Geneva & Vienna · open to data & AI roles

Daniel Navarro · Data Scientist & AI Engineer, GenevaAI that understands people, not just data.

I build RAG and LLM systems, data pipelines and quantitative evidence for international organisations and industry. An anthropologist turned data scientist, I work where machine learning meets public policy and human behaviour.

Data Engineer & BI Consultant, Instrumental Partners Information Management, UN OCHA MA Public Policy, CEU
1M+procurement contracts structured into a RAG and graph knowledge base
25%improvement over baseline in geospatial ML for Parkinson's research
9,300EU cooperation files referenced, status predicted at ~90% accuracy
5countries worked in: Switzerland, Austria, Colombia, El Salvador, Dominican Republic

About

Three lenses, one toolkit.

Most data problems are people problems in disguise. I combine production-minded engineering with the methods of a policy analyst and the curiosity of an anthropologist, so the systems I build answer the question that actually matters. I work end to end, from scraping and ETL to models, dashboards and the briefing that turns them into decisions.

01 / Engineering

Applied AI & data engineering

Retrieval-augmented generation, graph and vector databases, embeddings and automated reporting, shipped in Docker on Azure and AWS. I use agentic coding tools such as Claude Code to move from prototype to working system quickly.

  • RAG
  • LLMs
  • Knowledge graphs
  • ETL
  • Docker
  • Azure
02 / Evidence

Quantitative policy analysis

Impact evaluation, regression and comparative analysis, time-series forecasting and procurement analytics. Trained at CEU in Vienna, applied with the World Bank, the OAS and the EU.

  • Impact evaluation
  • R
  • Econometrics
  • Forecasting
  • MEAL
03 / People

Human behaviour & society

An anthropology degree, first in class, and fieldwork on armed conflict, elections and migration. It taught me that evidence should come from both data and people's testimonies, and to explain results to engineers, doctors and diplomats alike.

  • NLP
  • Discourse analysis
  • Mixed methods
  • Conflict & peace

Selected work

Systems, models & evidence.

A selection of projects across AI engineering, data science and policy research. Client work is described without confidential names or data.

Humanitarian AI · 2026UN OCHA

Grounded AI report generation for humanitarian crises

An automated reporting engine, not a chatbot. From a standard template and user inputs it pulls news and API data, builds a fact and relationship graph of events, people and organisations, and drafts reports grounded in traceable sources. Shipped with a containerised UI for Azure.

  • NLP
  • Graph DB
  • Vector DB
  • Embeddings
  • Docker
  • Azure

Outcome: used in crisis reporting, including the 2026 Venezuela earthquake; country offices trained on RAG-based reporting.

Read the case study →
Market intelligence · 2025–nowConsultancy

Procurement intelligence platform with RAG and ML

End-to-end system that scrapes, cleans and structures public procurement data at scale, then feeds a RAG and graph knowledge base for competitor reporting, BI dashboards and pricing and bidding models inside a custom CRM, for manufacturing and security-sector clients.

  • Python
  • Scraping
  • ETL
  • SQLite
  • Preset
  • ML
  • Apollo API

Scale: 1M+ contracts and 8k+ competitors structured.

Read the case study →
MA thesis · 2026CEU

(I'm)Paz Total: did Colombia's peace policy reduce violence?

A monthly panel built from National Police records and ACLED events for Buenaventura, Arauca and Tumaco, estimated with two-way fixed effects and event studies, plus robustness checks and QGIS maps.

  • Causal inference
  • TWFE
  • Event study
  • R
  • ACLED

Finding: the onset of peace talks is linked to more monthly violence, led by political violence.

Code on GitHub →
Procurement analytics · 2025CEU

Corruption-risk analytics for Rail Baltica

With Paula Biša: a contract-level Corruption Risk Index from red-flag indicators validated by logistic regression, comparing the Latvian implementer of Rail Baltica with the rest of the national market on TED data, 2018 to 2023.

  • Red flags
  • Logistic regression
  • TED data
  • R

Finding: no sign of unusually high risk overall; the implementer sits within, and partly below, market norms.

Code & deck on GitHub →
NLP · 2026CEU

Migration discourse in the Dominican Republic

Seeded and unseeded LDA, DBSCAN and a Spanish transformer sentiment model on 43 presidential speeches and ~8,800 Reddit sentences. Builds on earlier NLP work at the OAS in Santo Domingo.

10.6 pp more negative affect in migration sentences on Reddit, 4.6 pp in speeches.

Code on GitHub →
Research · 2025–26World Bank / CEU

Educational inequality across the Balkans & Europe

Led the CEU workstream: cleaned and merged international TIMSS data and ran survey-weighted regression and comparative analysis of socio-economic and parental-investment gaps.

  • TIMSS
  • Survey weights
  • Regression
Forecasting · 2024–25Independent

Air-quality & climate forecasting from satellites

ETL pipelines on Copernicus and Sentinel data feeding ARIMA, XGBoost and NARX time-series models, with Dash, Plotly and Power BI dashboards for monitoring.

  • Time series
  • XGBoost
  • Copernicus
  • Dash
Health research · 2023–25Universidad Icesi

Geospatial ML for Parkinson's disease

Machine learning and deep learning linking geographic and environmental attributes to disease progression, presented to doctors, engineers and designers.

25% improvement over baseline findings.

Publication · 2025Revista Geographia

Metropolitan electoral behaviour in Cali

k-means clustering shows how voting patterns cross municipal boundaries. Peer-reviewed article with Milanese.

  • Clustering
  • GIS
  • Elections
Policy briefCali

Blackpolis: racial inequality in Cali

Census and CaliEnDatos data, regression and neighbourhood clustering turned into a policy brief with three costed options on employment and education gaps for Afro-Colombian communities.

Brief on GitHub →

◆ Code samples and notebooks live on GitHub.

Experience

Building since 2018, professionally since 2023.

From research labs in Cali to multilateral institutions and private-sector clients, often working in parallel with full-time study.

  1. Data Engineer & BI Consultant

    Instrumental Partners LLC · Geneva, remote

    RAG and graph knowledge base, scraping and ETL over 1M+ federal procurement contracts, BI dashboards, pricing and bidding ML and Apollo API enrichment in a custom CRM. Data architecture from ERDs to user flows.

  2. Information Management Intern

    UN OCHA · Geneva

    Built an automated, graph-grounded AI reporting system with a Docker UI for Azure; trained country offices on RAG and LLM reporting; supported needs analysis and mapping of affected populations during earthquake responses.

  3. Researcher, Educational Inequality

    World Bank / CEU · Vienna

    Led the CEU research workstream, liaised with World Bank counterparts and ran regression-based comparative analysis on TIMSS data.

  4. Independent Consultant, Data Science & GIS

    Independent · Bogotá

    Dashboards for data storytelling, satellite-based forecasting models and GeoJSON datasets for radio coverage, environmental monitoring and infrastructure planning.

  5. Administrative Assistant / Archivist

    EU Delegation in Colombia · Bogotá

    Reorganised 20 years of cooperation archives (about 8 tons, 9,300 files), built Excel automation and met 100% of the processing goal.

  6. Research Assistant / Data Analyst

    I2T Laboratory, Universidad Icesi · Remote

    ML and deep learning on geospatial health data; owned the analysis pipeline from data quality to reproducibility.

  7. Electoral Observer & National Office Intern

    Organization of American States · El Salvador, Dominican Republic

    Observed the 2024 Salvadoran elections with a legal and gender focus; NLP research on migration discourse and support to high-level field missions.

  8. Undergraduate Research Assistant

    SegLab, Universidad Icesi · Cali

    Security and peacebuilding research, geospatial dashboards in QGIS and Power BI, and co-authored policy papers.

Toolkit

What I work with.

Python and SQL every day, R for econometrics, and a cloud and container stack to put things in front of users.

AI & ML

  • RAG pipelines
  • LLMs, Hugging Face
  • Graph & vector DBs
  • Embeddings
  • scikit-learn, XGBoost
  • Deep learning
  • NLP

Data engineering

  • Python, pandas
  • SQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite
  • ETL, scraping, APIs
  • Docker, Azure, AWS
  • Data architecture
  • Git, Claude Code

Analysis & BI

  • Impact evaluation
  • R / RStudio
  • Time series
  • Power BI, Preset
  • Dash, Plotly
  • Excel automation

Domains

  • Humanitarian information
  • Public procurement
  • Peace & security
  • Education & health
  • Environment, GIS
  • Elections & migration

Education

Trained in both worlds.

MA in Public Policy, Quantitative Policy Analysis

Central European University, Vienna. Impact evaluation, text analysis and NLP, procurement analytics, data visualisation.

BA in Anthropology, Magna Cum Laude

Universidad Icesi, Cali. First in class, Dean's List. Thesis on civilian and guerrilla interaction in Urabá.

Erasmus exchange, Area & Global Studies

University of Turin, Italy.

Languages

SpanishNative
EnglishC1 · IELTS 8
ItalianB1
FrenchA2

Recognition & publications

1st Place, TechPolítica Hackathon

FLACSO Ecuador, 2nd edition.

Beyond municipal boundaries

Milanese & Navarro (2025), Revista Geographia. Plus contributions to SegLab policy papers on security, peace and the pandemic.

Certifications

MEAL · Satellite image processing · Project planning & evaluation in health research

Contact

Let's build something useful.

Hiring for a data scientist, AI or data engineer in Geneva, Lausanne, Vienna or remote? I'm happy to talk about roles, projects and collaborations. I can work in Austria without visa sponsorship.

GenevaLausanne · VaudZurichViennaRemote / hybrid