E T Consultant - Data Scientist

CGAP; Washington (District of Columbia); On-site; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

World Bank Group in Washington, DC seeks dynamic Data Scientist Extended Term Consultants (ETCs) with fluency across code, evidence, strategy, and executive delivery. This role blends strong data science with development operations, offering exposure to corporate strategy and the global MDB ecosystem.

Selected consultants will join the team on-site at WBG Headquarters in Washington, D.C., mapped across workstreams in Outcome Measurement and Outcome Delivery. Up to four positions may be filled.

Responsibilities

• Indicator Methodology: develop, test, and refine outcome indicators and methodologies at project and portfolio level; data collection, cleaning, exploratory analysis, and QA of Scorecard indicators; review of PADs, ISRs, ICRs when required.
• Outcome Targets & Predictive Forecasting: monitor targets, analyze project docs, curate datasets, apply forecasting techniques to project portfolio trajectories, and synthesize findings.
• AI for Outcomes Engineering & Tool Development: contribute to AI for Outcomes by building data pipelines and tools; leverage LLMs, NLP, and ML to strengthen outcomes measurement and support decision-making.
• Methodological Notes & Guidance Development: author notes, indicator sheets, and technical guidance; ensure QA of results data with leading methods.
• Portfolio Analytics & Strategic Executive Insights: analyze outcome metrics across operations, aggregate results, extract actionable insights for senior leadership.
• Executive Visualization & Strategic Communication: translate findings into clear, executive slides, briefs, dashboards; tailor for senior management and non-specialists.
• Thematic Workstreams & Action Plans: contribute to rollout of outcome-related plans in collaboration with regional teams, vertical VP offices, IFC, and MIGA.
• Stakeholder Convening & Global Partnerships: support engagements with MDBs, partners, academics, and advisory bodies.
• Workstream & Project Management: provide proactive management across analytical streams, coordinate inputs, track milestones, ensure high-quality outputs.
• Ad-Hoc Program Delivery: contribute to rapid-response analytical requests and corporate initiatives.

Job description

At the World Bank, a member of the World Bank Group (WBG), you’ll join a diverse, global community working across cultures, disciplines, and borders to address the world’s most pressing development challenges. With 1.2 billion young people reaching working age in the decade ahead, the challenge of job creation has never been greater. Through partnerships across 145 countries and more than 182 offices worldwide, we work with governments, private sector, development partners and other stakeholders to invest in people, strengthen markets, and deliver scalable, data-driven solutions that generate more and better jobs and improve lives. For more information, visit https://www.worldbank.org/en/who-we-are/ibrd

Office of the Managing Director and Chief Knowledge Officer

The Managing Director and Chief Knowledge Officer (MDCKO) oversees the World Bank Group's knowledge and partnership agenda and helps ensure that the institution’s analytical and operational work responds to the most pressing development challenges facing client countries and global partners. The office plays a key role in shaping the WBG’s strategic direction, supporting key partnerships with shareholders, development agencies, academia, and other stakeholders, and strengthening how knowledge, evidence, and learning inform development impact. With the launch of the Knowledge Bank at the start of 2026, the WBG is deepening its focus on one of the areas client countries value most: global knowledge on what works, where, and why. The Knowledge Bank is intended to bring global expertise closer to country challenges, strengthen collaboration across sectors and institutions, and help scale practical solutions that can improve lives, create jobs, and support better development outcomes.

As part of this model, the WBG now operates through five vertical vice presidencies aligned with the mission: People, Prosperity, Planet, Infrastructure, and Digital & AI. In addition, three horizontal departments reporting to the MDCKO enhance knowledge, innovation, and outcome orientation across the WBG. One of those horizontal departments focuses on improving the institution’s outcome orientation: the Department for Outcomes.

About the Department for Outcomes

The Department for Outcomes is a corporate delivery and change team at the center of the World Bank Group’s shift from measuring activity to managing for impact. Its mandate is to make outcomes visible, comparable, and actionable so that leaders and teams can understand where the institution is changing lives, where progress is off track, and what needs to change next.

The Department leads the implementation of the World Bank Group Scorecard as an accountability, management, and communications tool. It develops and improves outcome indicators, methodologies, and targets in areas such as jobs, climate, private capital, gender, and youth; provides quality assurance; and connects outcome ambitions to knowledge, operations, and financing. Through its Outcome Measurement and Outcome Delivery units, the Department combines corporate reporting with portfolio analytics, forecasting, regular stocktakes, and action planning across the World Bank, IFC, and MIGA.

The Department also has a growing global role. It convenes multilateral development banks, development agencies, researchers, and external experts to improve and align outcome approaches, build institutional capacity, and modernize the profession of results measurement. Its work reaches from project-level data to senior management decisions, and from new methodologies inside the World Bank Group to shared approaches across the international development system.

Technology and innovation are core to how the team works. The Department develops AI-enabled analytics, data pipelines, forecasting models, interactive visualizations, and decision-support products that turn large and complex datasets into clear choices for operational teams, senior management, and external stakeholders. A piece of analysis is not considered finished when it is technically correct; it is finished when it helps improve a decision, a process, or a development outcome.

The culture is entrepreneurial, collaborative, and demanding. The team moves quickly because the needs are urgent, tests ideas early, learns from users, improves continuously, and expects high standards from concept through delivery. It values intellectual curiosity, rigorous analysis, direct communication, ownership, thoughtful risk-taking, and the readiness to challenge established practices. Young talent has been a major source of the Department’s innovation and rapid delivery; the selected Data Scientist ETC will be expected not only to contribute to the agenda but to help shape it.

Position Context

The Department for Outcomes is seeking dynamic, versatile Data Scientist Extended Term Consultants (ETCs) who operate fluently across code, evidence, strategy, and executive delivery. The successful candidate will combine strong data science and quantitative research skills with knowledge of development operations and a passion for evidence-informed decision-making and institutional change. The position offers direct exposure to corporate strategy, high-level leadership decision-making, and the global ecosystem of multilateral development banks (MDBs).

This single selection process is designed to select and hire up to four (04) Data Scientist ETCs, subject to candidate profile, technical screening, and interview evaluations. Selected candidates will be mapped across workstreams within the Outcome Measurement and Outcome Delivery units, based on business needs.

Selected consultants will join the team on-site at WBG Headquarters in Washington, D.C.

What You’ll Deliver

The Data Scientist ETC will contribute across analytical, technical, and operational workstreams:

• Indicator Methodology, Design & Quality Assurance: Support the development, testing, and refinement of outcome indicators and methodologies at both the project and portfolio level. This includes end-to-end data collection, data cleaning, exploratory analysis, and rigorous quality assurance of WBG Scorecard indicators, as well as conducting manual and automated reviews of results frameworks in operational project documents (e.g., Project Appraisal Documents [PADs], Implementation Status and Results Reports [ISRs], and Implementation Completion and Results Reports [ICRs]) when required.
• Outcome Targets & Predictive Forecasting: Support the formulation and regular monitoring of outcome targets to inform evidence-based decisions on corporate strategies and operational portfolios. Responsibilities include in-depth reviews of strategy and project documentation, curation of outcome datasets, application of statistical and forecasting techniques to project future portfolio-level trajectories, and synthesis of strategic findings.
• AI for Outcomes Engineering & Tool Development: Actively contribute to the AI for Outcomes program by designing, building, evaluating, and maintaining analytical tools, data pipelines, and intelligent products. This includes engineering applications powered by Large Language Models (LLMs), natural language processing (NLP), and machine learning to strengthen outcomes measurement, extract operational insights from unstructured text, and support evidence-based decision-making.
• Methodological Notes & Guidance Development: Author and contribute to methodological notes, indicator reference sheets, and technical guidance documents. Ensure quality assurance of results data by drawing on leading research and evaluation methods used across MDBs and international partners, directly strengthening the credibility, consistency, and comparability of reported outcomes.
• Portfolio Analytics & Strategic Executive Insights: Analyze outcome metrics from across WBG operations, aggregate portfolio results, and monitor where and how the institution is delivering on its development commitments. Extract actionable insights and strategic signals to feed into corporate decision-support platforms utilized by WBG Senior Leadership.
• Executive Visualization & Strategic Communication: Translate complex, multidimensional analytical and econometric findings into clear, visually compelling, and consulting-style deliverables. This includes crafting high-level executive slide decks, briefs, interactive dashboards, talking points, and briefing memos tailored for senior management, technical peers, and non-specialist audiences.
• Thematic Workstreams & Action Plans: Contribute to the rollout of outcome-related corporate action plans and cross-cutting thematic work (such as jobs, climate, private capital mobilization, women, and youth) in close collaboration with Regional operational teams, vertical Vice Presidencies, IFC, and MIGA.
• Stakeholder Convening & Global Partnerships: Support the Department’s convening, learning, and capacity-building engagements with internal and external stakeholders, including working groups with other multilateral development banks, partner development agencies, academic experts, and external advisory bodies such as the Jobs Council.
• Workstream & Project Management: Provide proactive project management support across analytical workstreams, including scoping tasks, coordinating inputs from multidisciplinary teams, tracking milestones, managing delivery timelines, and ensuring outputs meet the highest standards of technical rigor.
• Ad‑Hoc Program Delivery: Contribute flexibly to additional emerging work program priorities, rapid-response analytical requests, and corporate initiatives of the Department for Outcomes as needed.