Description

WBG Pioneers, the World Bank Group’s Internship Program, offers undergraduate and postgraduate students a high impact learning experience at the heart of global development. Participants gain hands on experience in a diverse and dynamic environment, contribute fresh perspectives and innovative ideas, and connect with international professionals working to end poverty on a livable planet.

WBG Pioneer

Background/Organizational Context

Our team (Financial Services Sector/Financial Inclusion) belongs to ‘the Knowledge Bank’—a part of the World Bank Group that designs and delivers ‘scalable solutions’: products or policies that help low- and middle-income countries address their most urgent development challenges. Our focus is on financial inclusion of individuals and businesses (micro, small and medium enterprises—MSMEs) and enabling digital financial services (DFS). To get there, we facilitate legal and regulatory reforms, and help countries set up their ‘financial infrastructures’: payment, clearing and settlement systems, as well as credit and collateral registries.

We work globally and focus on our field of expertise rather than on any particular country or region. Because of that, many of our colleagues find themselves working with governments or regulators from many different places. It is not unusual to be simultaneously working on projects in, for example, North Africa and Latin America.

Providing confidential, impartial, and evidence-based advice to central banks and other financial sector regulators around the world is the most important part of our work. However, we also spend time on developing and managing databases related to financial inclusion and infrastructure, helping other World Bank Group colleagues if they need our expertise in their projects, conducting research on financial inclusion and representing the World Bank Group at global standard-setting bodies such as the Financial Stability Board or the Bank for International Settlements.

Duties and Responsibilities

The intern will be helping us with day-to-day data analyst work and have the opportunity to experience how we work with clients by attending meetings and helping prepare presentations and briefs. They will also be expected to:

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  Design and execute creative strategies to find and acquire relevant data, including web scraping, integrating APIs, use of administrative datasets, survey data and social media.

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  Develop code in Stata, R, or Python to analyze data and automate workflows.

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  Draft sections of reports and presentations based on project work.

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  Support the use and integration of LLMs for drafting, coding, and handling complex data problems, including building agentic workflows, connecting models to data via protocols like MCP, and integrating AI into research.

In addition to helping with ad-hoc data work, they will pursue a research or operational project, where they will be expected to take the leading role and try to deliver actionable insights with minimal supervision. The projects envisioned for the interns in the winter cycle include:

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  Integrating our team’s data with a corporate AI platform. This will require proactively reaching out to colleagues across the team who maintain different datasets and, for example, aligning those dataset’s formats with what is required by the Model Context Protocol server used by the World Bank Group-wide platform. The intern may also have to think creatively about how to make retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) work with data formats that are not easy to ingest, or are inefficient with their use of tokens (from PowerBI dashboards to poor-quality scanned PDFs).

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  Using social media data on-chain records to find information about the use of cryptocurrencies for payments, and derive additional insights from it (for example, estimate unofficial exchange rates).

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  Design workflow for AI-assisted review of various documents—for example, procurement documentation, payment scheme rules, or project proposals.

We are also open to discussing other projects—we particularly encourage applications from students whose honors/graduation theses or other university research projects are related to our team’s remit.

Selection Criteria

• Candidates must be currently in the final year of an undergraduate program.

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  Candidates must have 0–6 years of relevant professional experience
  

• Academic background in social sciences (economics, finance, international relations, public policy, political science) or STEM fields. Other majors may be suitable, but enthusiasm and aptitude for data-driven work are essential. Demonstrated interest in development work and the World Bank Group’s mission

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  Proficiency in statistical analysis tools (R, Stata, Python) and familiarity with large language models, demonstrated by links to school projects, GitHub profile, or other contributions.

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  Interest in payments or financial inclusion and eagerness to learn; shortlisted candidates are expected to have reviewed relevant publications at worldbank.org/financialinclusion and worldbank.org/paymentsystems.

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  Strong writing skills in English. Fluency in other languages is an advantage.

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  Ability to work effectively with people from diverse backgrounds and across varied settings, demonstrating respect, adaptability, and thoughtful engagement in professional and field contexts. Strong organizational skills and ability to manage multiple priorities within tight deadlines

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  Proficiency in English; additional languages may be required depending on the role.

Note: Please limit your applications to a maximum of three positions. Applications exceeding this limit will not be considered.

WBG Culture Attributes:
1. Sense of urgency: Anticipate and quickly respond to the needs of internal and external stakeholders.
2. Thoughtful risk-taking: Challenge the status quo and push boundaries to achieve greater impact.
3. Empowerment and accountability: Empower yourself and others to act and hold each other accountable for results.

The World Bank Group values diversity and encourages all qualified candidates who are nationals of World Bank Group member countries to apply, regardless of gender, gender identity, religion, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or disability. Sub-Saharan African nationals, Caribbean nationals, and female candidates are strongly encouraged to apply.