Agronomy-at-Scale Post-Doc – International Potato Center: (Deadline 30 November 2022)

The International Potato Center (CIP) is seeking to recruit an energetic and results-oriented Agronomy-at-Scale Post-Doc to support the co-creation of agronomic advisory services with demand and scaling partners in the context of the Excellence in Agronomy (EiA) Initiative.

About the Initiative

The Excellence in Agronomy (EiA) Initiative aims to deliver agronomic gain for millions of smallholder farming households in prioritized farming systems, with emphasis on women and young farmers for measurable impact on food and nutrition security, income, water use, soil health and climate resilience. This objective will be achieved through co-creation and deployment of gender- and youth-responsive solutions to smallholder farmers with scaling partners, enabling the creation of value from big data and advanced analytics, addressing key knowledge gaps and facilitating innovation in agronomy research, and nurturing internal efficiencies for an agile and demand-driven agronomy research and development community. The work in the EiA Initiative is organized around Use Cases that take place in contrasting contexts in the Global South.  Use Cases respond to partner demands for agronomic solutions and focus on the development of Minimum Viable Products with a demand partner (public or private) that has an active extension network in a specific target area.

EiA is modernizing agronomy research, building on technological advances in the use of big data, geospatial analyses and crop modeling. The integration of these technological advances provides opportunities to develop increasingly well-performing decision support tools capable of providing site-specific agronomic advice to farmers and other actors at scale, often delivered through digital platforms.

About the position

The Agronomy-at-Scale Post-Doc will report to the Systems Agronomist Senior Scientist, Country Liaison in Rwanda, Kigali.

Key Responsibilities:

• Implement agronomy-at-scale approaches to generate scalable insights in site-specific responses to agronomic innovations in close collaboration with EiA Use Case partners and data science support functions.
• Develop, maintain, and continuously update decision analytics for site-specific agronomic advisory in collaboration with EiA Use Case partners.
• Build capacity of national partners in digital data collection and management, analytics to predict responses to interventions and generate decision-support, and other agronomy-at-scale approaches.
• Liaise with potentially new EiA partners in East and West Africa to assess demand for agronomic advisory services
• Design EiA Use Cases to respond to demand for agronomic advisory services from new EiA partners.

Requirements

Education and Experience

• PhD in Agronomy, Agricultural Sciences or related.
• Strong skills and minimum 2 years of experience in geospatial analysis and/or crop modeling.
  Excellent knowledge of design and statistical analysis of field experiments.
• Excellent skills in R programming and GIS.
• Experience in working with local partners in the agricultural sector in East and/or West Africa.
• Good understanding of crop management in the context of smallholder farms in Sub-Saharan Africa.
• Experience with the implementation of field experimental work is an advantage.
• Experience with machine learning is an advantage.

 Key competences

• Strong analytical skills.
• Ability to work in multi-disciplinary teams.
• Demonstrated ability to work independently and deliver quality products.

Languages

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills in English are required.

Benefits

• Exciting career growth opportunity in an international organization.
• Internationally competitive salary, paid in US dollars, and commensurate with experience.
• Comprehensive international insurance coverage.
• Attractive retirement plan.
• Three-year term contract with the possibility of renewal.
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