does this sound like you?

• Degree in Data Science, Statistics, Economics, Data-Driven Marketing, or similar
• Experience in developing rigorous RCTs and with statistical software packages (Open Data Kit and/or Salesforce preferred)
• Preferably with experience working in retail companies (FMCGs, general merchandise, appliances, etc)
• Ability to communicate effectively with field teams in Sub-Saharan Africa to design and implement trials
• Strong desire to work on climate justice and climate solutions in low-income contexts
• Living in Africa
• Fluent English