Data Associate

The Good Business Lab is an independent, non-profit research and innovation lab that uses rigorous academic research methods to develop scalable, market-ready interventions capable of providing dual benefits to workers and businesses. We design and trial interventions, using frontier research methods, to understand different programs’ impacts on workers and businesses. The founders of the lab are Ach Adhvaryu - assistant professor of business economics and public policy at the University of Michigan (www.achadhvaryu.com/), Anant Ahuja – head of Organization Development at Shahi Exports Pvt. Ltd. and Anant Nyshadham – assistant professor of economics at Boston College (www.anantnyshadham.com/).

We have conducted several studies at Shahi in the past five years to help understand how private business interests in developing countries can be aligned with the wellbeing of workers. For example, in one study we found that the net return to the firm from training women workers in life skills (such as financial literacy, communication, and problem solving) is 250%, 8 months after program completion. This program called P.A.C.E. (Personal Advancement and Career Enhancement), co-created by Gap Inc., Shahi, ICRW, and Swasthi has been scaled at a global level to reach over 45,000 female garment workers in 12 countries.

A critical aspect of the work is complementing the high-quality survey data with the large administrative datasets from partner the firms. For example, some of the project datasets contain daily hour level productivity data of more than 30,000 garment workers over five years. These datasets provide great opportunity to evaluate various development programs as well as to understand internal dynamics of large firms.  Working with various large datasets requires the ability to understand data structures, as well as an eye for spotting issues with the datasets. To ensure the smooth implementation of all projects, the lab is looking for a full-time Data Associate details of which are given below.

Location: Delhi, India

Length of Commitment: minimum 1 year

Remuneration: 6-9 lacs p.a.

Start Date: ASAP (applications being accepted on a rolling basis)

The Data Associate will work closely with academic researchers, data manager, stakeholders at partner firms and other field staff to collect, organize and help analyze the datasets. Key responsibilities include (but not limited to):

• Organize various large datasets and design data structure frameworks to integrate datasets
• Maintain and acquire new datasets from partner firms
• Help in the analysis of data for various academic projects. Some of the advanced research papers use Machine Learning and other cutting-edge algorithms to solve academic and industry problems. Here is an example of one of the data based projects.
• Work with the field team to design data protocols and maintain data quality
• Develop data visualization and insights for dissemination of research results
• Secondary research for upcoming projects
• Help partner organizations in improving data architecture

Requirement

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree a discipline such as Economics, Engineering, Mathematics, Physics, Statistics
• Knowledge of one of the following is essential – Stata, Python, R
• Prior experience of working with large datasets (either through past work experience or projects)
• Ability to work in a team and be self-motivated
• Experience with development sector preferred