AI Engineer, AI Transformation

PRODUCT MANAGER, AI TRANSFORMATION

Location: Nairobi, Kenya; Delhi, India; Dakar, Senegal

Grow as a Product Manager While Doing Meaningful Work

We are a growing and entrepreneurial team trying to accelerate the impact of the world’s most impactful organizations. Our AI Transformation work combines product development, internal innovation, and external consulting—we design and build contextually relevant AI tools for IDinsight and our partners.

This role offers end-to-end involvement: from problem scoping and tool design, to deployment, and providing hands-on support to internal teams and our partners. You will get to work closely with our partners, as well as with multidisciplinary team- economists, social sector experts, and functional leadership (finance, operations, legal, etc.) to create practical, impactful tools that accelerate social sector impact.

This role sits within the Impact & Transformation team. You will collaborate closely with IDinsight’s Data Science team while being primarily oriented toward the AI Transformation team’s internal and external mandates.

About IDinsight

We amplify social impact by partnering with leaders to develop tailored solutions. Our mission is to improve lives with data and evidence. We transform how the world fights poverty.

IDinsight is a global nonprofit that equips leaders with the data, evidence and technology to improve lives at scale. We partner with governments, NGOs, multilaterals, and funders to support decisions at every stage of their impact journey – from bold pilots to nationwide scale-ups. Our teams bring rigorous evidence and practical insights so leaders can make informed decisions that truly change lives. With our partners, we are pioneering the next frontier of social impact, where data and technology accelerate progress for millions. We help leaders overcome the three main barriers to impact:

• Figuring out what works
• Learning and improving
• Reaching and operating at scale

We work in multiple countries across Asia and Africa. Our work spans a wide range of sectors, including agriculture, education, health, governance, sanitation, financial inclusion, and other areas.

We have expertise in a variety of rigorous approaches and methodologies, which we tailor to each client depending on their needs and constraints. To achieve a positive social impact we:

• Support our partners with the full ‘data and evidence’ value chain – from primary data collection to data systems, monitoring evaluation and learning tools, and data science
• Inform funding decisions – toward high-impact initiatives and away from less effective programs or approaches
• Create cutting-edge AI-for-good products that make the delivery of social interventions and learning tools more cost-effective and scalable

Our diverse, growing team of roughly 250 outstanding colleagues operate in nearly two dozen countries around the world. Learn more about our mission, values, and principles at www.IDinsight.org.

About the Role

We are seeking candidates with strong software engineering skills in Python, experience building with Large Language Models, and a passion for building solutions to difficult social problems. Ideal candidates should be able to take a problem from concept to deployed, user-facing tool — handling frontend, backend, and everything in between. You should be able to work independently to solve complex challenges and quickly learn new tools and technologies as needed.

As an AI engineer on the AI Transformation team, the day-to-day work may include:

• Working with IDinsight teams and external clients to understand their current processes and pain points and identifying which of these can be solved with AI-powered tools.
• Working across business functions internally and externally — from research to finance to operations to programmatic challenges — to find ways of creating efficiency gains through AI tools and automation.
• Building and deploying user-facing AI applications: from LLM-based pipelines and agents to workflow automations and internal tools.
• Designing, testing, and iterating on LLM-based solutions — prompt engineering, retrieval-augmented generation, multi-step agent architectures, and API integrations.
• Working across the full stack — frontend, backend, and deployment — to ship tools that people actually use.
• Building dashboards, usage tracking, and analytics to measure the impact of deployed tools.
• Synthesising, visualizing, and communicating results internally with other teams as well as externally with clients: dashboards, plots, interactive viz, presentations and reports.
• Writing blog posts or presenting on lessons learned.
  
  

Career Development

Professional development for our technical roles is essential for IDinsight's long-term impact. With support from IDinsight leadership, the employee will maintain self-directed professional development plans and will be given "stretch" opportunities designed to strengthen their professional skills. Real-time feedback and structured reviews are regularly provided to maximize each team member's expertise. IDinsight's entrepreneurial culture allows roles and career progression to be tailored to individual strengths, interests, and goals. Employees have the opportunity to increase responsibilities, and high performers will have the opportunity to move up in the organization along technical, managerial, or client-facing paths.

Required Technical Qualifications

• 2–4 years of professional experience in software engineering, AI/ML engineering, or a closely related technical role.
• Proficiency in Python is required — including web frameworks, API development, and scripting. Please do not apply if you are not comfortable building production-quality Python applications.
• Experience building solutions using Large Language Models. This includes designing prompts, building LLM-based pipelines, retrieval-augmented generation systems, or developing applications that use LLM APIs.
• Ability to work across the full stack: backend (APIs, data pipelines), frontend (basic UI/UX for internal tools), and deployment (containerization, cloud services).
• Working knowledge of SQL and comfort working with structured data.
• Familiarity with version control (Git), CI/CD practices, and writing clean, reproducible code.
• B.S./B.S.E. degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Applied Math, Data Science, or a similar technical field.
  
  

Other Required Qualifications

• Proven ability to work alone and with teams in a dynamic, multicultural environment.
• Ability to rapidly prototype — going from an identified problem to a working tool in hours or days, and iterating based on feedback.
• Passion for improving lives through evidence-informed policy.
• Strong oral and written communication skills in English. Fluency in languages spoken in countries where IDinsight works is a plus.
• Strong values aligned with IDinsight's stated values.
• Ability to understand end-user needs and build solutions that people actually want to use — not just technically sound, but genuinely useful.
• Ability and interest in sharing knowledge, mentoring others, presenting work and reviewing the work of others.
• Deeply passionate about global development and improving lives in disadvantaged populations.
• Open-minded self-starter who will thrive while tackling new, unusual and unpredictable challenges.
  
  

Preferred Qualifications

The most competitive applicants will also have experience in one or more of the following:

• Experience living and working in developing country settings.
• Experience with API integrations and workflow automation tools (Zapier, Make, n8n).
• Experience building or deploying AI agents, custom GPTs/Projects/Gems, or workflow automations.
• Familiarity with cloud platforms (AWS/GCP), data integration workflows, or deployment pipelines.
• Experience with frontend frameworks (React, Streamlit, Gradio) for building internal tools.
• Comfort with basic data analysis and visualization.
• Experience working with SQL, custom APIs and AWS products like RDS, EC2, and Lambda.
• Familiarity with data science concepts (enough to work productively alongside data scientists and understand model outputs).
  
  

Nuts & Bolts

Location

This position is located in one of IDinsight’s existing offices, with the possibility of extensive travel dependent on project needs. While we have some teammates working remotely, the most likely offices for this position are New Delhi (India), Dakar (Senegal) and Nairobi (Kenya). Preference will be given to those with pre-existing work authorization in these countries; however, IDinsight will seek work permits where possible for exceptional candidates.

Compensation

Compensation is commensurate with relevant experience and background and is competitive within the social sector. We are especially proud of the people-focused benefits we offer, including comprehensive international health insurance, including mental health coverage; paid vacation, sick, and parental leave; relocation benefits; a travel stipend; technology and work-from-home stipends; a professional development budget; and more. Please note, as a non-profit, we are unable to provide compensation similar to leading technology firms.

Start Date

The start date of this position is flexible, although there is the potential to start almost immediately. We expect a minimum one-year commitment, with regular professional development conversations and potential for a long-term career at IDinsight.

References

Applications should include three references, including email, phone, and title. Briefly state in what capacity you worked with each reference.

How to Apply

Please click the “Apply for this job online” button at the top right. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis. The application asks various questions for us to get to know you and requires a CV and cover letter.

Please ensure that your CV includes relevant professional and personal experience and details on academic qualifications. CVs can range from one to two pages. Please note that headshot photographs, parental information, birth dates, marital status, and other personal information not relevant to the application do not need to be included in your CV. Additionally, we strongly encourage you to use your cover letter to highlight why you want to work for IDinsight specifically and what has prepared you to succeed in the role you’re applying for. A customized cover letter is an important part of IDinsight’s recruiting process as it allows us to understand your motivations for the position, relevant skills, and clarity of writing.

More information, including details on IDinsight’s hiring process and
frequently asked questions, can be found online at
IDinsight Careers.

IDinsight’s Commitment to Reducing Power Asymmetries

IDinsight is committed to reducing power asymmetries in the social sector. Our commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion reflects our understanding of the need for the sector to abandon unhealthy practices of the past. We wish to be part of a new generation of international NGOs who are honest about this history and transparent about our role in the present. Our commitment is also aligned with the impact of our work.

We seek a workforce that is inclusive of a variety of perspectives that will help us refine and improve our methods and relationships and strengthen the services we provide our clients and their communities or constituencies. The following commitments represent our vision for the IDinsight team:

• IDinsight will have greater representation from the populations we work with and the clients we serve.
• IDinsight will have greater representation from the countries in which we work.
• Across all countries in which we recruit, we will seek greater representation from historically excluded communities.
• IDinsight will foster an inclusive work culture that empowers a diverse team to do their best work.
• IDinsight is an equal-opportunity employer and strives to create a diverse and supportive workplace.