Position: Data Scientist and AI Engineer (Branch of Cowater International Inc. - CAPRED)__Deadline:10-July

Location: PhnomPenh

 

Reports to: Senior Economic Policy Researcher 
Duration: 6-12 months (strong possibility of extension for high performers) 
Employment type: Ongoing consultant (full-time equivalent) 
Contractual arrangement: Eligible for Cambodian citizens

 

The Data Scientist and Artificial Intelligence (AI) Engineer will provide technical support across CAPRED’s data science, data engineering, and applied AI work. In particular, they will help build reliable data pipelines, maintain digital data products, develop prototype AI tools, and strengthen internal capability to experiment safely and productively with data and AI.

This position is designed for an early-career professional with strong technical foundations, curiosity, and a willingness to learn through practice and mentoring. The successful candidate is not expected to be an expert in every tool from the start, but must demonstrate a strong learning mindset, a positive professional attitude, disciplined problem-solving, and the ability to learn independently. The role requires someone who is willing to test new ideas, learn from mistakes, document lessons, and help translate experimentation into practical innovation that improves CAPRED’s work processes.

 

Cambodia-Australia Partnership for Resilient Economic Development (CAPRED) or CAPRED Facility, is Australia’s flagship bilateral economic development program in Cambodia, focusing on economic recovery and resilience. The Facility supports Cambodia in implementing a range of necessary economic interventions and reforms to maintain and support the country’s economic transition. These interventions and reforms are primarily aimed at encouraging more productive and inclusive public and private investment that promotes a resilient, inclusive and sustainable economy (RISE).

CAPRED interventions fall under three technical components namely (i) Agriculture and Agro- processing; Trade, (ii) Investment and Enterprise Development and (iii) Infrastructure Development; and three cross-cutting sectoral areas (1) Gender Equality, Disability and Social Inclusion (GEDSI); (2) Climate Resilient initiatives, and (3) the Policy Hub. GEDSI is at the heart of all that CAPRED does.

CAPRED’s policy and economic analysis work increasingly relies on timely, integrated, and high- quality data. This includes official statistics, administrative datasets, macroeconomic and financial indicators, enterprise and survey data, geospatial and satellite data, web-scraped information, and other high-frequency data sources. CAPRED also supports government counterparts and internal teams to use evidence more effectively for policy monitoring, investment facilitation, private sector development, and economic resilience.

In parallel, rapid advances in AI create new opportunities to improve how CAPRED collects, processes, analyses, and communicates evidence. Practical AI applications that CAPRED is currently working on include Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) systems, AI-assisted extraction of information from PDFs and scanned documents, automated classification and summarisation of research and policies, conversational tools for data access, workflow automation for routine analytical tasks, and Big Data and AI for macroeconomic nowcasting.

Roles and Responsibilities:
Data tasks:

• Support the ingestion, cleaning, transformation, validation, and integration of data from structured and unstructured sources, including databases, spreadsheets, APIs, web sources, PDFs, survey data, and high-frequency indicators.
• Assist in building and maintaining reproducible data pipelines using Python, SQL, and related tools, with appropriate checks for data quality, consistency, and version control.
• Work on databases to store, query, document, and maintain analytical datasets used for policy analysis, dashboards, and AI applications.
• Support macroeconomic, trade, investment, enterprise, geospatial, and other policy- relevant data analysis under the guidance of senior staff.
• Develop scripts and workflows for automation, including routine data downloads, data cleaning, report-ready tables, and quality-control checks.
• Help maintain and improve CAPRED digital data platforms, dashboards, and visualisation tools so that insights are clear, accessible, and useful for decision-making.

AI tasks:

• Support the design, development, testing, and improvement of applied AI tools relevant to CAPRED’s work, including document search, question-answering systems, and AI-assisted data extraction.
• Assist in developing RAG workflows using vector databases, embeddings, semantic search,
• hybrid search, and prompt design for policy, legal, and economic documents.
• Help process and structure unstructured text from newspapers, PDFs, reports, laws, regulations, and policy documents in both English and Khmer language for analytical and AI use cases.
• Test AI outputs for accuracy, relevance, traceability, and usability, and help identify risks
• such as hallucination, biases, weak citations, poor retrieval, or inappropriate use of sensitive information.

Collaboration tasks:

• Work collaboratively with economists, policy analysts, data scientists, and project coordinating teams to translate analytical needs into practical data and AI solutions.
• Work collaboratively with CAPRED’s external counterparts in public and private sectors to deliver technical support on AI and data and strengthen their technical capacity.
• Learn    independently    from    online    learning    platforms,    documentation,    technical communities, and open-source resources, and apply new skills to CAPRED work.
• Demonstrate a constructive attitude toward teamwork, feedback, trial and error, and continuous improvement.
• Share useful tools, methods, and lessons learned with colleagues through short demonstrations, documentation, internal learning sessions, or informal coaching.
• Maintain organised code, files, documentation, and version control practices to support collaboration and continuity.
• Perform other relevant tasks assigned by the supervisor and CAPRED’s management in line with CAPRED’s evolving data, AI, and economic policy priorities.

Compliance

• Ensure stakeholders operate within Cowater and DFAT-related codes of conduct and policies, including all inclusion-related policies such as Child Protection and PSEAH, antifraud and corruption, value for money, and other policies.
• Work in a way that promotes social inclusion and gender equality, is sensitive to cultural and gender issues in Cambodia, and is disability inclusive.
• Commitment to championing environmental sustainability and climate action across the Facility.

Key Requirements (skills, knowledge experience & qualification):
Essential:

• Bachelor’s degree in data science, AI engineering, software engineering, statistics, computer science, or a related field.
• At least 1-2 years of relevant work experience, internship experience, project experience, or a strong portfolio of applied data, software, or AI projects. Exceptional recent graduates with strong portfolios will also be considered.
• Good working knowledge of Python and JavaScript, with the ability to write clear, reproducible, and well-documented code.
• Basic understanding of databases, APIs, data cleaning, data transformation, and quality- control concepts.
• Interest in applied AI, machine learning (ML), Large Language Models (LLM), vector embeddings, semantic search, RAG, or AI-assisted workflow automation.
• Good communication skills and ability to work respectfully and collaboratively in a diverse team environment with economists, policy analysts, project coordinating staff, and technical colleagues.
• Strong professional attitude, including reliability, humility, curiosity, attention to detail, and willingness to ask questions when needed.
• Demonstrated ability to learn independently from online courses, digital resources, documentation, tutorials, and mentoring from senior colleagues.
• Willingness to experiment, test ideas, encounter errors, debug problems, learn from failure, and use those lessons to improve tools and introduce practical innovation at work.

Desirable but not essential:

• Master’s degree in data science, AI, computer science, software engineering, statistics, or a related field.
• Experience with PostgreSQL, pgvector, Apache Airflow, or other data engineering tools.
• Experience developing data platforms, web applications, APIs, or interactive analytical tools using React, FastAPI, or similar frameworks.
• Experience with geospatial and remote sensing data
• Experience with text processing, PDF extraction, web scraping, natural language processing, embeddings, vector search, or LLM-based applications.
• Experience working with or supporting government institutions, research institutions, and private sector organisations.

Other information

• Qualified female candidates are HIGHLY encouraged to apply.
• Remuneration will be based on his/her qualifications, experience, and past performance.
• The position will commence as a 6-12 month consulting contract, with the strong possibility of extension for high performers. 

Please send CV and cover letter to
Email:      recruitment@capred.org
Contact:   099 223 998
Moreinfo:  https://capred.org/opportunities
Please mention "www.Cambodiajobs.Biz" where you saw the ad when you apply!