Consultancy: Software Developer, Office of Innovation (NYHQ or remote), 11.5 Months

The UNICEF Office of Innovation is seeking to hire several software developers to join the Software team for the open-source projects. Duration: 11.5 months. Duty Station: NYHQ or remote

UNICEF works in some of the world’s toughest places, to reach the world’s most disadvantaged children. To save their lives. To defend their rights. To help them fulfill their potential.

Across 190 countries and territories, we work for every child, everywhere, every day, to build a better world for everyone.

And we never give up.

For every child, innovate

UNICEF has a 70-year history of innovating for children. We believe that new approaches, partnerships and technologies that support realizing children’s rights are critical to improving their lives. The Office of Innovation is a creative, interactive, and agile team in UNICEF. We sit at a unique intersection, where an organization that works on huge global issues meets the startup thinking, the technology, and the partners that turn this energy into scalable solutions.

UNICEF's Office of Innovation creates opportunities for the world's children by focusing on where new markets can meet their vital needs. We do this by:

• Connecting youth communities (or more broadly -- anyone disconnected or under-served) to decision-makers, and to each other, to deliver informed, relevant and sustained programmes that build better, stronger futures for children.
• Provoking change for children through an entrepreneurial approach -- in a traditionally risk-averse field -- to harness rapidly moving innovations and apply them to serve the needs of all children.
• Creating new models of partnership that leverage core business values across the public, private and academic sectors in order to deliver fast, and lasting results for children.

The Office of Innovation specifically looks to form partnerships around frontier technologies (like drones and UAVs, blockchain, 21st century skills, urban technologies, new banking tools, wearables and sensors, or 3D-Printing) that exist at the intersection of $100 billion business markets and 1 billion person needs – and to identify how they can grow and scale profitably and inclusively.

OUR TEAM:

We're an interdisciplinary team around the world tasked with identifying, prototyping, and scaling new technologies and practices. With our partners, we focus on convening and collaborating on new and different solutions, low- and high-tech, through our Office’s global arms:

• UNICEF Futures – looks at the 2-5 year horizon to evaluate emerging and trending technologies (with an emphasis on digital), and to see how UNICEF can work with the private sector on doing better business while improving essential services for children.
• UNICEF Ventures – invests in early stage solutions that show great potential to positively impact children in the 0-2 year future (including the Venture Fund that invests in open source technology solutions from start-ups based in UNICEF’s programme countries.)
• UNICEF’s Global Innovation Center – identifies proven solutions that can be implemented at national scale in multiple countries – taking the ideas that help thousands in one country, bringing them to dozens of countries across multiple sectors, and impacting the lives of millions of children.

How can you make a difference?

We are looking to hire several software developers to join the Software team for the following open-source projects:

• You will create, and contribute to, open-source tools intended to use real-time information to inform life-saving humanitarian responses to emergency situations. Our github repositories host code designed to ingest, aggregate, and serve data, as well as generate insights based on formulas and algorithms provided by the data science team.
• You will develop applications to map schools and visualize their level of connectivity to the rest of the world. Other full stack applications you create will combine open and private sector data sets to help forecast, visualize and facilitate response to epidemic outbreaks and natural disasters. Please see:  (www.unicefstories.org/magicbox)
• You will contribute to the development and maintenance of open source software projects and systems that support country offices, while staying current with the latest technologies, plying them according to best practices and advising and supporting the Office of Innovation Ventures in topics related to software development.
• You will expand the UNICEF Innovation GitHub repository with open source applications that demonstrate the work of the data science team while iteratively prototyping. You will work with software partners (university internships, private sector partners, etc) on our projects.

To qualify as an advocate for every child you will have ……

• University degree (Bachelor's or higher) in Computer Science or equivalent work experience
• A minimum of two years of professional experience
• Javascript front-end frameworks (React / Redux, Angular, etc)
• Languages: node.js, ruby, python, bash
• Cloud services: Azure, AWS, etc
• Geospatial DBs, libraries and data structures
• Sql and NoSQL database systems
• Experience with git, pull requests, and continuous integration and deployment.
• Strong knowledge of data structures, algorithms, and run time optimization
• Experience with Hadoop based technologies e.g. Spark a plus
• Willingness to travel (sometimes on short notice) and develop software in the field, directly with end-users
• Open-source community active
• Fluency in English

Payment details and further considerations

• Monthly payment, based on monthly tasks and progress reports, approved upon monthly review with supervisor.
• Consultant is responsible for his own health insurance
• Consultant is eligible for standard DSA for all work-related travel
• Consultants are responsible for assuming costs for obtaining visas and travel insurance

Applications must include:

• Cover letter
• CV
• Links to previous work
• Please indicate your ability, availability and daily rate (in US$) to undertake the terms of reference above.  Applications submitted without a daily rate will not be considered.

UNICEF is committed to diversity and inclusion within its workforce, and encourages all candidates, irrespective of gender, nationality, religious and ethnic backgrounds, including persons living with disabilities, to apply to become a part of the organization.