Call for Senior Data Manager
WASCAL, the West African Science Service Center on Climate Change and Adapted Land Use
(www.wascal.org), is a research and education-focused inter-governmental institute designed to help tackle the climate change challenge and thereby enhance the resilience of human environmental systems.
It does so by strengthening the research capacity and infrastructure in West Africa related to climate change by pooling the expertise of 10 West African countries, i.e. Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d‘Ivoire, The
Gambia, Ghana, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal and Togo. WASCAL is supported by the German Ministry for
Science and Education (BMBF) and closely collaborates with a consortium of German universities spearheaded by the Center for Development Research (ZEF) of the University of Bonn. WASCAL is headquartered in Accra, Ghana, and operates a Competence Center (CC) in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, for its climate research activities. In addition, WASCAL coordinates a network of 10 graduate schools specialized on various aspects of climate change and its adaptation and mitigation, based at universities throughout the West African region.
WASCAL is seeking to fill the position of a Senior Data Manager to be based at its CC in Ouagadougou,
Burkina Faso.
In close co-operation with system administrators/programmers the successful applicant will supervise the operation of the data infrastructure at the CC, which manages large environmental and sociological data sets in a web-service based architecture, and co-ordinate the further development of the data management systems.
He/she will act as the primary contact person for the scientific staff and the WASCAL project management with regard to all data management issues at the CC.
Major responsibilities of the position:
• Providing senior professional leadership to IT systems, including data management software;
• Supervision and control of the data infrastructure in order to warrant its consistent and stable operation for data maintenance and access, data interpretation and scenario analysis;
• Developing concepts and data management plans for system extensions in terms of software architecture, database modeling, data cleansing, interface design according to changing demands of research carried out in the framework of WASCAL, and managing of their implementation;
• Co-ordination of data delivery in cooperation with WASCAL-internal and -external data providers in compliance with WASCAL’s data policy;
• Representation of the CC data management within WASCAL, and with partner organizations and programs;
• Planning, coordination and administration of data management consultancy and training programs with scientific staff members at the CC as well as in association with responsible persons responsible at partner organizations;
• Conduct of training and outreach activities to promote CC data management to the various stakeholders in the region.
The applicant should have a PhD in (geo-) informatics/computer science, or in another field closely related to management of research data, with the following qualifications:

• Sound practical experiences (minimum 5 years) with data management systems for heterogeneous
(scientific) data;
• Experience in designing, implementing and operating distributed data infrastructures with big data;
• Sound practical experiences in relational database modeling and management;
• Good knowledge on the concepts and standards used in the framework of Spatial Data
Infrastructures, in particular OGC web-services and standards (WMS, SWE, WPS, WFS, WCS, CSW,
SLD, metadata ISO 19115/19139);
• Good background in Web GIS server and –client technology (e.g. Geoserver OS, OpenLayers, etc.);
• Experience in geospatial data processing using GIS systems;
• Excellent communication, presentation and team leadership skills preferably experienced within international scientific networks;
• Excellent English and basic French speaking and writing.
Additional assets would be:
• Experiences in the field of regional meteorological or hydrological modeling, downscaling to the local scale and statistical and dynamic techniques for weather prediction or in the field of modeling socio-economic systems with environment and society interactions;
• Basic programming skills in JAVA, JavaScript and AJAX and functional capability to administer a
Linux/Unix operating system.
This is an international staff position based in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. Salary and benefits will be commensurate with experience. This position requires to travel within the WASCAL region and to Germany
(for training purposes).
With a view towards increasing the number of women in leading positions, WASCAL specifically encourages women to apply. Please send your application including a covering letter, detailed Curriculum Vitae, statement of motivation and the contact details of three (3) referees by email to WASCAL HR-Manager,
Mrs. Theresa Aniagyei-Bonsu at candidature@wascal.org , with “DATAMGR 2015” in the subject line. For further information, please visit www.wascal.org. Please note that only shortlisted candidates will be contacted.