Research and Data Specialist at Chancen International

The Research & Data Specialist will play a key role in strengthening Chancen’s ISA underwriting and portfolio analytics by ensuring high-quality data input, interpreting macroeconomic and market trends, and integrating external datasets. This role sits within the Financial Planning and Analysis team and supports pricing, risk analysis, and portfolio optimization efforts. The Specialist will work closely with the Tech, Finance, and Impact teams to improve how Chancen collects, organizes, and analyzes data across countries and portfolios.

Key Responsibilities

• Data Input & Quality Assurance
• Maintain standardized input templates (ISA, PEI, employment); enforce schema, validation, and audit trails.
• Run QA checks (completeness, outliers, duplicates, cohort consistency); reconcile discrepancies with data owners.
• Publish data quality reports and escalate recurring issues with corrective actions.
• Underwriting Support
• Ingest and harmonize PEI datasets (enrolment, completion, placement, salary distributions/percentiles).
• Compute placement rate, time-to-placement, salary progression curves by program/PEI/country.
• Produce quarterly PEI scorecards to inform pricing guardrails (share %, thresholds, caps) and affordability checks.
• Market & Macro Trend Analysis
• Track inflation, minimum wage, unemployment, sector demand, and youth income trends; maintain a macro indicator pack per country.
• Write concise insight briefs (one-pager) highlighting risk/opportunity and recommended parameter changes.
• Country Partnerships & Data Procurement
• Build strong working relationships with Country Managers, PEIs, ministries/labour bureaus, and relevant agencies across different countries.
• Map, source, and procure priority datasets (employment, wage, placement, census/sector data, PEI admin data); maintain a live source register with refresh cadences and owners.
• Lead data-sharing requests and negotiate MoUs/DSAs with support from Legal/Compliance; ensure licensing terms, usage rights, and privacy are respected.
• Set SLAs for delivery, quality, and format with country partners; monitor adherence and escalate risks early.
• Track procurement budget and cost per dataset; propose cost-effective alternatives when needed.
• Data Systems & Integration
• Align datasets to the data warehouse schema; define data contracts and SLAs with Tech.
• Co-build/maintain dashboards for portfolio health, outcomes, and underwriting inputs (BI tools).
• Version control for data artifacts, queries, and calculations; maintain data dictionary.

Requirements

Educational Qualifications

• Minimum Bachelor’s Degree in project management, analytics, Economics, Statistics, Applied Economics

Technical Skills, Competencies, and Experience

• Bachelor’s in Economics, Data Science, Statistics, Finance, or related field.
• 3–5 years in research/data analysis/credit modelling or adjacent roles.
• Proven experience cleaning, joining, and analysing education/employment datasets and building BI dashboards.
• Familiarity with income-based repayment/loan portfolios/credit scoring is advantageous.
• Experience across African markets preferred; strong written and verbal communication.
• Experience collaborating with country teams and external data owners (government, PEIs, research firms).
• Working knowledge of data licensing, privacy, and DPAs (GDPR/local equivalents) is a plus.