Research Assistant – Breeding Data Management

ABOUT IITA

The International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) is a not-for-profit research-for-development organisation and a member of CGIAR. It develops agricultural innovations that address hunger, poverty and natural-resource degradation across Africa.

JOB SUMMARY

The Research Assistant – Breeding Data Management will support the Breeding Data Manager with the adoption and routine use of the Enterprise Breeding System. The role combines breeding-data curation, electronic field-data collection, database support, data cleaning, reproducible analysis and dashboard reporting.

• Location: Ibadan, Oyo State, Nigeria
• Employment Type: Three-year renewable contract
• Work Arrangement: On-site
• Eligibility: Suitable Nigerian nationals
• Deadline: 2 October 2026
• Remuneration: Highly competitive salary and benefits; amount not specified

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

• Support adoption, implementation and routine use of the Enterprise Breeding System for storing, managing and reporting breeding information.
• Prepare, test and validate electronic field books and digital data-collection templates.
• Curate location, trait, germplasm, pedigree, experimental-metadata and germplasm-attribute records before upload.
• Use R scripts or other reproducible tools for data cleaning, validation, duplicate identification, germplasm matching, site curation and data transformation.
• Run database queries and extract information into approved templates, reports and dashboards.
• Develop, update and maintain Power BI dashboards covering breeding activities, phenotypic-data completeness, data quality, germplasm information and agreed indicators.
• Apply institutional and international research-data standards, including crop ontologies, trait dictionaries, controlled vocabularies and standard phenotyping protocols.
• Maintain clear documentation of data curation, uploads, scripts, queries, quality-control checks, dashboard updates and user-support requests.
• Prepare periodic updates on completed activities, data-quality findings, system challenges and recommended follow-up actions.
• Perform other related duties assigned by the supervisor.

QUALIFICATIONS AND EXPERIENCE

• Bachelor’s degree or Higher National Diploma in Data Science, Computer Science, Statistics, Agricultural Science, Plant Breeding, Bioinformatics, Information Technology or a related discipline.
• Relevant experience in data management, database support, agricultural research or breeding-data management is advantageous.
• Proficiency in Microsoft Excel, including formulas, pivot tables, data validation, lookups and data-cleaning functions.
• Working knowledge of R or Python for data cleaning, transformation, duplicate identification, descriptive statistics, visualisation and reproducible reporting.
• Ability to develop and maintain Power BI dashboards.
• Working knowledge of SQL and relational-database queries.
• Ability to conduct basic descriptive and exploratory analysis.
• Familiarity with electronic data-collection tools, digital field books, trait dictionaries, crop ontologies and phenotyping protocols.
• Familiarity with the Enterprise Breeding System, BreedBase, BrAPI-enabled applications or similar platforms is an advantage.
• Strong documentation, accuracy, organisation and communication skills.

IITA is an equal-opportunity employer and particularly welcomes applications from women.

HOW TO APPLY

Apply through IITA’s official Workable application page. Complete the online application and attach a detailed cover letter and CV saved in Microsoft Word format using your name as the filename.

Application Deadline: 2 October 2026.