Consultancy - Windows DirectAccess, ICTD New York

UNICEF's ICT Division requires consulting services to perform a detailed review of DirectAccess deployment and supporting infrastructure.

If you are a committed, creative professional and are passionate about making a lasting difference for children, the world's leading children's rights organization would like to hear from you.

For 70 years, UNICEF has been working on the ground in 190 countries and territories to promote children's survival, protection and development. The world's largest provider of vaccines for developing countries, UNICEF supports child health and nutrition, good water and sanitation, quality basic education for all boys and girls, and the protection of children from violence, exploitation, and AIDS. UNICEF is funded entirely by the voluntary contributions of individuals, businesses, foundations and governments.

Purpose of the Assignment

UNICEF's ICT Division requires consulting services to perform a detailed review of DirectAccess deployment and supporting infrastructure. Information gathered during the assessment will be used to provide recommendations for any changes required to maintain the highest levels of availability and to conform to current security and implementation best practices. Additionally, causes of slow downloads will be investigated. Recommendations and assistance will be provided for migrating the solution to Azure in the future.

This consultancy will be either based at UNICEF’s New York Headquarters or off-shore. The selected candidate will report to a section manager and work within a team dedicated to this initiative within UNICEF. 

Assignment Tasks

1. Review the current DirectAccess implementation for UNICEF Service Centers globally;
2. Assess DirectAccess supporting infrastructure including Active Directory, DNS, PKI, SSL/TLS configuration, and load balancers;
3. Collect and analyze network and performance data;
4. Evaluate existing deployment and compare to current implementation best practices;
5. Identify potential deployment issues and provide remediate options;
6. Provide guidance for maintaining and supporting a secure, robust, and highly available DirectAccess solution using Global Server Load Balancing (GSLB);
7. Investigate slowness associated with file download from on-premises resources using DirectAccess and TCP window sizing limitation and remedies;
8. Review the current DirectAccess Azure Proof of Concept and identify potential performance enhancement;
9. Discuss the Azure File sharing scenarios for Direct Access users;
10. Discuss the best practices for implementing ISATAP for remote user support and shortfall;
11. Asses the possibility to implement IPv6 DirectAccess once service is available for UNICEF network backbone;
12. Assist with the design of a DirectAccess infrastructure hosted in Azure;
13. Provide implementation services for DirectAccess deployment in Azure, if necessary.

Qualifications of Successful Candidate

Years of relevant experience

1. 6+ years of experience implementing DirectAccess at enterprise level and remote access VPN, Hyper-V and Hyper-V Virtual Networking, PKI, Windows Core Networking and Infrastructure
2. 3+ years of experience of cloud infrastructure Microsoft Azure, Azure virtual networking and Amazon Web Service
3. In depth knowledge on troubleshooting TCP/IP Protocol issues.

Please indicate your ability, availability and daily/monthly rate (in US$) to undertake the terms of reference above (including travel and daily subsistence allowance, if applicable).  Applications submitted without a daily/monthly rate will not be considered. This assignment has an expected duration of 120 working hours. 

UNICEF is committed to diversity and inclusion within its workforce, and encourages qualified female and male candidates from all national, religious and ethnic backgrounds, including persons living with disabilities, to apply to become a part of our organisation.