Data & Insights Director at Pula

Within the Field Operations team, the Data & Insights team is responsible for ensuring the highest possible quality of ground truth data collected by the field team, provide the tools and business intelligence support needed for excellent field execution, glean and communicate actionable insights from collected data, and report out standard and ad-hoc knowledge products based on field data to internal and external stakeholders. The team should further lead recommendations and innovations around data collection on the ground. The Data and Insights director will work in close collaboration with Field country teams and the insurance payouts team. 

The outputs of the D&I team will be subject to strict scrutiny by clients and insurers, requiring the utmost attention to detail and thoroughness in process to ensure every report, conclusion and data point is highly defensible. 

Data & Insights Team Key functions:

• End-to-end data project management
  • Project setup including sampling and configuration of data collection and monitoring tools ex dashboards and quality controls)
  • Administration and deployment of surveys
  • Data quality monitoring with at least weekly reports for every project
  • Create, maintain, and audit dashboards for reliable use by teams across the whole business
  • Produce and report on project performance monitoring and metrics, including execution and data quality metrics
  • Frequent monitoring of enumerators and RMs for action by field managers
  • Data cleaning and structuring
  • Investigation and validation of anomalies and unexpected results with additional evidence
  • Final reporting on data and conclusions addressing all aspects relevant to the insurance cover, fully supported by evidence.
• Pre-crop cut preliminary analysis of available data on crop health and evidence of perils via remote sensing data analysis, phone and other farmer surveys; report out as crop development reports
• Advise on improvements to the type and way data is collected
• Leverage a deep understanding of our data to proactively suggest strategic technical, product, and business investments
• Translate business problems into technical solutions for data infrastructure & engineering development
• Ownership of the quality control system for collected data
• Administration of call center tools and systems, including quality control and performance monitoring
• Representation and defense of reports and data to clients and insurers

Data and Insights Director Responsibilities

The Data and Insights Director will oversee the namesake team and will be responsible for leading the team in the Field Operations department responsible for ensuring the quality of the data we use in our index products, interrogating it, understanding it, and transforming it into well-documented conclusions. The Data and Insights Director aligns and directs the management, development, and integration of data analytics and business intelligence necessary for supporting the mission, vision strategies, objectives, and goals of business.

The Data and Insights Director, will organize and assemble the man-power, technology, processes, and financial resources necessary to address the current and future analytics needs of the business. 

Job responsibilities:

• Lead on the delivery of high quality data, architecture, analytics and insights 
• Design and implement end-to-end structured workflows for ground data which are fully documented. 
• Build automation systems to maximize efficiency and focus team attention on exploratory data analysis and data interpretation.
• Strategic role in creating a vision and roadmap for crop monitoring data
• Understand the needs of the business, to help prioritize workflow
• Understanding and design of data architecture that backs all data insights
• Lead, coach and develop Data & Insights team
• Create processes and oversight to ensure the team deliver timely high quality work
• Empower Field Operations staff on the ground with data for decision making on a daily basis
• Charisma to get ideas across and promote understanding and engagement with Field data and conclusions
• Lead efforts to leverage Pula’s extensive historical knowledge and new insights to drive growth and innovation in the next phase of the business
• Assess the commercial value and risks of growth opportunities as well as provide analytics that will position the business for dynamic growth
• Establish Pula as an industry leader by actively participating in data conferences, workshops, seminars, and so forth

Who you are: 

Key Competencies

• At least 7 years of working experience, including commercial experience in a data analytics or data warehousing department, preferably working as a Head of Analytics or Data. 
• Highly motivated and resourceful, with a track record in driving change at pace
• Can tell a great story that’s backed up by the data
• Strong project management and organizational skills
• Strong understanding of data architecture
• Knowledge and experience of data science in production, using these capabilities to build, maintain and improve processes
• Experience in bringing together diverse functions and building teams that include data analytics and warehousing personnel, guiding them through successful data analytic projects in a dynamic environment.
• Strong background and experience in training multi-cultural teams
• Agricultural and/or geospatial experience will be helpful -can be from private sector or social enterprise
• Great at content generation such as materials for training or internal policies, or types of write ups.
• Able to inspire, engage and influence both internally and externally
• You are comfortable with GSuite applications (Google Sheets, Google Docs, etc.) and are able to adapt to new systems easily (e.g., Asana, Slack, Jira)
• Bachelor's degree in Data Science, Computer Science, Information Technology, Economics, Statistics, Information Systems, Applied Math, or any other closely related field. 
• You are passionate about helping smallholder farmers build resilience
• Eager to learn and adapt
• Flexible to travel up to 40% of the time

Preferred Technical competencies:

• Python, R, APIs (currently our most widely used tools for data access and analysis)
• Microsoft BI (SSIS, SSRS, SSAS) and SQL Server / Transact SQL - a plus
• Azure Modern Data Platform: Synapse Analytics, Azure Analysis Services, Azure Data Factory,…
• ETL: Talend, Alteryx
• Gartner Magic Quadrant leader BI and Analytics platforms: Power BI, Tableau, Qlik, Board.
• Augmented Analytics (Thoughtspot,..) & Process Mining (Celonis, Prom, Disco)