NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

As our first data hire, you’ll own the full data lifecycle — from building pipelines and managing infrastructure to analyzing data, building models, and helping the team make smarter decisions. You’ll be the go-to person for all things data, working cross-functionally with engineering, finance, and leadership staff.This job provides significant professional growth potential and opportunity. We are looking for the right person to help shape our journey and grow with us. The majority of our team is based in Cape Town – working remotely most days, with 1 day in office every other week. The successful candidate must work independently and proactively to achieve performance goals and organizational objectives. We are looking for a team member who is purpose-driven, intelligent, reliable, and detail-oriented.

Key Responsibilities
Infrastructure & Pipelines
Design, build, and maintain ETL/ELT pipelines from internal and external sources
Create and manage scalable data storage solutions (e.g., data warehouse, data lake)
Ensure data quality, integrity, and availability across systems
Collaborate with engineering to integrate data collection into our products and tools
Automate and optimize data workflows and processing jobs
Analysis & Insights
Analyze data to uncover trends, patterns, and business opportunities
Build dashboards, reports, and visualizations to support teams across the org
Develop and deploy statistical models and machine learning solutions as needed
Design and evaluate A/B tests and experiments
Communicate insights clearly to both technical and non-technical stakeholders

Required Qualifications
2+ years of experience in data engineering, data science, or analytics roles
Strong SQL skills and experience with relational/non-relational databases
Proficiency with Python (or similar) for both data engineering and analysis tasks
Familiarity with cloud platforms (e.g., AWS, GCP, or Azure)
Experience with modern data tools (e.g., dbt, Airflow, Snowflake, BigQuery, pandas, scikit-learn)
Detail oriented and works with high levels of accuracy
Ability to organize multiple tasks and manage deadlines
Fluency in English
Personal qualities of integrity, honesty, and dedication
Ability to thrive in a startup environment — must be a problem solver, self-disciplined, ambitious, and eager to learn
Authorized to work in South Africa. Must be based in the Cape Town metro area.

Bonus Points For
Experience building end-to-end data systems in a small team
Familiarity with BI tools (e.g., Looker, Tableau, Metabase)
Exposure to product analytics, customer behavior analysis, or growth experimentation
Understanding of data privacy and governance best practices
Exposure to solar power systems, such as API integrations, data analysis, etc

What We Offer
Salary commensurate with experience, range is ZAR 360,000 – R480,000 annual
Generous 90% remote working
A chance to build and own the data foundation of a growing company
A collaborative, thoughtful team that values creative ideas