Data Scientist

About the Organisation

Girl Effect creates media and digital products that young women and adolescent girls across Africa and Asia actively use, trust, and rely on. With a reach of more than 50 million girls, the organization offers safe and supportive spaces where they can access important information on health, education, and relationships and build a clearer view of what they can do and become.

The organization currently runs three chatbots in India, South Africa, and Kenya. Together, these tools have reached nearly 3 million users by answering sensitive questions at scale on sexual health, mental wellbeing, and livelihoods, while also guiding users toward offline support services. Over the next five years, the goal is to expand this impact further, with an ambition to reach 30 million girls through chatbot-led solutions by 2030, supported by highly personalised AI-powered experiences.

Role Overview

The Data Scientist will lead work at the intersection of GenAI, LLMs, product safety, and digital service delivery. This role sits within a team that has already introduced a guarded GenAI capability and is now expanding into more advanced conversational experiences, including long-term interventions designed around behavioural science and user wellbeing.

The position requires someone who can contribute technically, shape architecture decisions, and collaborate across technical and non-technical teams to ensure the organisation’s AI products are safe, effective, and aligned to mission impact.

Technical Environment

• Python-based services connect with major AI models such as GPT from OpenAI, Gemini from Google, and Claude from Anthropic.
• The team uses a custom retrieval-augmented generation setup, live performance tracking, and safety guardrails on Azure.
• Products are delivered through WhatsApp, MoyaApp, Telegram, and custom web applications.

Key Responsibilities

• Develop and improve GenAI and LLM-driven solutions using the organisation’s existing AI stack.
• Contribute to technical direction and help shape major platform and architecture decisions.
• Design and maintain responsible AI practices, including strong evaluation methods and safety controls.
• Work on chatbot experiences that are accurate, secure, useful, and appropriate for vulnerable young users.
• Collaborate with data scientists, subject matter experts, safeguarding specialists, mental health professionals, and evaluation teams.
• Translate between technical and non-technical groups to support shared understanding of product goals and implementation.
• Prioritise and manage a technical roadmap within an agile working environment.
• Review code, design experiments, and help demonstrate whether new technology and approaches are effective.
• Represent the organisation’s data science perspective in external meetings, partner discussions, and public-facing events.

Requirements

• A postgraduate qualification in Data Science or a closely related field is required.
• Demonstrated hands-on experience with GenAI and LLM technologies.
• Strong understanding of the software development lifecycle.
• Ability to guide decisions around digital platforms, tools, and technical architecture.
• Excellent organisational and multitasking ability, with experience managing competing priorities.
• Strong analytical thinking and problem-solving skills.
• Clear communication and strong interpersonal skills.
• Ability to work effectively with colleagues at all levels of the organisation.
• Commitment to mission-led work and positive social impact for girls and young women.

Additional Information

The organisation is growing quickly and is looking for people who want to make a meaningful difference for girls. Its teams bring together people from both non-profit and commercial backgrounds, as well as a wide range of specialisms including creative, gender, and insight. The work environment is expected to stretch employees, support learning, and provide opportunities for career development alongside highly engaged colleagues.

Girl Effect is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of race, colour, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, marital status, disability, gender, or gender identity or expression. The organisation also aims to build a workforce that better reflects the communities it serves and will consider diversity of professional, academic, and cultural background during recruitment.

Safeguarding

The organisation has a zero-tolerance approach to safeguarding breaches, including sexual exploitation, abuse, and harassment (SEAH). All employees must comply with safeguarding policies and complete relevant background checks, which may include reference checks and criminal record checks where applicable.

Data Privacy and AI-Assisted Review

By applying, candidates consent to the use of their personal data for recruitment purposes. The organisation may use secure AI tools, including Google Workspace Gemini, to help summarise and analyse CVs against the role criteria. This assistance is only used to support review; all final shortlisting and hiring decisions are made by human recruiters. Applicant data is kept confidential within secure systems, is not used to train public AI models, and is processed in line with the organisation’s data privacy policy and the GDPR.

Application Deadline

The last date to apply is 29 June 2026.