Developer

Laterite is looking for a Developer to join our Analytics team and develop and implement research applications and software solutions for social impact. This role combines AI application development, software engineering, data handling, coding, product development, and deployment, with a focus on translating research needs into practical technical solutions. This role will liaise directly with our Managing Partner and Analytics team in Amsterdam, and with Laterite’s in-country research and data collection teams across eight countries in Africa and Latin America.

This position is open to candidates of all nationalities who have the legal right to work in the Netherlands. Please note that we are unable to provide sponsorship.

WHO WE ARE

Laterite is a data, research, and analytics firm working on complex international development challenges. We partner with universities, global think tanks, international NGOs, multilateral donors, and government ministries. Our clients include the World Bank, TechnoServe, the Mastercard Foundation, and others.

We operate across the Netherlands, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Sierra Leone, and Peru, with 80+ full-time staff and more than 2,000 enumerators. We believe meaningful impact requires being on the ground, building local teams, and establishing long-term trust. Our office culture is collaborative and gives people autonomy to grow into their roles.

THE ENVIRONMENT YOU’RE STEPPING INTO

You will join our Netherlands team in a collaborative and engaging environment. We are low on bureaucracy but high on individual accountability. You won’t be micromanaged here – we want you to use your judgment to solve problems, support our fast-paced teams, and actively improve the systems you build and work with. The Analytics team in particular is small, and you will have an opportunity to shape your role and the team you are on. Through your work, you will liaise directly with our in-country research and data collection teams across Africa and Latin America, who are working on delivering research for social impact.

HOW YOU’LL MAKE AN IMPACT

You will work on the development and implementation of AI-driven applications and software solutions for social impact across our key sectors: Agriculture, Education, Public Health, Youth & Labor, Urbanization & Migration. Some of this work might be internal-facing (e.g., building tools to help Laterite researchers do better research), and some of this work will be external-facing (e.g., developing a knowledge hub web platform for an international NGO).

An important note on this role: Laterite is not a technology company but is building tech products to complement our research and social impact work. Your experience on Laterite’s Analytics team will be unique and likely dissimilar to similar roles within technology companies.

We build fast, we learn as we go, and we all wear many hats. This is a generalist role, requiring multidisciplinary skills across the technology stack – from front-end to back-end to DevOps. Candidates should be prepared to go outside their comfort zone, learn by doing, and share their ideas for how to build better.

Your work at Laterite has the potential to make a meaningful difference. We are advocates of building AI for social good to create a fairer and more dignified world. In our own small way, the products we build attempt to unlock insights to help achieve this mission.

A non-exhaustive list of potential projects you might work on includes:

—    Intelligent knowledge hubs. Develop knowledge hub web platforms for use by researchers, policymakers, and program implementers working in the international development sector. Enhance data retrieval processes by integrating automated data curation pipelines with knowledge graphs, RAG, and LLM agents. This initiative involves curating unstructured data, establishing nodes and relationships within knowledge graphs, and combining these elements with a RAG pipeline to generate comprehensive, actionable insights that can be accessed in natural language.

—    Automating research processes and data analysis. Develop AI applications that automate time-consuming research tasks for Laterite’s research team (e.g., transcription, translation, quantitative and qualitative data analysis, survey development and testing), increasing efficiency and reducing manual data handling.

—    Supporting the build of an external website to host Laterite’s AI-powered research applications. This website will be publicly facing, allowing researchers to access and pay for Laterite’s suite of existing tools, like AutoQuant and AutoQual.

—    AI-powered applications for rapid data collection in WhatsApp. Develop tools to collect rapid surveys from the field (e.g., with teachers, farmers, enumerators), integrated in WhatsApp, and including automated analysis and insight generation from responses using an LLM pipeline.

—    Generative Data Augmentation and evaluation. Test whether we can create LLM pipelines or fine-tuned LLM models to generate synthetic quantitative or qualitative data. Evaluate the quality of this data against real data. 

—    Google Earth Engine Models: Implement and refine data scraping techniques to build and calibrate models within Google Earth Engine, focusing on environmental and socio-economic variables. This will help in making informed decisions based on the latest satellite and geospatial data.

This is a challenging position that will provide you with hands-on experience in software engineering, AI application development, various types of data handling (e.g., audio, images, geospatial, survey, etc.), coding, product development and deployment. You will work in a small development team, collaborating closely with senior research and management teams across the organization for guidance and mentorship.

WHAT YOU BRING

We are looking for someone with up to 2 years of experience in a related role, or a recent graduate, but will prioritize candidates with hands-on experience. We are seeking someone who is entrepreneurial, creative, passionate about international development and social impact, structured in their thinking, and able to translate complex research needs into technical solutions. Specifically, you have:

—    Master’s or Bachelor’s degree in a technical or quantitative field — for example Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Data Science, Software Engineering, Econometrics, Statistics, Digital humanities or a quantitative social science.

—    Software you have personally built and shipped, that you can show us: a GitHub portfolio, an internship, a research tool, or a substantial personal project. This is important to demonstrate for all candidates, but particularly for those applying with a Bachelor’s degree or limited work experience.

—    Experience working in, or a passion for, international development, social impact, and research

—    Strong programming abilities in Python

—    Experience developing applications with LLMs

—    Familiarity with AI frameworks and tools, particularly in the areas of agentic AI, RAG, and knowledge graphs.

—    Familiarity with version control and collaborative development tools (GitHub)

—    Awareness of DevOps and deployment concepts (e.g. CI/CD, environment configuration, secrets management), with curiosity and motivation to grow these skills

—    Exposure to cloud services, and working with Unix based server environments, and containerization (docker)

—    Excellent written and oral communication skills in English

—    Excellent organizational and interpersonal skills, self-motivation, and the drive to thrive in a fast-paced environment where timelines can often be unpredictable

In addition, we welcome:

o   Up to 2 years of professional work experience in a related role

o   Experience working with Stata or R

o   Exposure to machine learning and statistics

o   Eagerness to learn and grow in a collaborative, multidisciplinary team

If you’re excited about this role but your experience doesn’t align perfectly with every requirement, we encourage you to apply anyway. You may be exactly who we’re looking for.

 WHAT’S IN IT FOR YOU

—  Competitive compensation. EUR 33,830 – EUR 40,000 annual gross salary, commensurate with experience, plus 23 days of annual leave. Salaries are pegged against Laterite’s pay matrix and grades are reviewed every 12 months.

—  Professional growth. Laterite provides an annual learning budget of up to USD 1,000 per person and 10 days of time off for professional learning each year.

—  Flexibility. You can work from home a couple of days per week and from a remote location of your choice for up to 6 weeks per year. Our office is in the heart of Amsterdam, about a fifteen-minute walk from Amsterdam Centraal Station.