About CMS: Catalyst Management Services (CMS) partners to create social impact, guaranteeing results through development solutions and investments. The organisation commits to sustainable development that leads to investments in ideas, individuals and institutions, creating shared value and maximizing social returns. Our work since the past 25 years spans across a variety of domains: Livelihood Practice, Health Practice, etc. Our solutions range from Design (strategy and planning), Evidence (research, evaluation and insights), Monitoring (systems, accountability and performance), Learning systems (accretion and application). CMS is part of the Catalyst Group.
About the Role:
The Quantitative researcher is a wonderful opportunity to work with a fast-growing organization that is quickly being recognized for its work by major players across different industries, and that still retains the innovation and creativity of a start-up.
You will work with a high-performing dynamic team on a variety of assignments that will expose you to the gamut of activities that are shaping sustainable growth in the social sector.
This position drives design and sampling, selects appropriate research methods, trains field-based research teams, ensures the quality of large-scale quantitative data collection, and analyses primary and secondary data to investigate topics linked to core research questions for the undertaken projects.
Key responsibilities:
- Selecting appropriate research design for impact evaluations. Such design may include experimental, quasi-experimental, or other techniques. They may be short-, medium-, or long-term.
- Designing questionnaires for primary data collection, incorporating feedback from various stakeholders.
- Articulating sampling criteria and methodologies for data collection.
- Analyzing data using a range of quantitative research methods to provide data-driven insights. These methods may include descriptive statistics, trend analysis, inferential and regression techniques, clustering or segmentation, predictive analytics, building evidence to support causal relationships, building and utilizing indices or other explanatory tools
- Managing, organizing, and maintaining large datasets, understanding nuanced data ethics and security.
- Managing key partnerships with financial institutions, governments, and research institutes
- Conducting occasional internal training and workshops as part of capacity building and socialization of research results.
- Contributing to the organization’s research standards, research best practices, and research agenda.
- Working on research proposals and grants on with relevant quantitative and econometric methodologies and thematic areas
- Training and supervising both field-based and off-field data operations teams and ensure data quality
- Providing back end, coordination and hosting support for inception/dissemination workshops, provide up to date summaries of project they are working on for website and other promotional activity (conference, e-newsletter, social media etc.)
- Assisting in preparation of reports, documents and presentations for client reporting as well as dissemination activities, prioritise and manage project deliverables, ensuring timeliness
- Reporting to the respective project manager on all of the above-mentioned activities
- Any other task as assigned by the Portfolio Manager and senior management
Desired Competencies:
- A Bachelor's/Master’s degree in economics, rural management, social sciences, development studies, public policy, education or related fields
- 1-5 years of experience in development economics and research preferred (experience in writing research reports using primary and/or secondary data in developmental economics)
- Excellent understanding and experience in quantitative research- statistical and econometric methods
- Data management experience- oversee data collection, cleaning, analysis and synthesis
- Strong ability in working on data using either of STATA (preferable), R, SPSS or any other statistical tools
- Passion for the social sector, demonstrated through prior work and initiatives
- Highly effective interpersonal skills: warmth, tact, diplomacy and creativity
- Ability to work in a collaborative, multi‐disciplinary, dynamic environment as part of a closely-knit team (demonstrating patience, tenacity and grace under pressure)
- Fluency and excellent communication skills in English. Additionally, conversational fluency in any other Indian regional language would be a strong plus.
- Flexible, self-motivating, able to manage multiple tasks efficiently, and team player
- Detail oriented, with strong organizational, analytical and problem-solving skills
- Familiarity with statistics and quasi-experiments preferred
- Strong quantitative skills and advanced proficiency in STATA, MS Excel, experience in managing large quantitative datasets, data analysis and visualizations
- Ability to adapt to changing technologies and research environments