Data Manager at the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA)

The International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) is a not-for-profit institution that generates agricultural innovations to meet Africa’s most pressing challenges of hunger, malnutrition, poverty, and natural resource degradation. Working with various partners across sub-Saharan Africa, we improve livelihoods, enhance food and nutrition security, increase employment, and preserve natural resource integrity. IITA is a member of CGIAR, a global agriculture research partnership for a food secure future.

We are recruiting to fill the position below:

Job Title: Data Manager

Ref: IITA-HR-NRS2020-018
Location: Ibadan, Oyo
Recruitment Type: National (2–year renewable contract)

Duties
Successful candidate will among other things perform the following duties:

Monitor, supervise,screen, maintainand analyzedatafor the cassava breeding unit;
Carry out analysis of experimental data such as: analysis of variance for comparing genotype performance for single location and multi–environment GXE trials using standard applications in SAS, R, and GGEBiplot software.
Develop appropriate selection indices for rapid advancement of cassava breeding trials including rapid data processing from harvest to selection to accommodate the perishable nature of cassava planting material.
Work closely with molecular geneticist and biometricians to integrate field and molecular data for genetic mapping studies.
Backstop research supervisors in development of experimental designs to apply appropriate statistical model for analysis.
Prepare periodic status summaries on data analysis activities.
Contribute to preparation of reports, publications and visual presentation of analysis results.
Contribute to international cassava database development for NEXTGEN cassava Project.
Contribute to the adoption of field data collection systems including the use of electronic devices and provide training to the cassava breeding community on the use of these devices.
Contribute to development and maintenance of IITA cassava breeding database including curation of pedigrees, clone names, genotypic and phenotypic data.
Conduct capacity development regarding data management and analysis for cassava breeding staff, NARs partners, and other cassava partners.
Provide backstopping support to IITA hub breeding regarding data management and analysis.
Represent IITA at international meetings on data management.
Responsible for development and maintenance of cassava ontologies.
Integration of CG core meta data schema into cassavabase.org.
Perform any other job–related task as may be assigned by the supervisor.

Qualification

Master’s in Computer Science, Statistics or Agricultural Science or related field;
With minimum of six (6) years’ experience in data management for a plant breeding program in a well–structured environment or donor funded organization.

Competencies
The ideal candidate must:

Be proficient in the use of MS Access, MS Excel, statistical packages (SAS, STATA, SPSS, R, METAR, AGDR, GEAR, PBTOOL, GenStat, ASREML, GBEBiplot), computer programming languages (JAVA), DMBS (POSTGRESQL)., ontologies tools (OBO Edit) and Protégé.
Have good understanding of experimental design, statistics and its principle in plant breeding and agronomy practices as required.
Ability to work under pressure, good communication and interpersonal skills.
Be able to work under minimal supervision.