Research Associate – Digital Agriculture

About the role

The International Livestock Research Institute is seeking a Research Associate to strengthen its Digital Agriculture programme. You will work with interdisciplinary teams to manage and analyse large climate, soil and agricultural datasets, and help build scalable data platforms that support decision‑making for farmers and policy makers.

Key responsibilities

• Support data ingestion, cleaning and management of weather, soil and agricultural datasets.
• Assist in the analysis of climate variables such as rainfall, temperature and forecasts.
• Contribute to the development and maintenance of platforms like AgDataHub.
• Benchmark and validate forecast products against observed data.
• Develop Python scripts and automated workflows for data processing and analysis.
• Liaise with national partners, including meteorological agencies and research institutions.

Required profile

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Applied Mathematics, Statistics, AI/ML, Data Science or a closely related field.
• Minimum two years of relevant professional experience.
• Strong analytical abilities and written communication skills in English; French is a plus.

Required skills

• Python programming.
• Version control with Git/GitHub.
• Linux/Unix command‑line environment.
• Deep‑learning techniques (e.g., CNNs) applied to geospatial or remote‑sensing data.
• Cloud computing experience with AWS.
• Familiarity with distributed data systems such as Apache Druid.