Research Analyst Consultant. Florence Italy. Office of Strategy & Evidence /Remote #592612

tendersglobal.net

Contract Duration: 6 Months

Working arrangement: Home/Remote based

Terms of Reference

The purpose of this consultancy is to provide technical analytical support to the Urban Poverty study in the United Republic of Tanzania and produce a working paper for publication and a policy brief for advocacy. Background UNICEF Office of Strategy and Evidence – Innocenti (UNICEF Innocenti) and UNICEF Tanzania Country Office (TCO) are collaborating to generate high‑quality, policy‑relevant evidence on urban poverty and deprivation in Tanzania. The collaboration aims to produce a peer‑reviewed working paper and a policy brief that will inform UNICEF advocacy, programme design, and resource mobilisation in support of urban social protection, targeting, and inclusive urban development. Rapid urbanisation in Tanzania has intensified spatial inequalities, particularly within large urban centres where informal settlements and localised deprivation are often masked by aggregate statistics. While recent global studies have produced micro‑estimates of wealth and poverty, these models lack the spatial granularity required to map intra‑urban disparities relevant for city‑level planning and intervention. This research addresses that gap by developing an urban‑focused, high‑resolution poverty mapping approach, integrating geospatial data and machine‑learning techniques. The analysis will focus on six Tier‑1 cities—Dar es Salaam, Mwanza, Arusha, Dodoma, Mbeya, and Zanzibar City—where the density of survey data enables robust model training and validation. Within this context, UNICEF Innocenti seeks to recruit a Research Analyst (Consultant) to provide technical and analytical support to the study, contributing directly to the processing of geospatial data, predictive modelling, analysis, and drafting of the working paper and the policy brief.

Minimum Requirements

• Education: Master’s (or Higher) in Data Science, Spatial Econometrics, Geography, Computer Science, Economics, Statistics, Public Policy, or a related highly quantitative field
• Work experience: At least 3 years of relevant experience in quantitative research and advanced data analysis.
• Demonstrated experience working with geospatial data and spatial analysis.
• Practical, demonstrable experience building and tuning supervised machine‑learning models (e.g., Random Forest, XGBoost) and deep learning architectures (e.g., CNNs) for socio‑economic or spatial analysis.
• Skills: Expert‑level proficiency in Python or R (mandatory for Google Earth Engine integration, CNN feature extraction, and ML pipelines) AND proficiency in Stata (mandatory for all survey data processing). The consultant must be able to deliver clean, reproducible Stata .do files for the survey integration phase, and clear Python/R scripts for the geospatial and machine‑learning phases.
• Demonstrated experience with Google Earth Engine (GEE), standard GIS platforms (e.g. QGIS, ArcGIS), including the processing of multi‑spectral remote sensing data (e.g. Sentinel‑2, VIIRS) and vector data (e.g. OpenStreetMap).
• Strong data visualization skills (e.g. generating continuous spatial heat maps) and a proven track record of analytical academic writing.
• Language Requirements: Fluency in English (written and spoken) is required.
• Desirables: Familiarity with handling Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) or Living Standards Measurement Studies (LSMS), particularly experience in mitigating the spatial displacement (jittering) of GPS survey clusters.
• Knowledge of the United Republic of Tanzania’s urban landscape, social protection landscape and poverty profile.
• Relevant research experience working with UNICEF, other international organisations.
• Ability to organise own work and to carry out a computationally heavy research project with limited supervision according to deadlines.

UNICEF encourages applications from all qualified candidates, regardless of gender, nationality, religious or ethnic backgrounds, and from people with disabilities, including neurodivergence. We offer reasonable accommodation for persons with disabilities throughout the recruitment process. UNICEF does not hire candidates who are married to children (persons under 18). UNICEF has a zero‑tolerance policy on conduct that is incompatible with the aims and objectives of the United Nations and UNICEF, including sexual exploitation and abuse, sexual harassment, abuse of authority and discrimination based on gender, nationality, age, race, sexual orientation, religious or ethnic background or disabilities. All selected candidates will, therefore, undergo rigorous reference and background checks, and will be expected to adhere to these standards and principles. Background checks will include verification of academic credential(s) and employment history.