Johannesburg: Senior Data Researcher (JHB Hybrid) posted by Datafin

About the Role

Datafin is seeking a Senior Data Researcher to play a critical role in enabling data-driven decision-making, programme improvement, and organisational learning as part of their Johannesburg-based Community Upliftment Programme. The successful candidate will possess expertise in data analysis, data science, or related fields and strong quantitative and analytical skills.

Key Responsibilities

• Analyse data to generate actionable insights that inform strategic decisions and programme improvements.
• Create, enhance and support the use of interactive dashboards and analytics tools to improve data-driven decision-making across the organisation and network.
• Provide statistical methodology to design and execute experiments, including evaluations and research projects.
• Ensure that data analysis and insights are aligned with broader strategic goals related to child outcomes and early learning.
• Support real-time monitoring and feedback loops to enable rapid adjustments and responsive decision-making.
• Identify patterns, trends, and correlations in data to inform programme adaptation and innovation.
• Write up findings in accessible and understandable formats for audiences of varying technical ability.
• Create insights briefs and reports to communicate key findings and recommendations.

Requirements

• Qualifications: A minimum of a Master’s Degree in Education, Psychology, Economics, Social Sciences, Statistics, or a related field.

Experience/Skills

• At least 5 years of experience in Data Analysis, Data Science, or related fields.
• Strong quantitative and analytical skills, including proficiency with statistical software (e.g., Stata, R, or SPSS).
• Excellent knowledge of and ability to work with SQL databases.
• A strong working and theoretical knowledge of statistical principles, especially relating to designing and running randomised control trials.
• Experience with data visualisation tools (e.g., Power BI, Tableau).
• Proven ability to drive continuous improvement in data systems and insights generation.
• Strong communication and report-writing skills, with the ability to explain complex data to non-technical audiences.
• Experience in managing and working with large datasets and relational databases.
• Familiarity with data governance, including privacy, compliance, and security requirements.

Desirable

• Experience working in a social impact or nonprofit context.
• Familiarity with survey software (e.g. SurveyCTO) and CRMs (Microsoft Dynamics) as well as Azure.
• Experience in building capacity for data use and improving data literacy across teams.
• Experience in, or familiarity with, Early Learning, ECD, Education, Public Health.

Attributes

• Ability to work collaboratively and effectively in a cross-functional team environment.
• Demonstrated ability to design and implement rapid experiments.
• Strong strategic thinking and problem-solving skills.
• Behaving trustworthily: being reliable, accepting, open, congruent (i.e. integrity).
• Learning curiously, incl. learning how by doing differently:
• Clear curiosity (asking questions, questioning assumptions, doing differently, trying things).
• Track record of learning.
• Openness to & appetite for feedback.
• Familiarity with and curiosity about:
• Societal scale.
• Systems doing-and-thinking.
• Design thinking & iterative designing.
• Driving to succeed.