Data Scientist

About Girl Effect

Girl Effect creates media and technology products that adolescent girls across Africa and Asia trust and use. Its platforms reach more than 50 million girls with reliable guidance on health, education, and relationships, helping them find safe, supportive spaces and make informed choices. The organization also runs three chatbots in India, South Africa, and Kenya that have served nearly 3 million users with practical answers about sexual health, mental wellbeing, and livelihoods, while connecting them to real-world services. Over the coming years, the aim is to expand this impact significantly, with a long-term goal of reaching 30 million girls through chatbot-led experiences powered by advanced AI.

Role overview

This position sits at the intersection of data science, GenAI, product thinking, and responsible technology. The successful candidate will help shape the next generation of chatbot experiences, including more sophisticated conversational journeys and interventions designed around behavioral science. The work involves building and guiding AI-driven systems that are safe, scalable, and effective for vulnerable young users.

Technology and product context

• The organization has moved from traditional user-insight-led digital products toward GenAI-enabled experiences built with large language models.
• A custom generative AI feature already operating within strict guardrails has processed more than 150,000 user submissions.
• Future plans include extending this capability to mixed-code language use in South Africa, Kenya, and India.
• The roadmap is expanding from basic question-and-answer flows to longer, more complex conversational interventions such as Single Session Interventions (SSIs) for mental wellbeing.
• The work is grounded in behavioral science and focused on safely guiding young users toward healthier outcomes.

Technical environment

• Python-based services connect with GPT from OpenAI, Gemini from Google, and Claude from Anthropic.
• The platform uses a custom retrieval-augmented generation pipeline, live performance measurement, and safety guardrails hosted on Azure.
• Deployment channels include WhatsApp, MoyaApp, Telegram, and custom web applications.

What you will do

• Contribute technical leadership for GenAI and LLM-based products.
• Help make major architectural and platform decisions across the data science and AI stack.
• Build and maintain responsible AI workflows with rigorous evaluation and safety controls.
• Work closely with data scientists, subject matter experts, safeguarding specialists, mental health experts, and evaluation teams.
• Translate between technical and non-technical stakeholders so product goals, behavior-change objectives, and implementation details remain aligned.
• Prioritize and manage a technical roadmap within an agile working environment.
• Review code, design experiments to validate solutions, and represent the data science function in meetings and public-facing events when needed.

Requirements

• A postgraduate qualification in Data Science or a closely related field.
• Demonstrated experience working with LLMs and GenAI systems.
• Practical exposure to the full software development lifecycle.
• Ability to advise on digital platforms, tools, and architecture choices.
• Strong planning, organization, and multitasking capability.
• Excellent communication, collaboration, and interpersonal skills.
• Strong analytical thinking and problem-solving ability.
• Comfort working across teams and with colleagues at all levels of the organization.
• Genuine commitment to Girl Effect’s mission and to improving the lives of girls and young women.

Additional information

The organization is growing quickly and is looking for people who want to help drive meaningful change for girls. Teams are diverse, spanning non-profit and commercial backgrounds and a wide range of specialisms, including creative, gender, and insight. The environment is intended to stretch and develop team members while offering opportunities to learn from highly engaged colleagues. Girl Effect is an equal opportunity employer and considers candidates fairly regardless of race, colour, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, marital status, disability, gender, gender identity, or gender expression. The organization is also committed to building a workforce that better reflects the communities it serves.

Safeguarding

Girl Effect has a zero-tolerance approach to safeguarding breaches, including sexual exploitation, abuse, and harassment. All staff must follow safeguarding policies and complete applicable background checks, which may include reference and criminal record checks where required.

Data use and AI-assisted screening

By applying, candidates consent to the processing of personal data for recruitment purposes. Secure AI tools may be used to help summarize and assess applications against role criteria, but these tools are only assistive. Final shortlisting and hiring decisions are made by human recruiters. Candidate data is not used to train public AI models, remains confidential within secure systems, and is processed in line with the organization’s Data Privacy Policy and the GDPR.

Application deadline

The closing date for applications is 29 June 2026.