Description
ICF is seeking an experienced Senior Data Processing Specialist to provide technical leadership for data processing, digital data collection, and data-related innovation under The DHS Program and other large-scale surveys in low- and middle-income countries.
The Senior Data Processing Specialist will lead the design, testing, deployment, and support of complex computer-assisted personal interviewing (CAPI) systems and associated data-processing activities across multiple country surveys. This is a senior, hands-on role: the successful candidate will resolve complex technical and data-quality problems, strengthen the skills of Data Processing Specialists, consultants, and country counterparts, and promote consistent technical practices across the survey portfolio.
The Senior Data Processing Specialist will also help shape how AI and automation are used in DHS data processing, contributing to a team that includes AI engineers and other specialists. This includes helping pilot, evaluate, and improve tools such as AI-assisted anomaly detection and identifying processing tasks that can be safely automated.
This position will require travel internationally approximately 20 to 30 percent of the time, including trips that may extend for several weeks.
Key Responsibilities
CAPI and field systems
· Lead the design, programming, testing, deployment, and maintenance of complex CAPI applications for population and facility surveys using CSPro and other appropriate technologies.
· Translate questionnaires, skip patterns, validation rules, sample-management requirements, biomarker protocols, and other survey specifications into reliable and user-friendly data-collection applications.
· Lead technical readiness reviews and support pretests, training, survey launches, and initial fieldwork.
· Diagnose and resolve complex application, device, synchronization, communications, and data-quality problems.
Data processing and quality
· Provide technical oversight for survey data processing, including automated quality checks, standardized tabulations, dataset preparation, metadata, anonymization, and disclosure protection.
· Ensure consistency among questionnaires, CAPI applications, datasets, tabulation specifications, and final survey outputs.
· Develop reusable code, testing procedures, documentation, templates, and technical guidance that improve quality and efficiency across surveys.
Technical leadership and capacity strengthening
· Provide senior technical guidance and mentoring to Data Processing Specialists, consultants, and country counterparts, and advise Survey Managers and Survey Portfolio Managers on technical issues.
· Lead training and capacity strengthening for in-country data-processing staff, IT personnel, trainers, supervisors, and other technical counterparts, including the appropriate use of new tools.
· Collaborate with survey managers, statisticians, survey methodologists, biomarker specialists, GIS specialists, analysts, and other technical experts.
Innovation, automation, and AI
· Work with AI engineers and other teammates to pilot, evaluate, and improve AI-assisted data processing tools, such as anomaly detection for data quality, before they are scaled.
· Identify data processing tasks that could be safely automated, and help develop reusable scripts or pipelines to automate them.
· Contribute to standards for testing, documentation, expert review, and confidentiality when automated and AI-assisted tools are used with survey data.
· Capture lessons learned and help translate successful innovations into sustainable tools, standards, and operating procedures.
Required Qualifications
· Bachelor's degree in computer science, information systems, mathematics, statistics, demography, public health, data science, or a related discipline, or an equivalent combination of education and relevant experience.
· At least 10 years of…