Since its commercial launch in October 2012, M-KOPA has connected more than 250,000 homes in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda to solar power, and is now adding over 500 new homes each day.
Customers acquire solar systems for a
small deposit and then purchase daily usage "credits" for US $0.45,
or less than the price of traditional kerosene lighting. After one year
of payments customers own their solar systems outright and can upgrade to more
power.
All revenues are collected in real-time via mobile money systems (such as M-PESA in Kenya) and embedded GSM sensors in each solar system allow M-KOPA to monitor real time performance and regulate usage based upon payments.
This connected design means that M-KOPA
is processing vast amounts of data (i.e. over 10,000 mobile payments per day)
via the company's proprietary cloud platform, M-KOPAnet.
As of May 2015 M-KOPA employs over 650 full time staff across East Africa and sells through a network of 1,000 direct sales agents. It has also commenced licensing its technology to partners in other markets.
M-KOPA has been recognised for its pioneering business mode and scale, notably winning the 2015 Zayed Future Energy Prize, being selected as the top New Energy Pioneer at the 2014 Bloomberg New Energy Finance awards and earning the 2013 FT/IFC Excellence in Sustainable Finance Award.
M-KOPA is seeking:
Position Title: Data Scientist
Location: Nairobi, HQ Office
Position Start: As
Soon As Possible
Reporting to: Head of Data
Overall Purpose: An experienced Data Scientist with strong business
acumen, a talent for exploring data, and an ability to blend qualitative and
analytical skills to solve business problems.
The Data Scientist will work with
multiple teams in the development and implementation of predictive, diagnostic
and prescriptive analytics
Role Profile
Key Accountabilities
- The Data Scientist will lead discussions with
teams cross functionally on analytics-driven outcomes, as well as leading
in the development, and operationalization of statistical projects, which
will involve large, disparate, complex data sets.
- The aforementioned teams will include
engineers, data analysts, software developers, and business users from all
departments.
- Building mathematical models and data models,
manipulate data, create diagnostic, predictive, and prescriptive
statistics to describe a situation and make recommendations for action.
- The Data Scientist will act as a
thought-leader within the organization, sharing and communicating
analytical best practices to others within and outside of the immediate
team
- Work with a variety of data sources from flat
files, RDBMS, and “big data” sources to identify the necessary data
elements, determine analysis opportunities, and apply data mining
techniques to explore the data.
- Leverage proven written and oral communication
skills to convey complex issues to executive level management in a simple
and straight forward manner.
- Work with the Business Intelligence team to
continuously enhance our data warehouse to address a variety of use cases
across the enterprise.
- Work in an Agile environment, delivering
interim solutions quickly and continuously exploring ways to improve our
results
- Actively seek out new potential problems to
solve, assist in building out our future roadmap while simultaneously
executing our present analyses
- Creating Excel and PDF-based reports
Job Requirements
- Required: 5+ years of hands-on experience
performing analytics, data mining and modeling
- Required: Advanced SQL skills (data modelling,
TSQL or equivalent)
- Required: Advanced SQL skills. Experience with
writing complex SQL queries as well as extensive experience working with
relational and dimensional data models
- Required: Advanced Excel skill; writing macros
and demonstrable knowledge of Excel’s BI capabilities.
- Required: Familiarity with a data analysis
programming language (e.g. Python, R)
- Comfortable working in cross functional
groups, supporting multiple business clients, and presenting to Senior Executives
of varying levels of technical understanding.
- Strong affinity for Mathematics, Statistics
and Data visualization
- Experience working with Visualization software
such as Tableau, Power Bi, QlikView, etc
- Experience deploying machine-learning techniques
on an enterprise-scale
- Ability to blend qualitative and analytical
skills, problem solving and strategy consulting with a strong bias to
action.
Nice to have:
- Experience in open source programming
languages such as R for large scale data analysis
- Experience with Hadoop environment, Pig, Hive,
Map Reduce programing, other Hadoop services.
- Experience with scripting language such as
JavaScript, Unix Shell programming
Personal traits
- Strong business acumen and ability to
translate data patterns to business processes.
- Be a collaborative teammate, sharing knowledge
and learning from others while working through complex problems
- Always on the look-out for the next challenge.
The ideal candidate will be curious to explore, and always asking “why”.
Remuneration: Competitive, covering a monthly salary, performance
bonus and medical benefits reflective of the candidate’s experience and skills.
Position Title: Data Operations Lead
Location: Nairobi,
HQ Office
Position Start: As Soon As Possible
Reporting to: Head of Data
Overall Purpose: Primarily
responsible for designing, testing and executing one-off and regularly run SQL
scripts and query packages to extract data from SQL server databases ready for
production of data visualizations.
Part of this function involves
ensuring that data quality, integrity and completeness is maintained or
improved and that duplicate entities & errors are identified, removed
and/or corrected.
Role Profile
Key Accountabilities
- Actively work on routine and ad hoc data and business
projects involving querying from the data warehouse.
- Liaise with the Head of BI and BI Lead
Architect on the construction of data extraction queries, reports and
automations to ensure compliance with quality standards and established
methods.
- Take ownership of production and testing of
data operations reports using provided data sources and tools (SQL Server,
PowerQuery, PowerPivot.)
- Working closely with the BI developer team to
ensure that all ongoing development meets the business user requirements.
- Work with data owners to verify and obtain
approval that any transformed data retains its accuracy.
- Execute one off data extraction and
manipulation jobs as required.
- Work closely with the database administrator
to validate any scripts produced and understand the performance impact on
the source databases.
- Training data operations team members on SQL
querying and the use of data extraction and visualization tools.
- Ensure that any data integrity issues are
reported immediately and summarized weekly to the relevant HoDs, and
others authorized to receive this information.
- Provide and follow up on system requirements
to improve data collection and accuracy
- Maintain and update automated reports in
liaison with the data analysts
- Work closely with data scientists to solve
business projects.
- Any other tasks as directed by HoD Data
Operations.
Skills, Knowledge, Qualifications
Required
Mandatory Technical:
- Practical experience in Microsoft SQL Server
(2008, 2012) and Transact SQL
- Practical experience in Microsoft Excel 2013
for data visualization
- Practical experience in Microsoft Excel 2013
for accessing external data sources
Ideal Technical:
- Experience in database query performance
analysis and optimization
- Experience in Microsoft PowerQuery
- Experience in Microsoft PowerPivot
- Experience in writing DAX formulae
- Achieving Results – Be aware of key business
and team objectives and ensure that these are applied appropriately to all
business activities
- Building Relationships – Able to develop
effective relationships with BI team, Data Operations, Developers, IT and
other business users
- Customer Focus (internal) – Able to anticipate
and understand customer expectations, and ensure that customer
requirements are met and expectations appropriately managed. Able to build
solid relationships with team members and internal customers.
- Communication – Effective written and verbal
communication skills suited for technical audiences, peers, IT management,
data users and consumers.
- Planning and Organizing – Effective at
planning and managing own workload and ability to split time between
reactive tasks and planned project work.
- Teamwork – Effective at contributing towards
the objectives of a team, and being able to share knowledge, experience,
ideas and information. Aware of the needs, objectives and constraints of
those in other disciplines and functions.
- Problem Solving and Decision Making –
Effective at solving problems in a measured and creative way. Proactive in
relation to identifying and undertaking activities that are of benefit to
the business. Effective at balancing long and short term objectives.
Responsible for own decisions and actions.
- Influencing and Impact – Act in a professional
manner, and exhibit the required behavior that should provide an example
to other employees. Needs to be able to identify tasks outside of own
remit and work with peers to ensure an end to end solution is effectively
delivered. Must be prepared to meet business goals and respond well to
change.
Personal Attributes / Functional
Competencies:
- Qualifications – Qualified with a relevant
technical qualification and/or relevant professional experience.
- Technical – In depth expertise in Transact
SQL, MS Office Pro Plus.
- Experience – At least 3 years working with
databases, two years of which should have involved T-SQL,
- Skills – Expertise in T-SQL, SQL Server, ETL
tools, Data conversion, Data De-duplication, Data Cleansing methodologies
- Analytical Thinking – Effective at
understanding a problem and developing one or many approaches to solving
the problem.
- Task Focused – Ability to concentrate on tasks
and finish tasks avoiding distractions
- Stress Handling – Retaining objectivity and
proper understanding of a problem when placed under stress
- Applying standards – Ability to follow, adopt,
recommend and promote standards regarding the use of data querying and
visualization tools and regularly run SQL jobs.
- Industry Developments – Must take the
initiative to ensure that technical knowledge relevant to this role stays
current and in line with industry developments.
Remuneration: Competitive, covering a monthly salary, performance
bonus and medical benefits reflective of the candidate’s experience and skills.
How to Apply
To apply, send an updated detailed
copy of your CV and a cover letter expressing why you feel you would be an
excellent candidate for the role to careers@m-kopa.com with the subject
EV-DOL-2063
Deadline for applications is noon on Wednesday 10th February, 2016.
Deadline for applications is noon on Wednesday 10th February, 2016.
Please Note: Due to the large number of applications received by
us, we regret that you will not be contacted unless you are short listed for
the post and invited for an interview.
Therefore, if you have not heard
from M-KOPA within 4 weeks of the date of the deadline your application,
you should assume that you have not been successful on this occasion.
This measure has been taken in the interests of efficiency and cost effectiveness and we apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.
