Senior Research Associate

About the role

Spark Microgrants, which works in 1,000+ villages across six countries in sub-Saharan Africa, is looking for a Senior Research Associate to join its Research team. The role sits alongside the Senior Research Director and the Evidence and Strategy Manager and covers designing, managing and delivering high-quality research, including rigorous evaluations and applied research. It is a hands-on position for someone who can independently own each stage of a research project, from design to analysis and dissemination.

Key responsibilities

• Own research projects or workstreams from start to finish, including work plans, budgets, timelines and coordination of inputs and activities.
• Lead quantitative research, from design and measurement through analysis and dissemination; some experience with qualitative research is preferred.
• Ensure research meets organizational standards for rigor, quality and research ethics.
• Maintain reproducible analytical workflows, including documented code, version control and research documentation.
• Develop, test and deploy survey instruments and other research tools, and prepare datasets following reproducible data management practices.
• Analyze quantitative, qualitative and, where relevant, geospatial data and turn findings into data visualizations, briefs, reports, presentations and technical documentation.
• Understand Spark's monitoring systems and use monitoring data to inform evaluations and learning.
• Strengthen team research systems, tools and quality standards, and collaborate across research and program teams.

Required profile

• Master's degree in social sciences, data science, evaluation, international development or a related field.
• 5-10 years of experience in applied quantitative research, evaluation or policy research in low- and middle-income country contexts, able to manage substantial parts of a project independently.
• Experience with randomized controlled trials, quasi-experimental methods or other applied evaluation approaches.
• Experience cleaning, managing, analyzing and documenting complex research datasets.
• Excellent written and verbal English, including the ability to explain technical methods to non-technical audiences and to write for donors, proposals, blogs and op-eds.

Required skills

• Strong quantitative skills, including regression analysis, hypothesis testing, sampling and statistical inference.
• Stata or R, and digital data collection platforms such as CommCare or SurveyCTO.
• Git and reproducible, well-documented analytical workflows.
• Familiarity with LaTeX is preferred.

The position is based in Uganda, Rwanda or Malawi, with a three-month probation period. Salary depends on location and experience.