E T Consultant

Job #:
req37966

Organization:
World Bank

Sector:
Research & Quantitative Analysis

Grade:
EC1

Term Duration:
1 year 0 months

Recruitment Type:
Local Recruitment

Location:
Washington, DC,United States

Required Language(s):
English, Spanish

Preferred Language(s):

Closing Date:
8/8/2026 (MM/DD/YYYY) at 11:59pm UTC

Description

VPU Context: The Development Economics Vice Presidency (DEC) is the World Bank's central reservoir of fresh insights into the most pressing challenges of development. It is led by the Chief Economist and Senior Vice President of the World Bank Group, who advises the President and senior managers, serves as the community leader for the WBG's economists, and helps to keep the institution in the forefront of thinking about development policy. DEC constitutes one of the world's largest teams of economists focused on policy solutions for developing economies.

Unit Context: A department of the World Bank's Development Economics Vice-Presidency, the Development Impact Department (DECDI)I's purpose is to increase the use of impact evaluation (IE) in the design and implementation of public policy and to develop institutional capacity and motivation for evidence-based policy. DECDI's work focuses on:
• Evaluating programs at scale to answer policy-relevant questions.
• Developing innovative data systems and data analytics tools for real-time decisions.
• Using causal inference analysis to identify mechanisms to improve results.
• Building capacity to strengthen country institutions for evidence-based policymaking.

DECDI aims to overcome the challenge to identify true cause-and-effect relations in policy programs. By linking researchers to policymakers and feeding results back into policies, DECDI fosters systematic use of evidence, which informs adoption, mid-course corrections, and scale-up of policies. Through workshops and clinics with operational staff and government clients, joint research teams, active field coordination, as well as research products such as seminars, papers, and policy briefs, DECDI builds capacity while forming a wider community of practice.

DECDI accompanies impact evaluations during their entire life-cycle. It starts with assessing demand, identifying research questions, as well as supporting project implementation, high quality data collection, analysis, and dissemination of results.

With a portfolio of more than 220 impact evaluations, DECDI operates across all sectors in about 60 countries spanning the globe. The IEs test a variety of interventions and mechanisms to understand why policy succeeds or fails and how to improve policy design and implementation to obtain better results. By working proactively in collaboration with clients, DECDI employs experimental methods to infer causality whenever possible (79% of the portfolio). 17% of DECDI IEs utilize non-experimental methods, while 4% use a combination of the two. DECDI is structured into 5 World Bank units:
• DECPL: Planet Impact Lab.
• DECPE: People Impact Lab.
• DECPR: Prosperity Impact Lab.
• DECID: Infrastructure and Digital Impact Lab.
• DECMB: Behavior Science Lab.

Within DECDI, the People Impact Lab (DECPE) focuses on:
• Labor markets and jobs, including employment, productivity, earnings, skills, and transitions into better work.
• Human capital, including education, health, mental health, and investments that improve individual well-being and economic opportunity.
• Social protection and adaptive delivery systems that strengthen resilience, inclusion, and access to services.
• Economic inclusion in fragility, conflict, and violence (FCV) settings, with attention to implementation risks, gender, and operational feasibility.

DECPE combines experimental and quasi-experimental methods with operational collaboration. In FCV settings, where insecurity, displacement, weak markets, food insecurity, climate shocks, trauma, and limited delivery capacity can interact, the program uses rigorous evidence, high-frequency data, and practical analytical tools to help teams identify emerging risks, adapt delivery, and learn what works under changing conditions.

The E T Consultant - Research Assistant will work under the supervision of Economist Arlen Yahir Guarin Galeano and provide research, data, and analytical support across key engagements in DECPE's FCV program. The assignment will provide critical analytical inputs to strengthen the evidence and decision systems that help operational teams target support, monitor implementation risks, adapt delivery, and translate findings into actionable guidance, with particular responsibility for work in South Sudan, Colombia, and Peru.

The role combines applied microeconomics, impact evaluation, data management, reproducible research, and policy communication. The Research Assistant will collaborate with DECPE researchers, World Bank operational teams, field coordinators, survey firms, government counterparts, and implementing partners to produce timely, rigorous, and policy-relevant outputs.

The portfolio includes the following complementary workstreams:
• An impact evaluation of the economic opportunities component of South Sudan's Productive Safety Net for Socioeconomic Opportunities Project, with emphasis on high-frequency data-quality checks, econometric analysis, and reproducible code.
• An evidence and implementation note on economic inclusion in FCV settings, and a Colombia study linking mental health, treatment, and labor-market outcomes using administrative data.
• A high-frequency FCV Risk Tools Dashboard and accompanying practical note that integrate geocoded indicators of conflict, disaster shocks, food insecurity, displacement, and mobility for operational monitoring and research;
• A Peru impact evaluation of alternative cash-transfer modalities for in-transit migrants and refugees, including final analysis and policy translation for border and transit-point programming.
• Cross-cutting analytical datasets, reproducibility packages, literature reviews, policy notes, presentations, working papers, and other research outputs for internal and external audiences.
More information can be found at https://www.worldbank.org/en/about/unit/unit-dec/impactevaluation.

Duties and Responsibilities: DECPE is seeking to hire an E T Consultant - Research Assistant to provide analytical, data, and research support across a portfolio of FCV engagements. The Research Assistant will work under the supervision of Economist Arlen Yahir Guarin Galeano and collaborate with DECPE researchers, World Bank operational teams, field coordinators, survey firms, government counterparts, and implementing partners. The position is designed for a quantitatively strong early-career researcher who can manage complex data, implement rigorous analysis, maintain reproducible workflows, and translate findings into clear research and policy products.
• South Sudan - FCV Impact Evaluation (40%): The E T Consultant - Research Assistant will support the impact evaluation of the economic opportunities component of the South Sudan Productive Safety Net for Socioeconomic Opportunities Project (SNSOP), conducted under the Partnership for Economic Inclusion Impact Collaborative. The study examines the incremental effects of a livelihoods package, including a cash grant, skills training, coaching, and savings groups, layered onto regular cash transfers for youth in Juba, as well as alternative gender-targeting approaches. The work will focus on programming and maintaining high-frequency data-quality checks, reviewing incoming survey and implementation data, constructing analysis-ready datasets and indicators, producing descriptive and causal estimates, conducting robustness and heterogeneity analyses, and preparing tables and figures. The Research Assistant will maintain well-documented, version-controlled code and reproducibility packages and contribute to analysis plans, research notes, presentations, and final outputs on household welfare, food security, assets, savings, income generation, empowerment, psychosocial well-being, implementation quality, and program costs.
• Economic Inclusion in FCV / Colombia Mental Health / FCV Risk Tools Dashboard (45%): This allocation covers three complementary workstreams. For the Economic Inclusion in FCV Evidence and Implementation Note, the Research Assistant will conduct and document the literature review, organize evidence on where and when graduation and economic inclusion programs are effective, map relevant outcomes and constraints, assess complementary package components and delivery challenges, and provide analytical and drafting inputs. For the Colombia mental health and labor markets study, the Research Assistant will construct and analyze linked administrative datasets to examine how anxiety and depression affect earnings, employment, and job mobility, whether government-provided therapy or specialist care attenuates these losses, and how the relationships vary with conflict victimization, displacement, and the long-run economic costs of violence. Tasks will include code development, data documentation, econometric analysis, tables, figures, presentations, and reproducibility. For the FCV Risk Tools Dashboard, the Research Assistant will support data sourcing, geocoding, harmonization, indicator construction, and visualization across high-frequency data on conflict events, disaster shocks, food insecurity, displacement, and mobility, including model-based food insecurity predictions and mobile-phone mobility metrics where available. The work will include reproducible data pipelines, links between project or evaluation locations and evolving risk exposure, heterogeneity and outcome analysis, and inputs to the dashboard's practical note and operational outputs.
• Peru - Cash-Transfer Modalities for In-Transit Migrants and Refugees (15%): The E T Consultant - Research Assistant will support the final analytical phase of an impact evaluation of alternative cash-transfer modalities for Venezuelan migrants and refugees in transit through Peru. The study examines how flexible assistance can respond to needs and decisions while people are still moving, including risks, motivations, needs, expectations, use of assistance, and onward plans, and how different delivery modalities can inform programming at border and transit points. Responsibilities will center on cleaning and harmonizing survey and program data, implementing the analysis plan, producing descriptive and causal results, conducting robustness and heterogeneity checks, maintaining high-quality reproducible code, and preparing tables, figures, and reproducibility materials. The Research Assistant will also contribute to final research outputs, policy notes, design briefs, and presentations that translate the findings into practical guidance for displacement response.

Scope of work:

The E T Consultant - Research Assistant - will report to Arlen Guarin and allocate time across the portfolio as described above. The position emphasizes hands-on data work, coding, analysis, reproducibility, and research production, while contributing to coordination, survey, and implementation tasks as needed. Responsibilities are organized around three core areas:
• Impact Evaluation Design and Research Support
• Support the design and implementation of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and quasi-experimental studies using difference-in-differences (DiD), instrumental variables (IV), and regression discontinuity (RD).
• Contribute to randomization procedures, sampling frames, power calculations, pre-analysis plans, balance checks, treatment tracking systems, outcome definitions, and analysis protocols.
• Translate research questions into empirical specifications, analysis-ready datasets, reproducible code plans, and clear analytical deliverables.
• Coordinate data needs and analytical inputs across research teams, operational colleagues, field coordinators, survey firms, government counterparts, and implementing partners.
• Monitor implementation and research data, identify deviations or analytical risks, document decisions, and support timely follow-up that protects data quality and design integrity.
• Participate in technical meetings, missions, workshops, and trainings, and prepare concise follow-up materials, task trackers, and analytical summaries for internal and external counterparts.
• Contribute to ethical review submissions, data-protection procedures, secure data-access arrangements, and documentation of research protocols, as applicable.
• Survey, Data Management, and Analytical Work
• Design and revise questionnaires, program instruments in SurveyCTO, test skip logic and translations, support field updates, and develop high-frequency checks for survey and implementation data.
• Clean, label, merge, anonymize, link, and document complex survey, program, administrative, geospatial, and contextual datasets, using reproducible workflows, data dictionaries, and clear provenance records.
• Conduct econometric and statistical analysis in Stata, R, and Python, including descriptive statistics, causal estimates, robustness checks, heterogeneity analysis, event studies, publication-quality tables, and figures.
• Use SQL and scripted data pipelines to manage large or relational datasets; geocode project and observation locations; construct and validate FCV indicators; and apply machine learning or NLP methods when useful for prediction, classification, variable selection, or text processing.
• Review incoming data and automated quality reports, diagnose