Web Development Expert

The Consultant will deliver and hand over the CITES.ORG systems set out below — built to be maintained by CITES editors without ongoing developer support — improve the website’s design and enquiry handling, and keep CITES.ORG secure, up to date and supported throughout the contract.

HOME BASED

14 Months

The United Nations Environment Programme (UN Environment) is the leading global environmental authority that sets the global environmental agenda, promotes the coherent implementation of the environmental dimension of sustainable development within the United Nations system and serves as an authoritative advocate for the global environment. The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) is an international agreement between states. It aims to ensure that international trade in specimens of wild animals and plants does not threaten their survival (www.cites.org). The CITES Secretariat is administered by UN Environment and is located at the Geneva duty station. This assignment is part of the CITES Secretariat's implementation of the programme of work of the CITES Parties. The consultant will undertake tasks related to the delivery, maintenance, improvement and support of CITES.ORG systems required by Conference of the Parties (CoP) mandates and Secretariat priorities — including Party submission and review facilities with searchable publication, public registers and a captive-bred trade review tracker, a unified register management system with self-service, automation, website design improvements, a guided-enquiry support system, and routine maintenance and enhancements — over an initial 12-month period. The work requires specialist Drupal web development skills — configuration-first development, role-based access control, searchable registers and self-service workflows, data import/integration, and site maintenance — that are not available in-house within the required timeframe. Delivering it under one contract, on a shared set of reusable building blocks, keeps the systems consistent, avoids duplicated effort, and provides continuity of web development support to the Secretariat. Under the overall supervision of the CITES Secretary-General and the direct supervision of the Information Systems Officer, Outreach and Projects Unit, the Consultant will perform the following tasks, grouped by workstream. • Workstream A — Party submission and review mechanism (Decisions 20.159(b), 20.149, 20.160): Design, build and hand over a reusable, access-controlled facility for Parties to submit information and for the Secretariat to review, moderate and publish it, with searchable publication. Delivers the shared building blocks reused by other workstreams. • Workstream B — Decisions 20.136–139 web pages and register (Decision 20.137): Build and publish the two thematic sections (diagnostic samples; musical instruments) with official texts, guidance and document links, and a maintainable register of Parties’ existing arrangements. • Workstream C — Captive-bred trade review tracking system (Resolution Conf. 17.7): Build a web-based record and tracking system for the captive-bred trade review (case and review-event records, status workflow, access control, dashboards and reports), migrating the current spreadsheet, with links to the CITES Trade Database and Species+ via their APIs. Provision for related species records (e.g. an endemic-species register/tracker) reusing the same building blocks, where required (scope to be confirmed). . • Workstream D — Unified Register Management System — four public registers (self-service): Build one shared system for the four public registers (nurseries; captive-breeding operations; scientific institutions; caviar exporters), reusing the existing institution data model and public Views; add a public access-request form, Secretariat-approved scoped external user accounts, an external submitter dashboard and a Secretariat dashboard, and an institution-record moderation workflow (Draft → Submitted → Under review → Revision requested → Approved/Published → Rejected → Archived), with only approved records shown publicly. • Workstream E — Automation and Party self-service of information resources (national contacts and registers): Automate routine/legacy maintenance tasks and enable Parties to self-update their own information resources — in particular national contacts and register entries — reusing the register management workflow and access model above, reducing manual Secretariat data entry while preserving validation, review, approval and audit. • Workstream F — Website improvements and redesign (news pages, homepage, menu structure): Deliver an improved design and information architecture for CITES.ORG: a new design for the news pages and homepage, and a revised main menu structure, conforming to existing templates and accessibility practice; scope, agree, build in staging and deploy to production through the standard process. • Workstream G — Guided Enquiry / AI-assisted support system (info@cites.org and phone queries): Build a guided enquiry system on CITES.ORG: a branching decision-tree Q&A in English, French and Spanish that gives tailored answers and links to national contacts and guidance; provide an editor backend to create/edit questions, answers, branching logic and translations without code; and provide a self-service-first escalation that, only when unresolved, captures the enquiry (with the user’s decision path) via a structured form and routes it to the appropriate Secretariat unit via a dashboard (ticketing), with spam protection. • Workstream H — CITES.ORG maintenance: Routine maintenance of the CITES.ORG Drupal instance: core and module updates and security patches, health/backup monitoring, bug fixes and performance; report vulnerabilities/incidents to UNICC and support resolution. • Workstream I — Minor CITES.ORG enhancements: Small design and functionality improvements prioritised by the Secretariat, scoped and delivered through the standard staging-to-production process.

Education Qualifications: An advanced university degree in computer science, information systems or a related field is required. A first-level degree (Bachelor's degree or equivalent) in the specified fields of studies with two additional years of relevant work experience may be accepted in lieu of the advanced university degree. Work Experience: A minimum of two (2) years of progressively responsible experience in web development, information systems or software development, including substantial hands-on Drupal full-stack development (Drupal 7–11) is required. Demonstrated technical leadership on web projects — requirements gathering and management, writing functional specifications, coordinating a development team, and direct client communication is required. Experience in live-site maintenance and operations — core/module patching, security updates, backups and performance — with deployment to managed hosting using CI/CD and containerized workflows (Docker; Ansible / Jenkins / GitHub Actions) is required. Experience in third-party data integration and content migration via APIs (REST/OData/SOAP; e.g. Species+) and database/query work (SQL or equivalent) is required Experience developing and maintaining UN or MEA Drupal portals, and large-site revamps/migrations (e.g. to Drupal 9/10) is desirable Experience in building secure national/Party reporting or workspace tools using Drupal, including active contribution to the Drupal community in areas such as search indexing, migration or role-based security, and developing data visualisation dashboards using Highcharts or equivalent tools is desirable Prior experience with the UN system and/or public-facing UN websites, is desirable. Language: English, French and Spanish are the working languages of the CITES Secretariat. For the post advertised, fluency in spoken and written English is required. Knowledge of French or Spanish is desirable.

Not available.

Not available.

THE UNITED NATIONS DOES NOT CHARGE A FEE AT ANY STAGE OF THE RECRUITMENT PROCESS (APPLICATION, INTERVIEW MEETING, PROCESSING, OR TRAINING). THE UNITED NATIONS DOES NOT CONCERN ITSELF WITH INFORMATION ON APPLICANTS’ BANK ACCOUNTS.