Careers at GiveDirectly

What you’ll do:

• Lead mobile data program design initiatives: Design and manage end-to-end data analysis approaches using mobile network operator (MNO) data for recipient identification and enrollment, in collaboration with internal teams and external partners
• Partner with telcos: Serve as GiveDirectly’s technical lead in negotiations and collaboration with telecommunications companies to enable access to and use of mobile data for program design.
• Technical Backstop: Serve as the technical backstop for country teams, vendors and partners to ensure high quality, principled analytic and processing approaches to mobile network operator (MNO) data.
• Develop and refine data pipelines: Oversee the creation and validation of mobile data processing pipelines to ensure data integrity, privacy compliance, and analytical rigor.
• Support program operations: Work with country teams and internal and external data science capacity to pilot and implement mobile-data-informed enrollment strategies that improve targeting speed, accuracy, and inclusivity.
• Ensure ethical use of data: Uphold principles of responsible data use and data minimization in all work, ensuring privacy, consent, and security are upheld.
• Contribute to strategy and innovation: Identify new opportunities to integrate mobility data into GiveDirectly’s humanitarian and cash transfer programming across countries.
• Build Momentum: Ensure GiverDirectly’s experience with mobile data across contexts is advancing a broader goal to create a global capacity to work with mobile network operator (MNO) data wherever relevant.

What you’ll bring:

• 5+ years of experience in a technical or data-focused role, ideally in mobile technology, humanitarian tech, data science, or international development.
• Extensive experience managing complex partnership relationships and negotiating collaboration frameworks to achieve project outcomes.
• Experience working with or for mobile network operators and a demonstrated understanding of the MNO business model, incentive structures, and sensitivities.
• Experience working with or analyzing mobile phone data (e.g. call records, tower data, mobile money).
• Ability to coordinate the evaluation of machine learning algorithms for appropriate methods, model validation, and fairness metrics and guide model design in collaboration with technical teams.
• Deep understanding of data privacy and protection principles, particularly in relation to the use of telecommunications and geolocation data in humanitarian settings. Experience applying frameworks such as GDPR, Responsible Data for Children, or Humanitarian Data Ethics standards is strongly preferred.
• Excellent project management skills, 
• Extensive experience managing partnerships and coordinating across teams.
• Demonstrated ability to take ownership, learn quickly, and drive complex projects independently.
• Highly organized, with a strong curiosity and creative approach to solving difficult, real-world data problems.
• Clear and compelling communicator who can explain technical concepts to non-technical audiences.
• Strong alignment with GiveDirectly’s values and mission.
• Language Requirement: English fluency

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What you’ll do:

Payments Product Strategy and Roadmapping

• Own the product vision, roadmap, and prioritization for international payments infrastructure.
• Translate strategic objectives into actionable product goals, features, and success metrics.
• Regularly evaluate and refine product-market fit in the context of fast-evolving program and country needs.

Investigate and Innovate Global Payment Channels:

• Identify, assess, and recommend international payment solutions that can reach populations in fragile and underserved markets.
• Develop partnerships with global and regional payment aggregators, mobile money platforms, remittance providers, and stablecoin or crypto partners.
• Pilot and evaluate alternative transfer modalities, including blockchain-based or decentralized finance (DeFi) approaches, particularly in contexts where traditional banking access is limited.

Build and Scale Payment Infrastructure:

• Design systems for integrating new payment rails into GD’s operations, ensuring compliance, security, and scalability.
• Define and document technical and operational requirements for payment implementation in humanitarian and development settings.
• Collaborate with engineers and data teams to ensure seamless integration with targeting, verification, monitoring, and payments systems.

Research & Landscape Analysis:

• Map and compare emerging technologies and vendors in the payments space, with a focus on rapid deployment and cross-border capabilities.
• Conduct technical due diligence on vendors and track trends in stablecoin, mobile finance, and blockchain applications.

Cross-functional Collaboration:

• Work closely with program managers, engineers, field teams, and finance/legal teams to ensure payment strategies align with on-the-ground realities and compliance frameworks.
• Ensure excellent handoff of provider execution, oversight and compliance to implementation teams.
• Support crisis response deployments with technical insight and problem-solving on-the-fly to ensure people get paid.

Performance and Reliability Management:

• Define and monitor key metrics (e.g., transaction success rates, payment speeds, reconciliation gaps).
• Coordinate root cause analyses and mitigation planning for issues affecting reliability, latency, or compliance, and feed this into the product and FSP strategy

Drive Efficiency and Creativity:

• Leverage your creativity to solve the unique challenges of delivering money in unpredictable, unstable, or disconnected environments.
• Continuously refine internal payment playbooks and propose systemic improvements to speed, reliability, and recipient experience.

What you’ll bring:

• Exceptional alignment with GiveDirectly Values and active demonstration of our core competencies: emotional intelligence, problem solving, project management, follow-through, and fostering inclusivity. We welcome and strongly encourage applications from candidates who have personal or professional experience in the low-income and/or historically marginalized communities that we serve.
• 5+ years of experience working with international digital payment systems, financial technology platforms, and/or crypto/blockchain-enabled services.
• Demonstrated understanding of global remittance infrastructures, mobile money networks, cross-border compliance issues, and KYC/AML processes.
• Hands-on experience evaluating and/or implementing stablecoin or cryptocurrency payment solutions in low-infrastructure environments.
• Experience in a high ambiguity, low-structure environment — you create clarity, not wait for it
• Ability to collaborate inclusively with stakeholders across varied social, national, and cultural backgrounds, including communicating technical concepts to both technical and non-technical stakeholders
• Analytical problem solver: looks at problems with analytical and iterative mindset, with strong framework for prioritization
• Intermediate to advanced data manipulation and analysis skills to derive insights from payment data.
• Technical fluency with payments APIs and technical documentation, including data security standards and the ability to identify areas of concern or strength.
• Language Requirement: English fluency