ICF
Senior Research Methodologist — Principal Investigator, Multimodal Survey Experiment
Reston, VA · Principal · Full-time
Sponsorship not specified$119k-$203kDetected 7 days ago
Data ScienceStatisticsPublic HealthResearchLeadershipCommunicationCollaborationPublic SpeakingBiostatisticsEpidemiology
About the role
- The practice has deep expertise in population-based surveys, health data systems, monitoring and evaluation, and technical assistance to national institutions.
- This is a grant-funded position spanning a two-year period.
- This position is 100% remote/telecommute, with international travel to study countries.
Responsibilities
- Provide overall scientific leadership for the experiment from design through implementation, analysis, and dissemination, serving as the single point of technical accountability across two concurrent country tracks.
- Convene and lead a technical working group (TWG) of external experts, and finalize core design decisions - including content scope, representativeness targets, and content-triage grading criteria - with in-country co-PIs and partners.
- Lead development of the full study protocol and oversee IRB/ethics submissions in coordination with ICF and in-country ethics committees.
- Direct the analytic core of the study: sampling and power design, dual-frame estimation, the non-response and replacement protocol, mode-effects estimation, and small area estimation - working closely with the sampler, methodologist, and data scientist/modeler.
- Lead development and population of a cost-quality frontier, integrating activity-based cost and time data captured during fieldwork.
- Lead post-hoc simulation of untested design configurations, and translate findings into transferable decision-tree and heuristic guidance for future survey designers.
- Lead the final report(s) and peer-reviewed manuscripts, and represent the study in conference and stakeholder presentations.
- Serve as the primary technical liaison to the funder and to in-country partners, ensuring strong country ownership and adherence to Global Access and open-data commitments.
Requirements
- OR a master's degree in one of these fields with 20+ years of relevant experience.
- Demonstrated experience with household survey operations in low- and middle-income countries.
- Demonstrated track record of methodological thought leadership, such as conference presentations and peer-reviewed articles.
Nice to have
- Experience with DHS or DHS-like surveys and with biomarker (e.g., malaria RDT) data collection.
- Experience conducting survey research in West and/or Central Africa.
- Experience partnering with national statistical offices, ministries, or other in-country institutions.
- Working proficiency in French.
- Professional Skills You Will Use
- Attention to detail, organized, and proactive
- Able to make sound methodological decisions under real-world timing and budget constraints, including protecting scientific integrity when tradeoffs arise.
- Submission Materials
Compensation
- $119,323.00 - $202,850.00
Benefits
- Minimum 15 years of experience in survey research design and implementation, applied to population-based or public health surveys (or 20+ years with a master's degree, as above).
This listing is sourced directly from ICF's careers page and normalized into a canonical job model.