Fresh Jobs at Taimaka

About the Job

Taimaka, as an organization, cares deeply about maximizing our cost-effectiveness. For instance, we shut down our initial program, a post-harvest loans initiative on which the organization was founded, when we ran an RCT and determined that it was insufficiently cost-effective.

We believe our current work is highly cost-effective, saving a life for every ~$1.6k-$1.7k spent, based on combining our cost and program performance data with GiveWell’s cost-effectiveness modeling for acute malnutrition. However, there are large error bars around that underlying modeling, due in part because of a lack of direct comparison data illuminating the mortality rates of treated vs. untreated children with severe acute malnutrition.

Taimaka is working with a large, well-known Effective Altruist charity evaluator to collect better data on acute malnutrition treatment programs to try to reduce uncertainty around its estimates of the cost-effectiveness of acute malnutrition. If we are successful in reducing these error bars, and acute malnutrition treatment remains highly cost-effective, this project could lead to that evaluator moving tens or hundreds of millions of additional dollars annually into acute malnutrition treatment.

To implement this project, we are hiring two Field Research Associates on our “CMAM Evaluation” team. As on of these Field Research Associates, you will run a portion of our cost-effectiveness research portfolio, which includes:

• A study of treated children over a 12-month follow-up period with a set of matched, healthy community controls to assess the mortality rate of treated malnourished and healthy children, as well as the relapse rate of treated malnourished children.
• Bi-annual surveys of prevalence, coverage, and mortality rates in the catchment areas served by 6-12 of our outpatient facilities.
• Year-round assessment of what percentage of children we are treating actually live in our designated catchment areas vs. commute to our facilities from outside of those areas.
• Working with other NGOs who implement in areas without functioning malnutrition treatment referral networks to collect data on mortality and anthropometric status.

In addition, you will conduct desk research to support work on similar priorities, like identifying existing data sources or published literature that may be able to provide points of triangulation around untreated mortality. You will be expected to become familiar with thinking about and modeling cost-effectiveness in the Effective Altruist style.

You will be guided in your work by Taimaka’s director of Research and Program Improvement. In addition, an experienced consultant will help in the set-up of the prevalence, coverage, and mortality assessments in 2025. You will, in turn, oversee teams of field data collectors, as well as one to two mid-level managers to assist in running those teams.

We view this role as fitting into the later half of someone’s early career. Our priority is finding candidates who can work entrepreneurially - identifying key problems, work independently, and self-start - and think for themselves. We’re looking for scrappy innovators, so if you think you fit that, please apply even if you have to do some learning on the job.

Specific Responsibilities

Your specific responsibilities may change depending on which elements of our cost-effectiveness research portfolio you end up working on, as well as evolve over time as our plans develop during 2025, but generally we expect your day to day to fall into a couple of key buckets:

Planning Data Collection Efforts

• Plan implementation methods and timelines for specific research projects. Draw on existing guidelines and field toolkits, upskilling yourself where needed.
• Write protocols, draft guidance documents, develop training materials, prepare budgets, and guide procurements of equipment and commodities for assigned projects, to align with methods and timelines.
• Map program catchment areas and construct population estimates to facilitate sample selection for surveys of prevalence and coverage with the support of an experienced consultant.
• Design and supervise the translation of survey questionnaires.
• Develop data collection tools (Open Data Kit forms, paper forms, etc.) and supervision checklists for data collectors and managers to use in implementing research projects. Implement orientation and training for teams of data collectors and data collection supervisors on SMART methodology or similar, with the support of an experienced consultant.
• Oversee community awareness and sensitisation for assigned research projects, including meeting with community leaders to introduce new projects, sharing updates with relevant contacts, and working with our community mobilisation team to address key tensions as they arise.
• Project-manage implementation of assigned research projects.

Monitoring Data Quality

• Conduct weekly data monitoring efforts with the supervisors or program officers you manage to assess fidelity of implementation of protocols and check for poor quality submissions from your field teams.
• Write code in R or Python to automatically pull data, clean it, and flag potential problem areas, including by cross-checking research/survey data and CMAM program data. Train and support program officers to regularly review and interpret this data.
• Design and implement a feedback loop to ensure that poor quality submissions and potential problems are documented, investigated and addressed.
• If you identify sources of poor quality data, take immediate corrective action, including form changes, retraining, or replacement of personnel.
• Design and implement processes for data verification and triangulation, including back checks, quality audits, and qualitative data collection (interviews, focus groups) to proactively identify and address data issues.

People Management

• Write job descriptions, advertise new roles, develop test tasks, and assess applications to hire new field data collectors and supervisors to support your assigned projects.
• Provide day-to-day oversight of your team, conduct performance reviews, provide training, and support team members’ professional development.
• Coordinate with the core CMAM program delivery team to ensure that routine data collection meets the needs of assigned research projects and troubleshoot coordination and quality issues related to program data collected by inpatient and outpatient staff.
• Meet regularly with the research management team to discuss progress and challenges.

Desk Research, Modeling, and Translating Your Learnings into Program Action

• Conduct literature reviews and other similar research efforts into related areas, like untreated acute malnutrition mortality rates, to support our cost-effectiveness modeling.
• Assist in re-working and improving sections of our cost-effectiveness model.
• Clean and analyse data collected for assigned research projects, including calculating key indicators according to established standards (i.e., death rate, GAM prevalence), conducting exploratory data analysis, and calculating inputs for cost-effectiveness modelling.
• Develop informative, concise reporting of your assigned research projects for internal and external audiences.
• Where your research identifies ways to improve our programming (e.g., creating a better understanding of the relationship between prevalence/coverage and case severity at admission), draw up guidelines to be incorporated into the treatment program.

Future Growth Trajectories

• This cost-effectiveness modeling effort is a three year project that may expand based on how successful it is. If you excel in this role and we expand this project, you could lead larger, cutting-edge research projects designed to identify the core drivers of how lives are saved via acute malnutrition treatment, like figuring out how to directly compare treated and untreated mortality or leading research into improved triaging methods to target treatment to patients who will not recover on their own.
• Depending on your interests, you could also focus more in this job on specializing in cost-effectiveness modeling. Alternatively, if you are more interested in the field side, you could specialize in running field trials, and work for Taimaka or another implementer on improving our protocols and practices.

About You

• This role will likely suit an early to mid-career public health (or similar) specialist with an interest in research. Our preference is for someone with a few years of work experience under their belt, but we may make exceptions for truly exceptional candidates.
• If you are not sure whether you’re the right fit for the position, err on the side of applying. Our initial application is designed to be fairly painless to complete and our priority is finding candidates with high overall potential, an ability to learn, and who align with our core philosophy of cost-effectiveness and innovation, rather than who check specific boxes.

Must Haves:

Candidates must have the following to qualify:

• Bachelor’s degree or higher in public health, statistics, economics, or similar
• Past experience with data analysis in either R OR Python Pandas
• An ability to learn new skills, particularly by diving in headfirst and learning by doing
• An ability to set your own priorities and independently solve problems

Nice to Haves:

The more of these that describe you, the better, but none are required. Even if none of these describe you, but you feel like you are talented and can learn, err on the side of applying.

Past experience with:

• Technical:
  • An XLSForm based data collection platform (e.g., Open Data Kit, KoboCollect, SurveyCTO)
  • Geospatial data collection and mapping using ArcGIS, QGIS or similar software
• General:
  • Field experience in an LMIC, particularly if you were doing work related to data collection
  • Experience or training implementing SMART or similar surveys related to child nutrition and mortality
  • Familiarity with GiveWell/Effective Altruist methods of evaluating cost-effectiveness
• A Master’s degree in public health, statistics, economics, or similar
• 1 year or more of work experience in field research

go to method of application »

About the Job

A portion of Taimaka’s work is dedicated to identifying ways we can improve the implementation of acute malnutrition treatment in our program. Over the years, these innovation efforts have led to a couple of key advances, like creating a digital case management application for our field staff to guide them through the treatment process, implementing a reduced RUTF dosage protocol for the first time in Nigeria, and integrating complementary food for the treatment of moderate acute malnutrition into a facility-based program. These advances are a key part of the reason our cost-per-child-treated is less than half that of the average NGO in northeastern Nigeria, and we’re keen to drive our cost-effectiveness even higher through new advances.

As an associate on our Program Improvement team, you would be in charge of running key innovation projects designed to improve our programming. While there is an element of research and evaluation to these projects, our goal is to avoid large-scale research trials and focus on quicker turnaround initiatives that are responsive to program needs. Think less abstract/academic research and more iterative design. A few examples of projects we are considering for 2025 are:

• Integrating ORS/Zinc co-pack distribution into our mass screenings for acute malnutrition cases to save additional lives, along with a post-distribution follow-up data collection round to verify that households actually received the packs and understand when and how to use them.
• Creating a biometric identification solution to track patient enrollment and improve identification of patients across time and facilities. This would involve identifying a developer who could implement this solution, project managing the implementation of it into our existing tech stack, and working with the programs team to roll the solution out.
• Do a sprint on overhauling our care protocols for under-six months children based on the latest research and published guidance from the WHO. Interview with experts at other organizations to incorporate their lessons learned. Team up with the programs team to roll out these new protocols and do a pre/post analysis to understand what effect they have.

Our goal in hiring for this position is to find someone who can embed closely with our programs team and spend substantial time every week out in our facilities, understanding pain points and problems. We want someone who will obsess about optimizing implementation, and who can add capacity to our existing program improvement team to form the missing link between identifying a good idea and actually developing it into something actionable.

You would report to our Research and Program Improvement director, who would assist in setting priorities and identifying projects for you to work on. However, once you are assigned to a project, we will expect you to work independently, recruiting additional staff as needed, planning implementation, and executing, with guidance and mentoring from your supervisor. In this role, you will likely oversee 1-2 mid-level managers along with a variable number of field personnel to collect data or perform similar tasks.

We evaluate the cost-effectiveness of our programming in the GiveWell/Effective Altruist style, meaning we judge the success or failure of our program improvement projects based on whether they reduce our estimated cost-per-life saved. You will be expected to learn how to model cost-effectiveness in this way, and incorporate it into your decision making.

Specific Responsibilities

Manage Implementation of Specific Program Improvement Projects - 75% of your time

Planning and Setup - 35% of this chunk of time

• Once assigned to a project, draft plans on how to go about implementing it. You may receive a very specific brief, or a more general task like “figure out novel ways to reduce nonresponse.”
  • You will likely need to carry out literature reviews and other research, like expert interviews, to identify possible strategies, and then develop a preferred approach out of that research.
• Draft protocols to implement the project, as well as an evaluation strategy to efficiently/frugally study its impact.
• Hire and train staff members required to to carry out the project (for instance, a team of temporary field enumerators).
• Create paper forms, supervision documents, Open Data Kit (ODK) digital forms, and other necessary tools to implement the project.

Implementation - 50% of this chunk of time

• Project manage the implementation of the idea: set timelines, ensure they are met, troubleshoot issues as they arise
• Monitor implementation and data quality by conducting weekly meetings with your junior staff, writing R or Python code to pull and clean any necessary data for checks, including by cross-checking program and survey data
• Design and implement feedback loops to ensure identified problems are effectively addressed in a timely manner
• Provide day-to-day oversight of your team, conduct performance reviews, provide training, and support team members’ professional development.

Analysis - 15% of this chunk of time

• After the conclusion of projects, write up reports on lessons learned
• Carry out statistical analysis of any evaluation data to determine whether the project had the desired impact
• Use impact and cost data to make recommendations as to whether the project should be incorporated into the CMAM program permanently, abandoned, or further iterated upon
• If adopting the project, write protocols and work with the core CMAM program team to institutionalize it within their activities

Identify Future Program Improvement Projects - 15% of your time

• Embed with the CMAM program team, spend time in Taimaka treatment facilities, interview staff - generally work to have very good context across the treatment program on what is working well, what isn’t, and what could work better
  • Get in the weeds, obsess about details
• Speak with experts and implementers at other organizations, understand what they are thinking about and see as potential ways to improve treatment outcomes and reduce costs
• Stay up to date on published literature in acute malnutrition treatment and related fields, as well as grey literature. Suggest ideas as they come to you, no matter how out there!
• Work with the Research and Program Improvement director to conduct back-of-the-envelope cost-effectiveness assessments of new ideas to prioritize them for implementation

Mentor Program Improvement Fellows

• Taimaka typically has 1-2 fellows per year (typically MPH students doing a practicum) come to Gombe to work on specific projects.
• You would support the Research and Program Improvement director in showing these fellows the ropes of Gombe, helping them understand our program, and give them tips on how to go about executing on their own projects.

Future Growth Trajectories

• If you excel in this role, you will become a leading expert on the cutting edge of acute malnutrition treatment programming, and accumulate a large store of knowledge and experience on implementing global health programming in a developing context.
• At Taimaka, you could end up managing a larger team and budget on an expanding set of more ambitious research and innovation projects as you demonstrate your ability to successfully identify and implement improvements to CMAM programming. You could also parlay this experience into starting your own organization or pivoting to work on a portfolio at a grantmaker or large INGO focused on institutionalizing more cost-effective solutions to global health challenges across implementers.

About You

• This role will likely suit an early to mid-career public health/global development professional, or a very bright early to mid-career generalist capable of learning on the job. Our preference is for someone with a few years of work experience under their belt, but we may make exceptions for truly exceptional candidates. We’re looking for someone who wants to become obsessed with optimizing malnutrition treatment to save as many lives as possible. We don’t really care what your background is as long as you are willing to put in the work to become a world-leading subject matter expert.
• If you are not sure whether you’re the right fit for the position, err on the side of applying. Our initial application is designed to be fairly painless to complete and our priority is finding candidates with high overall potential, an ability to learn, and who align with our core philosophy of cost-effectiveness and innovation, rather than who check specific boxes.

Must Haves:

Candidates must have the following to qualify:

• Bachelor’s degree or higher
• Past experience with:
  • Data analysis in either R OR Python Pandas
  • SQL OR proven competence in any non-statistical programming language (taken as evidence of your ability to quickly learn SQL)
• An ability to learn new skills, particularly by diving in headfirst and learning by doing
• An ability to set your own priorities and independently solve problems

Nice to Haves:

The more of these that describe you, the better, but none are required. Even if none of these describe you, but you feel like you are talented and can learn, err on the side of applying.

Past experience with:

• Technical:
  • An XLSForm based data collection platform (e.g., Open Data Kit, KoboCollect, SurveyCTO)
  • Geospatial data collection and mapping using ArcGIS, QGIS or similar software
• General:
  • Public health, humanitarian interventions, or biostatistics
  • Field experience in an LMIC, particularly if you were doing work related to data collection
  • Overseeing small teams (1-5 people)
  • Familiarity with GiveWell/Effective Altruist methods of evaluating cost-effectiveness
• A Master’s degree in public health, statistics, economics, or similar
• 1 year or more of work experience in field research or 2-3 or more years of other work experience

go to method of application »

About the Job

Taimaka’s enrollment and treatment process for children with acute malnutrition is entirely digitized. Staff using our mobile phone application are guided step-by-step through the treatment process for each case they see, with that data then uploaded to our database to create a complete record of every touchpoint a child has with one of our providers. This, in theory, provides us with a fantastic amount of data to use to inform program design and execution. However, sometimes, we often find ourselves with too much data and not enough staff capacity to use it well.

The Program Optimization and Data Lead role is crucial for transforming Taimaka's data into smarter, more effective programming. Your core responsibilities will be:

• Optimize and Enhance Digital Tools: Continuously improve our ODK application to ensure high-quality data collection that supports real-time decision-making and evolving program needs (this involves 'low-code' technical work, collaborating on complex programming). Modify clinical guidance provided through ODK (in collaboration with our program team) to provide the highest quality care possible.
• Drive Data-Driven Program Improvement: Develop and execute a strategy to unlock the potential of our data. This involves proactively identifying key questions, conducting analyses (using R/Python, SQL), creating insightful dashboards (e.g., Metabase), and building systems to embed data use into operational workflows for senior staff and field managers. Work with senior program leadership to identify problems and brainstorm solutions. Again, we want someone who is going to actively suggest fixes, not someone who merely hands over data and stops there.
• Lead and Develop the Data Team: Manage and build the capacity of our M&E and data staff (currently ~3 FTEs, expected to grow) to effectively support data quality, analysis, and insight generation.

Our current data team consists of ~3 FTEs:

• An M+E Supervisor who monitors form submissions and makes corrections when needed, provides data on a by-request basis to program management staff, and who runs tri-annual field patient screening efforts with temporary staff contracted for ~1 week per screening.
• A Data Entry Clerk who manually enters some paper forms filled by staff not equipped with smartphones (e.g., community mobilizers conducting at-home follow-up visits for patients).
• A few part-time Field Data Collectors who conduct backchecking visits of admitted patients to verify their anthropometrics.

We expect that this team will need to expand by another few staff members as our program grows, meaning you will need to carry out some recruitment and hiring as well.

We view this role as fitting into the later half of someone’s early career. Our priority is finding candidates who can work entrepreneurially - identifying key problems, work independently, and self-start - and think for themselves. We’re looking for scrappy innovators, so if you think you fit that, please apply even if you have to do some learning on the job.

Specific Responsibilities

Optimize and Enhance Digital Case Management Software - 20% of your time

• Implement updates to the Open Data Kit (ODK) forms Taimaka staff use to enroll patients and track their progress through the program (e.g., add a new biographical data collection question to the admission form) to improve user experience and care outcomes
• Execute more complex additions, like adding a warning to facility staff if a child has already been seen that week and is coming in for a second time (this requires integrating data from database queries into ODK attachments to provide real-time data back to the form)
• Make changes to these core ODK forms to ensure they remain in line with treatment protocols (e.g., changing recommended drug dosages in the section of the form that provides treatment guidance, based on changes in treatment protocols provided to you)
• Develop new ODK forms to meet program needs, such as digital attendance verification, supervision checklists, mapping new catchment areas, and replacing paper-based forms with digital versions.

Conduct Proactive Data Analysis for Program Strategy and Optimization - 30% of your time

• Proactively identify opportunities and initiate data analysis projects to answer critical strategic questions, evaluate program components, and guide key decisions (e.g., site selection, or identifying causes of programmatic challenges like data fabrication).
  • Brainstorm solutions to identified issues with senior program staff, work with program staff to implement these solutions.
• In some cases, plan and run field research efforts to gather more data to factor into decision-making than we usually collect.
• For data collection efforts, expect to delegate a lot of the data collection efforts (once you plan it) to your junior staff. For more complex data analysis, expect to undertake this yourself. These tasks will often require reviewing academic and grey literature, searching practitioner forums and guidelines, and organising discussions with other organisations.

Ensure High-Integrity Data Pipeline - 10% of your time

• Design and implement systems for your staff to routinely check data issues (like duplicate patient IDs, duplicate form submissions, etc.). Monitor your staff’s performance in carrying out these checks.
• Take initiative to improve these quality checks without external guidance. Brainstorm and refine over time what data needs to be checked to prevent problems.

Proactively Mitigate Program Fraud Risks - 20% of your time

• Conduct proactive risk assessments for ways fraud could be committed by Taimaka staff or patient caregivers that would divert resources away from treatment. Prioritize the most impactful risks.
• Design and implement data-driven fraud prevention and detection measures - like randomized home visit checks, biometric verification, or other novel solutions - to prevent these risks. Refine these checks over time with minimal external guidance.
  • Implementation may include hiring and onboarding new members of the data team.
• Integrate fraud detection mechanisms into ODK forms, database systems, and M+E dashboards. For more complex prevention mechanisms requiring more in-depth coding abilities (like biometrics), project manage volunteer software developers.

Develop and Implement Data Insight and Reporting Systems - 10% of your time

• Identify key metrics program personnel need to make decisions and track program quality, through a combination of independent thought and work with the program team.
  • Some examples would be things like: facility-by-facility reports of reasons for non-recovery of patients, staff-level caseload reports to monitor distribution of workload, or automatically updating dashboards of stock levels at different facilities.
• Create dashboards or other methods (or delegate the creation of these) to share these metrics on an ongoing basis, empowering program staff.
• Continuously refine these systems to tune them to make sure the right data is getting to program staff in a way that is helpful to them.

Program Management for Monitoring and Evaluation - 10% of your time

• Work with Taimaka’s executive director and nutrition program director to set quarterly priorities for the data team. Translate quarterly targets into monthly and weekly plans for the team.
• Provide day-to-day oversight of the data team (2-6 people), conduct performance reviews, provide training, and support team members’ professional development.
• Write job descriptions, advertise new roles, and assess applicants to hire new members of the data team as needed.
• Coordinate with external collaborators, like volunteer developers, data scientists, or researchers assisting on specific projects.

Future Growth Trajectories

Future growth trajectories for excelling hires could look like:

• Overseeing a growing team and budget as our program expands and our data team grows with it
• Several years down the line, helping set up new data teams as we expand to new states in Nigeria
• As part of your professional development, we could explore more technical routes like investing in coding training to do more in-depth work on our digital case management system

About You

• This role will likely suit an early to mid-career public health, data, or M+E specialist, or a very bright early to mid-career generalist capable of learning on the job. Our preference is for someone with a few years of work experience under their belt, but we may make exceptions for truly exceptional candidates.
• If you are not sure whether you’re the right fit for the position, err on the side of applying. Our initial application is designed to be fairly painless to complete and our priority is finding candidates with high overall potential, an ability to learn, and who align with our core philosophy of cost-effectiveness and innovation, rather than who check specific boxes.

Must Haves:

Candidates must have the following to qualify:

• Bachelor’s degree or higher
• Past experience with:
  • Data analysis in either R OR Python Pandas
  • SQL OR proven competence in any non-statistical programming language (taken as evidence of your ability to quickly learn SQL)
• An ability to learn new skills, particularly by diving in headfirst and learning by doing
• An ability to set your own priorities and independently solve problems

Nice to Haves:

The more of these that describe you, the better, but none are required. Even if none of these describe you, but you feel like you are talented and can learn, err on the side of applying.

Past experience with:

• Technical:
  • An XLSForm based data collection platform (e.g., Open Data Kit, KoboCollect, SurveyCTO)
  • Python (general use, not for data analysis)
  • Metabase or similar BI/dashboarding software
  • Geospatial data collection and mapping using ArcGIS, QGIS or similar software
• General:
  • Public health, humanitarian interventions, or biostatistics
  • Field experience in an LMIC, particularly if you were doing work related to data collection
  • Overseeing small teams (1-5 people)
  • Familiarity with GiveWell/Effective Altruist methods of evaluating cost-effectiveness
• A Master’s degree in public health, statistics, economics, or similar
• 2 years or more of work experience in data or M+E or 4 years or more of other work experience