Open Positions @ Talarify
Job title: | Research Analyst and Trainer |
Start date: | 1 February 2021 (or as soon as possible) |
Duration: | 2 years with the potential to renew |
Location: | Fully remote (South Africa) |
Infrastructure requirements: | Reliable internet access that allows for successful virtual meetings |
Type: | Full-time |
Citizenship: | Must be legally employable in South Africa |
Remuneration & benefits: | ZAR 360’000 - ZAR 450’000 CTC (package structuring is negotiable) |
Travel: | Must be willing to travel to any of the 26 public universities in SA (depending on COVID-19 situation and regulations) - average 2 days per month once travel is possible. |
About the position
We realise the responsibilities cover a wide range of typical job roles, but do not expect that the successful candidate will be equally competent in everything. We are looking for someone who can complement the existing expertise within the company and who displays enthusiasm for the role and the goals & approaches of our organisation.
Responsibilities:
Writing & Project Management
Support the development of programme documentation (e.g. project plans and reports)
Support grant-writing activities with collaborators
Organise online and in-person events (in line with COVID-19 regulations)
Contribute to the writing of blog posts and peer-reviewed journal articles
Contribute to monitoring and evaluation of projects (surveys/interviews with beneficiaries)
Participate in project meetings
Do presentations about various aspects of the projects or contents of our work
Community, Mentoring & Training
Engage with project stakeholders in South Africa and internationally
Conduct training (online or in person)
Contribute to the development of open training materials
Participate in mentoring activities
Contribute to the development and support of various communities of practice in South Africa and beyond
Software Development
Contribute to documentation for packages and code snippets
Development of code for analysis and visualisation (including e.g. interactive Shiny apps or similar)
Static website development and content creation
Minimum Requirements
MSc (with preference for experience in interdisciplinary work) or extensive experience working in an academic context
Experience in using R (and optionally Python) in projects
Demonstrated use of Github/git
Good written and real-time communication skills
Public presenting skills
Experience with training people in early stages of learning digital/computational skills
Ability to travel to training/meeting locations when needed (considering COVID-19 regulations)
Experience with data cleaning, wrangling, analysis, visualisation
Extensive experience with online meeting tools such as Zoom, Google Meet
Able to work remotely with a distributed team
Advantageous
Experience with geographical data
Verbal and written communication skills in any of the South African national languages (beyond English) and/or French
Demonstrated ability/experience to work in a multidisciplinary environment
Static website development experience (e.g. Jekyll or Hugo)
Experience with project management tools such as Trello
Experience in Monitoring & Evaluation
Interests
Capacity development
Mentorship
Open science
Open data
Tech for Good
Sustainable development goals
Accessibility
Diversity and inclusion
Opportunities
Work with peers across the African continent, Europe, the UK, and the US
Learn about working with international organisations and funding bodies
Personal & professional development opportunities
Application process
Please complete this form and email a 1-page cover letter and CV to info@talarify.co.za.
Be sure to include some examples of your own work, including writing (such as blog posts), code, video recordings of talks or workshops you’ve given or anything else that is relevant to this position. Include at least 2 references of people whom you’ve worked with in the past three years.
About Talarify
Talarify is a South African company founded in late 2014.
Our passion is to support researchers (specifically early career researchers) and postgraduate students to grow the digital and interpersonal skills that will allow them to be more efficient and relevant in their work. We want to share Reproducible Research and Open Science practices, Open Educational Resources, Open Data, and Open Source software along with the power of communities of practice and collaboration to enable and empower people.
For more info please visit http://www.talarify.co.za.
Talarify operates within various local and international communities, including volunteer communities. Our staff members are expected to adhere to our communities’ codes of conduct. An example of one of our community’s code of conduct can be found at https://docs.carpentries.org/topic_folders/policies/code-of-conduct.html.
Current Projects
ESCALATOR: Humanities & Social Sciences Champions Network
A collaboration between Talarify and the South African Centre for Digital Language Resources (https://www.sadilar.org/). The project involves the development of a champions network to grow a community of practice around digital and computational skills amongst South African humanities and social sciences researchers and students. Historically disadvantaged universities will be prioritised. SADiLaR is funded by the South African Department of Science and Innovation.
afrimapr: R building blocks to democratize African Open Data
afrimapr is creating reusable open-source R building blocks to make open data in Africa more usable by data scientists. The building blocks include code snippets and R packages Data skills will be enhanced through training materials and an open-source book. A community of developers and users is being initiated. Funded through the UK’s Wellcome Trust.
Surveying Open Data Practices in Africa
The way data are managed, used and shared in research (and beyond) is changing. This project aims to capture the current landscape of open data practices in research. The survey covers eight African countries including Uganda and Ethiopia from East Africa; Burkina Faso and Senegal from West Africa and Botswana, Malawi, Mozambique and Zimbabwe from Southern Africa. The project is funded by Canada’s IDRC and hosted at Oxford University.
Research Software & Systems Engineers - AFRICA
Many roles exist in academia beyond the traditional ‘academics’ and ‘support staff’. Research Software Engineers, for example, are people who combine professional software expertise with an understanding of research. Research Systems Engineers are people who develop and maintain computing systems to support research. Over the past years there has been some effort to establish an African Research Software and Systems Engineers community where resources and information can be shared and lobbying can be done for the careers of people employed in academic environments, but who shouldn’t be measured by the number of papers they publish or the number of students they graduate. For more information about international efforts see https://researchsoftware.org/ and https://www.software.ac.uk/research-software-engineers. This project supports the development of an African community of practice of RSSEs.
Talarify is committed to equality, employment equity and diversity.
All candidates who comply with the requirements for appointment are invited to apply. All candidates agree to undergo verification of personal credentials.
Talarify reserves the right to not fill the advertised position.
