By continuing to browse this site, you agree to our use of cookies. Read our privacy policy

Internship - Software Developer, Office of Innovation

  • Organization: UNICEF - United Nations Children’s Fund
  • Location:
  • Grade: Internship - Internship
  • Occupational Groups:
    • Information Technology and Computer Science
    • Innovation
    • Innovations for Sustainable Development
  • Closing Date: Closed

The intern will contribute to Magic Box, an open-source platform intended to use real-time information to inform life-saving humanitarian responses to emergency situations.

UNICEF works in 190 countries and territories to protect the rights of every child. UNICEF has spent 70 years working to improve the lives of children and their families. Defending children's rights throughout their lives requires a global presence, aiming to produce results and understand their effects. UNICEF believes all children have a right to survive, thrive and fulfill their potential – to the benefit of a better world.

LOCATION:  New York (optional remotely)

DURATION:  between (minimum) 3 and (ideally) 6 months; 

Part-time internships can be considered, if the student needs to attend some courses.

BACKGROUND:

UNICEF has been innovating for children for 70 years. Innovations support the organization's 135+ country offices in finding solutions for the world's most vulnerable children. The UNICEF innovation work includes both policy and practice of innovation in UNICEF, and the larger UN. Innovation in UNICEF is defined as "doing something new or different that adds value. Innovation is a cross-sectoral function that enhances programme and development effectiveness as well as management and is guided in all contexts by UNICEF's Innovation Principles (http://www.unicefstories.org/principles/). UNICEF is engaged in testing and scaling up new partnerships, technologies, and collaborations in some of the world's most difficult operating environments.

In January 2016, the UNICEF established the Office of Innovation in order to strengthen its innovation functions and leverage the increasing opportunities across the organization.  The Office of Innovation unites:

  • The Global Innovation Centre (GIC): established in 2014, and focusing on Scale Up which looks at expanding the application of proven solutions from one to several countries and regions by UNICEF and partners
  • Ventures which looks at investing in new solutions with a 0-2 year horizon
  • Futures: focusing on what is coming in the 2-5 year horizon and works with big tech partners

With $12m available in funding for the Innovation Fund, the Office of Innovation is scaling up investments significantly over the course of 2017. We invest in solutions that can impact the lives of the most vulnerable children. We find these solutions clustered around $100 billion industries like blockchain, artificial intelligence, UAVs, data science

SCOPE OF WORK:

You will contribute to Magic Box, an open-source platform intended to use real-time information to inform life-saving humanitarian responses to emergency situations. It's composed of multiple github repositories designed to ingest, aggregate, and serve data, as well as generate insights based on formulas and algorithms provided by the data science team.

For more information, please see:

Activities:

  • Create pipelines to ingest and combine new datasets. Datasets can be open or provided by private sector partners and represent mobility, behavior and weather.
  • Add new endpoints to an API that serves the data
  • Prototype web based UIs to feature the data.

EXPECTED/KEY DELIVERABLES:

  • Public github repositories with test coverage and pre-commit hooks to run tests and lint.

CONDITIONS:

  • Interns must fund themselves for their travel to the duty station, their accomodation and living expenses at the duty station during the internship. A monthly stipend will be paid by UNICEF, unless interns already receive stipends from other sources.
  • UNICEF accepts no responsibility for the medical insurance of the intern or cost arising from accidents and illness incurred during the internship. Interns have to demonstrate a proof of medical and accidental death insurance prior to the beginning of work.
  • Interns are personally responsible for obtaining necessary visa covering the entire period of their internship.
  • Intern is expected to provide his/her own laptop and if working remotely intern must have access to internet connection

QUALIFICATION REQUIREMENTS:

  • Be enrolled in an undergraduate or graduate degree programme in computer science, or have graduated within the past two years.
  • Excellent academic performance, as demonstrated by academic records.
  • Demonstrated interest in Innovation and Technology for development.
  • Experience in some of the following:
    • SQL/NoSQL
    • node.js
    • react + redux
    • linux
    • mocha / spec
    • spark
    • docker
    • bootstrap or material design lite

 Languages

Fluency in English, knowledge of another official UN language is an asset.

This vacancy is now closed.
However, we have found similar vacancies for you: