Consultancy: HIV Data Scientist Consultant - Req.#

UNICEF works in some of the world’s toughest places, to reach the world’s most disadvantaged children. To save their lives. To defend their rights. To help them fulfill their potential. 

Across 190 countries and territories, we work for every child, everywhere, every day, to build a better world for everyone. 

And we never give up. 

For every child, HOPE!

Vacancy Announcement: Consultant

Consultancy Title: HIV Data Scientist Consultant

Section/Division/Duty Station: Division of Data, Analytics, Planning and Monitoring (DAPM, Data & Analytics, Health and HIV Unit) New York HQ

Duration: July 2025 to July 2026

Home/ Office Based: REMOTE 

About UNICEF

If you are a committed, creative professional and are passionate about making a lasting difference for children, the world's leading children's rights organization would like to hear from you. For 70 years, UNICEF has been working on the ground in 190 countries and territories to promote children's survival, protection and development. UNICEF supports child health and nutrition, good water and sanitation, quality basic education for all boys and girls, and the protection of children from violence, exploitation, and AIDS. UNICEF is funded entirely by the voluntary contributions of individuals, businesses, foundations and governments. UNICEF has over 12,000 staff in more than 145 countries.

BACKGROUND

Purpose of Activity/Assignment: 

The Division of Data, Analytics, Planning and Monitoring (DAPM) was created in 2019 to strengthen decision making and organisational learning across UNICEF. It sets the corporate direction for evidence informed analysis, strategic planning, programme monitoring and performance management, ensuring that every programme result rests on rigorous data and rights based practice. Within the Division, the Data and Analytics Team (DAT) serves as the organisation’s primary source of global statistics on children, curating administrative records, household surveys, geospatial information and other large data sets, maintaining their quality and public availability through data.unicef.org, and driving investments that help national statistical systems measure what matters for children.

The Health and HIV Unit (HHU) within DAPM focuses on leveraging data and analytics to strengthen health systems, improve programmatic decisions, and enhance outcomes in immunization, HIV, and maternal, newborn, child, and adolescent health. HHU is central to tracking progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals, ensuring data-driven program improvements, and promoting UNICEF’s role as a global leader in health and HIV data for children. One of the key initiatives managed by HHU is AHEAD (Actionable Health Analytics for Local Decision-Making), a flagship analytics initiative that transforms routine and survey data into timely, subnational insights to strengthen primary health care and equity-focused planning. The initiative supports countries in identifying service delivery gaps, tracking progress, and using data more effectively to drive local action and improve outcomes for women, children, and adolescents.

Under the general direction of the Statistics Officer for HIV/AIDS, the Consultant will provide technical support to expand the HIV analytics capability of AHEAD. The consultant will support the design and implementation of automated data pipelines that ingest and harmonize HIV-related data from routine systems and household surveys, ensuring quality and reproducibility. They will conduct subnational analyses to identify geographic and population-specific coverage gaps, build reproducible code to support core indicators and visualizations, and generate analytical products and briefs tailored to country needs.

Additional responsibilities include contributing to the analysis of service disruptions and unmet need, supporting country offices through direct technical assistance and strengthening the underlying data infrastructure for HIV monitoring. This work will accelerate the availability and use of actionable HIV data in countries prioritized under ongoing grants and contribute to the broader goal of embedding high-frequency analytics into UNICEF’s programming and policy engagement.

Scope of Work: 

The consultant will contribute to the design of a modular R-based analytics package that supports reproducible analysis and visualization of HIV-related indicators across priority countries.

In collaboration with other team members, the consultant will conduct subnational analyses to identify service gaps and disparities and prepare tailored country deliverables (including briefs, and slide decks).

To support continuity and scalability,