ICT Specialist - Data Analysis (Retainer, multiple positions), Multiple positions

UNOPS is an operational arm of the United Nations, supporting the successful implementation of its partners’ peacebuilding, humanitarian and development projects around the world. Our mission is to help people build better lives and countries achieve sustainable development.

UNOPS areas of expertise cover infrastructure, procurement, project management, financial management and human resources.

Working with us

UNOPS offers short- and long-term work opportunities in diverse and challenging environments across the globe. We are looking for creative, results-focused professionals with skills in a range of disciplines.

Diversity

With over 4,000 UNOPS personnel and approximately 7,000 personnel recruited on behalf of UNOPS partners spread across 80 countries, our workforce represents a wide range of nationalities and cultures. We promote a balanced, diverse workforce — a strength that helps us better understand and address our partners’ needs, and continually strive to improve our gender balance through initiatives and policies that encourage recruitment of qualified female candidates.

Work life harmonization

UNOPS values its people and recognizes the importance of balancing professional and personal demands.

The UNOPS Information Technology Group (ITG) unit is focused on innovation and harnessing cutting-edge technology to deliver solutions to UNOPS that truly address business needs.

Working with UNOPS IT Group is a unique opportunity to deliver systems to users around the world - making an impact on development and solving practical problems for the UNOPS workforce and thereby help people build better lives and countries achieve peace and sustainable development.

ITG’s goal is to provide greater effectiveness, efficiency, and differentiation to UNOPS products and services. UNOPS IT Group is responsible for architecting, designing, delivering, and managing all UNOPS IT infrastructure and business applications. The unit includes Enterprise Architects, Business Analysts, Solutions Designers, Developers and QA Testers from all around the world who are based primarily in Denmark and Thailand.

UNOPS is building a cadre of data specialists who can be called upon to support a variety of different data related projects. Projects could range from examining complex datasets to assessing quality and finding trends, to building reports in SQL leveraging data in BigQuery, to building a database structure for reporting and analysis, to developing a dashboard for a field office or project. 

Ideal candidates are expected to demonstrate both technical expertise and business acumen. They won’t necessarily be experts in procurement, finance, HR, partnerships or project management, but they have the ability to pick up a project in any of these fields, then produce and communicate accurate, cohesive analysis and data products. They will also help to build data literacy in the organization by sharing their knowledge and expertise.

In addition to ICT Specialist - Data Analysis, UNOPS is also advertising for ICT Analysts - Data Analysis, who are expected to have slightly less experience than ICT Specialist - Data Analysis. We expect ICT Specialist - Data Analysis to be involved in more advanced projects, which may involve the conception of data initiatives through to development, implementation, training and evaluation, and managing such projects with limited direction.

This retainer position falls under the UNOPS Corporate retainer pool, which is administered by the Portfolio Support (PS) team within the Implementation Practices and Standards (IPS).

This is a home-based assignment, which may involve travel to various locations, including to remote or post-conflict environments. The functions/responsibilities/key results of this job description are generic and may not always be applicable, nor be comprehensive, for all missions under this job title. The specific tasks and deliverables for each retainer assignment) may vary and will be detailed in the terms of reference developed for each assignment by the requesting office/unit.

All retainer assignments will be handled via the UNOPS online retainer management tool , including the request for the retainer’s services and the provision of feedback for each assignment. 

• Support the design, development, testing, implementation and documentation of data tools, including dashboards and reports

• Work with projects, programs, and/or offices to identify data analysis and visualisation needs, including as part of engagement design and project and procurement planning and implementation

• Provide technical advice on leading practices in data collection, structuring, quality management, analysis and presentation, and their intersection with policies, processes and project implementation

• Design, conduct, document and present analyses on complex and connected data, proposing and testing hypotheses, deriving statistics, trends and insights, and proposing improvements to policies, processes and projects

• Conduct rigorous data quality analysis and testing of data sources and tools

• Other related technical and analysis support as required

• Gather and document user requirements and expectations, reporting requirements, design preferences, and quality criteria

• Develop and implement BigQuery databases, tables and SQL queries to store, structure, compare and extract data, as well as exploiting other tools within Google Cloud Service as appropriate

• Design processes and tools to assure ongoing quality and integrity of data

• Lead the design, development, testing, implementation and documentation of data tools, including dashboards and reports

• Produce detailed concept designs and specifications for consultation and sign off, using a range of analysis and statistical techniques to provide insight into the functioning and management of a project or program

• Develop, test and implement, including quality assurance of the resulting tools and underlying datasources

• Present to project stakeholders, revising and updating as necessary based on feedback from users and stakeholders

• Document key decisions made in development and provide documentation to project stakeholders on how to use and maintain

• Liaise with ITG personnel to ensure all developed tools are:

• compliant with UNOPS data security and governance policies

• consistent with UNOPS ITG standardised approaches to developing SQL queries and nomenclature

• professionally designed and implementing following standard UNOPS and/or project templates and branding guidance

• implemented in such a way that the business unit retains ownership of dashboards and data sources at the end of the assignment

• Develop and deliver capability development programs and documentation for personnel and key users on data tools, including in their use and ongoing maintenance

• Provide internal training as required on skills and technologies within the scope of experience of the consultant, including on dashboard development

• Assist with ongoing maintenance of data tools, including updating data sources, implementing improvements and providing other ad-hoc support as required

• Candidates should demonstrate a combination of relevant academic credentials and/or industry certifications as well as qualifying experience 

  • Candidates with a high school or secondary school diploma (minimum requirement) should demonstrate a minimum 11 years of relevant work experience

  • Candidates with a technical or professional diploma should demonstrate a minimum 9 years of relevant work experience

  • Candidates with a Bachelor’s degree or equivalent  should demonstrate a minimum 7 years of relevant work experience

  • Candidates with a PhD or Master’s degree or equivalent should demonstrate a minimum 5 years of relevant work experience

• Academic qualifications and/or certifications should have a strong data science component and be in the field of Statistics, Mathematics, Data Science, Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering, Economics or equivalent

Contract type: Individual Contractor Agreement (ICA) Contract level: IICA 2
Contract duration: 1 year (with possibility of extension subject to business needs and satisfactory performance)

• Please note that the closing date is midnight Copenhagen time
• Applications received after the closing date will not be considered.
• Only those candidates that are short-listed for interviews will be notified.
• Qualified female candidates are strongly encouraged to apply.
• UNOPS seeks to reasonably accommodate candidates with special needs, upon request.
• Work life harmonization - UNOPS values its people and recognizes the importance of balancing professional and personal demands. We have a progressive policy on work-life harmonization and offer several flexible working options. This policy applies to UNOPS personnel on all contract types
• For staff positions only, UNOPS reserves the right to appoint a candidate at a lower level than the advertised level of the post
• For retainer contracts, you must complete a few Mandatory Courses (around 4 hours) in your own time, before providing services to UNOPS.
• The incumbent is responsible to abide by security policies, administrative instructions, plans and procedures of the UN Security Management System and that of UNOPS.  

It is the policy of UNOPS to conduct background checks on all potential recruits/interns. Recruitment/internship in UNOPS is contingent on the results of such checks.

Additional information

• A retainer Individual Contractor Agreement (ICA) is issued for a period of time during which the services of the individual contractor may be required intermittently.
• A retainer ICA will specify a unit price (e.g. amount per day actually worked). For budgetary purposes, a monetary limit will be specified at the time the ICA is awarded and issued.
• UNOPS shall have no obligation to obtain any minimum quantity of Services from the Individual Contractor during the duration of the retainer ICA.
• Payment will be made only after completion of work (if any) or reaching agreed milestones.
• A retainer ICA does not accord any exclusivity to the Individual Contractor with respect to the Services listed in the job description. UNOPS shall have no limitation on its right to obtain Services of the same kind from any other source at any time.
• UNOPS Individual Contractors must comply with the standards of conduct required of a UN civil servant, when carrying out their official UNOPS responsibilities and also all other times. This includes the standards of conduct set forth in the UN Secretary-General’s Bulletin of 9 October 2003 entitled “Special Measures for Protection from Sexual Exploitation and Sexual Abuse” (ST/SGB/2003/13) and the UN Secretary-General’s Bulletin of 18 June 2002 entitled "Regulations Governing the Status, Basic Rights and Duties of Officials other than Secretariat Officials, and Experts on Mission" (ST/SGB/2002/9) as they may be amended from time to time.
• UNOPS Individual Contractors must comply with all applicable UNOPS policies and instructions. This includes the obligation to declare any outside activity that could result in an actual or perceived conflict with the interests of the UN; as well as to refrain from using information gained through the UNOPS Individual Contractor Agreement contract for the Individual Contractor’s own purposes or to help a third party (unless the information is already in the public domain), in particular but not only in relation to procurement of works, goods and services.
• UNOPS Individual Contractors must abide by UN safety and security policies, instructions, directives, plans and procedures of the UN Security Management System and that of UNOPS.
• The standard terms and conditions of the UNOPS ICA as of the present date can be found at https://content.unops.org/HR-Documents/ICA_contract/Annex-A-ENGLISH.pdf Given the nature of this position, particular attention should be given to section 11 on Confidentiality.