Stears Recruitment for Open Data Intern

Stears is an intelligence startup of 25+ people using data to answer questions about Africa. Our mission is to become the world's most trusted provider of African data & insight to global businesses, finance, and policy professionals. We make this possible by integrating all our intelligence (news & analysis, proprietary data, aggregated public data, licensed data, forecasts, and reports) into a searchable platform, complemented by a rich mobile experience. Our customers currently pay for access to Stears’ intelligence through a web platform, that includes daily insight and data. Our experts are always ready to answer client data questions about any sector, market, or African country.

We are recruiting to fill the position below:

Job Position: Open Data Intern
Job Location: Lagos
Employment Type: Full-time

Job Description

• This role is focused on generating positive social impact through data, by making important datasets about Africa freely available to the public. Stears’ Open Data team publishes datasets that increase transparency into political systems and the management of public goods (infrastructure, publicly funded services, land, environment, etc.)
• This Open Data work supports Stears’ social impact mission, as a complement to our commercial, subscriber-only products.

Example Open Data projects:

• Tracking African elections and governance - continuing our work on Stears Elections
• Mapping Lagos’ informal ferry routes to help reduce road congestion
• Evaluating the distribution of foreign aid across the continent
• What it includes: As an Open Data Intern, your mission is to find, gather, and synthesise data for our growing portfolio of projects. This includes desk research, data wrangling, data analysis, and some field research activities in Lagos, Nigeria.

Key Responsibilities

• Conduct research to find potential information sources and evaluate their usefulness and reliability
• Collect, clean, combine, and organise datasets
• Summarise your research findings by preparing clear and concise reports or presentations for internal and external stakeholders
• Create data visualisations (training will be provided in Flourish)
• Assess and quantify data quality problems
• Analyse datasets to derive insights
• As needed, conduct local on-the-ground field research.

Your day-to-day activities could include:

• Creating geospatial datasets from satellite imagery or GPS logs
• Conducting exploratory data analysis to find patterns, trends and anomalies in large datasets
• Conducting on-the-ground data collection and field visits, including conducting brief interviews with relevant members of the public
• Producing beautiful, interactive data visualisations
• Extracting/scraping data from PDF documents, websites, news feeds, and other sources

Requirements

• Availability to begin work in February
• 1-2 years of experience creating and analysing data using tools like Google Sheets (formulas and pivot tables), Python, SQL, QGIS/ArcGIS, PowerBI, Tableau, PDF scraping software, etc.
• A self-starter attitude and the ability to quickly learn on-the-job, including teaching yourself new skills when needed
• Knowledge in statistics and mathematics
• Passion for data visualisation and making data insights easy to understand
• (Preferred) Pidgin and/or Yoruba language skills for local field work in Lagos.