[Jobs] JOBS: Statistician, Benetech Human Rights Program

[Liz Ozselcuk]

Hello all,

Could you post this to whomever you think it might interest? We have anotherjob 
-- less math, more junior -- which I'll be sending out next week. Thanksmuch! 
-- PB.


http://www.benetech.org/join_us/position_postings.shtml#stat
Statistician (#STAT)
The Benetech Human Rights Program (HRP) seeks a statistician to participate 
inanalysis of large-scale human rights violations.

The HRP leads the world in statistical analysis that reveals the truth 
aboutlarge-scale human rights violations. Spanning nearly two decades, our 
effortshave supported the prosecution of perpetrators by international 
criminaltribunals and exposed criminal policies and structural violence 
committed bystate and non-state organizations. Our goal is to change history 
byestablishing rigorous and transparent statistical accounts of 
politicalviolence. To that end, we work with human rights organizations to 
transformindividual first-hand testimonies of violence into comprehensive, 
usable data.

In collaboration with our grassroots partners, we use social science 
reasoningto develop theories about what behaviors their data on human rights 
violationsmeasure. We help partners identify new sources of data that may help 
test thesetheories. When appropriate, we conduct our own research to derive 
defensibleconclusions from our partners' data. Our research and analysis is 
used to helpclarify the past, advocate for justice and strengthen 
accountability for pastviolence.

Responsibilities include
 	 ? Provide guidance to HRP project teams, leading the statistical
 	 designand implementation of projects as needed.
 	 ? Participate in data cleaning, record-linkage, and estimation
 	 formultiple projects, including writing analytical sections of project
 	 reports.
 	 ? Contribute to research and development of the HRP's frameworks
 	 andtools (e.g. record-linkage, inter-rater reliability, multiple
 	 systemsestimation) through software design, implementation, and
 	 testing.
 	 ? Perform background research for data analysis projects/reports
 	 (e.g.literature review on both statistical methods and human rights
 	 history incountries of interest).
 	 ? Represent the Benetech HRP at human rights meetings and
 	 statisticalconferences, present papers.
 	 ? Write articles for academic, scientific, and popular
 	 publications,alone and with other team members.
 	 ? Lead HRP data processing working group for ongoing development
 	 ofbest practices.
 	 ? Other duties as assigned.

The ideal candidate will have:
 	 ? Master's or Doctoral degree in Mathematical or Applied
 	 Statistics,Biostatistics, Applied Math, or equivalent combination of
 	 education andexperience
 	 ? Advanced computer skills, including programming experience in one
 	 ormore statistical languages (particularly R), and experience with the
 	 standardtoolkit of Unix-like environments (for example: bash, python,
 	 perl, ssh, gpg,svn, LaTeX, make, gcc, autoconf, tar, and the unix
 	 filesystem).
 	 ? Experience dealing with data validation and cleaning
 	 ? Willingness to learn data processing techniques derived from
 	 softwareengineering best practices
 	 ? Statistical specialization in generalized linear models,
 	 Bayesianmethods, sampling elusive populations, visualization, or
 	 exploratory anddescriptive analysis.
 	 ? Attention to detail, strong organizational skills, imagination
 	 andcreative problem solving, and ability to manage multiple
 	 simultaneous tasks
 	 ? Excellent communication skills, with the ability to work well with
 	 awide range of people and make professional presentations to a range
 	 ofaudiences.
 	 ? Excellent writing skills, ability to craft professional text
 	 foracademic or popular audiences.
 	 ? Personal commitment to our mission to strengthen respect for
 	 humanrights around the world.

Other skills
 	 ? Experience performing international field work; teaching
 	 statistics;and grantwriting.

Duties will be performed in Benetech's Palo Alto office as well as in thefield; 
substantial domestic and international travel will be required. Oncehired, the 
candidate must be able to provide proof of eligibility to work inthe United 
States.

How to apply

Consider these websites: http://www.martus.org, http://hrdag.org

Send a cover letter, writing sample, and CV to hr at benetech.org. Consider 
ourtechnological preferences in your choice of file formats. In the cover 
letter,please explain what interests you about the Benetech Human Rights 
Program. Weare especially interested to hear critiques of our reports 
(available on ourwebsite). Tell us how you would strengthen our team.