Rural Senses is changing the way international development and humanitarian response projects are being planned, executed and evaluated. With AI-enhanced data analysis and local networks of data collectors, Rural Senses mission is to bring over a billion people living in developing countries to a meaningful place in the decision-making process. Rural Senses collects and analyses data at scale and depth to provide meaningful insights on vulnerable communities’ needs, challenges,willingness to pay and more. Our insights help NGOs, governments and businesses to build projects that address what people really care about and to rigorously evaluate projects’ impact.

Rural Senses mission is to ensure that the needs and values of vulnerable communities are being met early on in the decision-making process and that project success is defined primarily by its evidence-based impact.

Founded in January 2019, Rural Senses is already serving leading international NGOs, was selected for the Microsoft AI for Good 2020 Programme, Google SDG Advisory 2021 program and recognized by leading practitioners as a leading solution. Our small team is global and diverse, the work is done remotely or in the field.

About the position 

To support our growth, we seek a passionate and experienced Sales, Business and Community Development Professional that will take a leadership role in the company. In this role, you will build intimate relationships with potential clients, partners and key opinion leaders, build and execute a business development strategy, sales funnels and community building activities to maximise the value Rural Senses is providing.

The role has both strategy and operational elements: Strategy(~20%) – you will take the lead on the way Rural Senses is differentiating itself from others, its business development roadmap, assess markets and business opportunities. Operations (~80%): you will execute low budget -high impact business development campaigns, run sales presentations, maintain relationships, write newsletters, boost our social media presence, initiate community events and more.

In addition, you will work closely with product, research and operation team members to constantly provide input for the development of new features and new research ideas.

We expect to start with a 50% position and grow to 100% within 1-2 months.

Key responsibilities 

• Identify and manage new potential sales leads.
• Manage and grow a network of clients and partners.
• Maintain communication channels including social media accounts, newsletter, conferences etc.
• Represent Rural Senses in workshops, seminars and other events.
• Build a long-term communication strategy and brand language.
• Define sales processes to reduce friction and serve the business model.
• Collaborate closely with the product team to maximize potential opportunity of the product, based on market feedback. 
• Build close relationships with key partners and key opinion leaders.
• Initiate, plan and run online events.
• Plan and write project proposals in multiple contexts (grant proposals, sale offers).
• Manage relationships with customers and stakeholders.
• Write project summaries suitable for sharing 
• Help to build training materials including videos and graphics.
• Continuously improve the sales funnel and sales presentations and brochures.

Requirements 

• Passion to make a positive impact 
• 3+ years experience in B2B/B2NGO sales, business development or similar roles.
• Creative story teller with excellent listening and communication skills
• Experience in digital marketing tools
• Experience in selling software tools including running product demos
• Excellent English writing and speaking skills
• Great presentation skills
• Experience working with/in developing countries
• Experience in international development or humanitarian response
• Established networks in the international development sector
• Team player
• Deals well with change and uncertainty
• Comfortable with remote working
• Access to reliable internet connection
• Ability and willingness to travel to, and work in, developing countries when required.

Desirable but not mandatory requirements: 

• Multilingual and experience working internationally
• Based in the Global South
• Experience working in a start-up
• Experience running events and building online communities

Compensation 

We offer a competitive compensation package which consists of:

• Base salary 
• Success-based bonuses 
• Company shares/options plan

Rural Senses is making sure vulnerable communities have a strong say in the decisions that shape our world. With AI-enhanced data analysis and local networks of data collectors, Rural Senses mission is to bring over a billion people living in developing countries to a meaningful place in the decision making process. Rural Senses collects and analyses data at scale and depth to provide meaningful insights into vulnerable communities’ needs, challenges and willingness to pay. Our insights help NGOs, governments and businesses to build projects that address what people really care about and to rigorously evaluate projects’ impact.

Rural Senses mission is to ensure that the needs and values of vulnerable communities are being met early on in the decision-making process and that project success is defined primarily by its evidence-based impact.

Founded in January 2019, Rural Senses is already serving leading international NGOs, was selected for the Microsoft AI for Good 2020 Programme, Google SDG Advisory 2021 program and recognized by leading practitioners as a leading solution. Our small team is global and diverse, the work is done remotely or in the field.

About the position 

To support our growth, we seek a passionate and experienced data scientist that will take a leadership role in the company. In this role, you will work with the unique data Rural Senses is collecting to generate actionable and compelling insights and dashboards. You will work closely with AI, software, impact and business professionals to bring data to life and make sure the insights generated are meaningful to driving change in the lives of people. 

We are looking for someone who enjoys working with complex and messy data from multiple sources (Rural Senses’ proprietary qualitative data, GIS data, public data sets and more) and can extract the most interesting insights. The ideal candidate has the technical capabilities to process and analyse data that also knows how to apply intuition to decide how and what to analyse. 

The data we are working with represents the voices of people living in the most vulnerable communities in the world. We translate these voices into insights to make sure these community members take a significant role in shaping the future. A passion to make a positive change in the world’s power dynamics is a ‘must have’ for this position. 

The role is on a full time basis, fully remote, and we hire worldwide.

Key responsibilities

• • End-to-end research and implementation of scalable data dashboards
  • Work directly with clients to identify meaningful visualisations analysis
  • Adjust and improve advanced NLP models for optimal performance 

  Requirements 

  • Passion to make a positive impact 
  • 3+ years experience as a data scientist in a commercial working environment.
  • Relevant education
  • Proven ability in creating simple and effective visualizations from complex data 
  • At least 2 years experience using Python
  • At least 2 years experience using noSQL DB
  • Proven experience in qualitative data analysis
  • Good knowledge of statistics  
  • Experienced in choosing, setting up and working with BI tools, such as Tableau, Power BI, Plotly (the more the better).  
  • Creative and out of the box thinker.  
  • Team player
  • Deals well with change and uncertainty 
  • Comfortable with remote work
  • Access to reliable internet connection
  • Excellent English writing and speaking skills 
  • Ability and willingness to travel to, and work in, developing countries for limited periods, when required  
  • Startup attitude, willingness to build things from scratch

  Desirable but not mandatory requirements: 

  • Experience with NLP
  • Experince with map-based/GIS visualisations 
  • Experienced working with Azure cloud
  • Multilingual and international experience 
  • Experience working with/in developing countries 
  • Experience in the international development or humanitarian response sector

Compensation 

We offer a competitive compensation package which consists of:

• Base salary 
• Company shares/options plan