Application Development (various profiles)

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• FAO is committed to achieving workforce diversity in terms of gender, nationality, background, and culture
• Qualified female applicants, qualified nationals of non-and under-represented member nations, and person with disabilities are encouraged to apply
• Everyone who works for FAO is required to adhere to the highest standards of integrity and professional conduct and to uphold our values. FAO has a zero-tolerance policy on conduct that is incompatible with the aims and objectives of the United Nations and FAO, including sexual exploitation and abuse, sexual harassment, abuse of authority, and discrimination
• All selected candidates, therefore, will undergo rigorous reference and background checks
• All applications will be treated with the strictest confidentiality
• The incumbent may be re-assigned to different activities and/or duty stations depending on the evolving needs of the Organization

Organizational Setting

The Information Technology Division (CSI) is responsible for all IT activities within the Organization. CSI performs on behalf of the Organization the following critical roles: defining FAO IT policies and providing strategic advice on IT architecture and standards, governance, policy and operational matters while monitoring organizational compliance; defining the mechanisms for managing FAO's information and data; protecting FAO's information assets and ensuring confidentiality, integrity and availability; ensuring provision of IT services that are core for the Organization's global operations and supporting the information and business processes; coordinating organization-wide IT activities in order to reduce duplication and fragmentation and to increase integration of information data, systems and platforms, mobilizing IT resources from across the Organization.

Fighting against hunger requires the best and most innovative software developers, committed to change the world for the most vulnerable people. The consultant has to be comfortable working under high pressure in a rapid-changing environment, being a self-learner and independent person. Reporting Lines The Software Developer reports to a software development technical team leader under the overall direction of the Senior Software Development Officer.

Reporting Lines

Depending on the role assigned, the incumbent will report to the Senior Software Development Officer, or the Project Lead.

Technical Focus

The incumbent will contribute to application development in one of FAO’s IT development and innovation teams, developing solutions using the latest technologies and mainstreaming their adoption, working in one of 3 roles:

• Application Development Lead
• Application developer
• Project & Programme support to application development

Candidates will have concrete experience and passion for one or more of the following specialisations and/or technologies:

• Leading application development – leading a team of software developers in delivering solutions using agile approaches and being responsible for reporting progress to stakeholders.
• Programme and Project support – programme & project monitoring, budget management, resource management, reporting, hiring, coordinating workshops and events, portfolio management.
• UX/UI – Design, business models, success KPIs, human-centered design, story boarding and customer journeys, internationalization and multi-cultural interfaces, material-design.
• Mobile/Web/Front End AppDev – Flutter & Dart, Angular, React, PWA, Android Native
• Backend AppDev – Serverless Firebase/Amplify, Cloud/Lambda Functions, Cloud APIs, Java/Spring, Python, Flask, Django, NodeJS, RoR
• Data Engineering – Realtime, Internet of Things, BigData, Geospatial, ArcGis, ETL, Data Flow and Integration, Analytics, Predication Modelling and Machine Learning. Jupyter Notebooks, Python Pandas, Airflow/DataFlow, BigQuery, Cloud Composer, GEE, CKAN.
• Data Visualization/Analysis – Shiny, Tableau, PowerBI, Google Data Studio, CartoDB.
• Cloud DevOps – SDLC, Continuous Integration and Delivery (BitBucket Pipelines) - GCP/AWS Infrastructure as a Code, Terraform, SaaS solutions - InfoSec - Monitoring and Analytics of Performance, Stackdriver, Crashlytics and Usage.
• Geospatial Engineering - GIS applications, standards, protocols, data acquisition & processing, remote sensing, geospatial modelling.

Tasks and responsibilities

Depending on the profile, the incumbent will support, lead or execute the following duties with respect to information systems:

• Participate in an Agile software development team, building high quality and effective software products that deliver real solutions in the shortest time.

• Develop applications using SDLC methodologies such as CI/CD models and tools.

• Participate in design discussions, develop mock-ups and translate business requirements into technical tasks.

• Develop, test, debug and maintain applications; address systems performance issues and crashes as per operations requests when necessary.

• Ensure coherency and compliance with appropriate organizational standards in close collaboration with quality assurance (QA), information security (InfoSec) and user experience functions (UX).

CANDIDATES WILL BE ASSESSED AGAINST THE FOLLOWING

Minimum Requirements

For consultants: University degree or equivalent in Computer Science, IT engineering or Professional Software Engineer. Working knowledge of English, French or Spanish and limited knowledge of one of the other two or Arabic, Chinese, Russian.

- For PSAs: University Degree or equivalent technical experience in the subject. Working knowledge of English, French, Spanish, Arabic, Chinese or Russian.

- At least 1 year of professional experience working as an application developer, application development lead or project/programme support.

FAO Core Competencies

- Results Focus

- Teamwork

- Communication

- Building Effective Relationships

- Knowledge Sharing and Continuous Improvement

Technical/Functional Skills

- Self-learner and independent

- Demonstrable ability to implement solutions to complex problems in front end, back end and mobile platforms.

- Deep knowledge and skill in programming techniques, technologies and frameworks

- Experience in designing mobile & cloud first architectures

- Familiarity with defensive and secure programming techniques

- Knowledge of internet and web protocols and standards.

- Desirable knowledge of software development best practices including version and release management, continuous test, integration and delivery.

- Knowledge in test-driven development, agile methodologies, cloud architectures, APIs and/or DevOps; is desirable and could be a key differentiator.

- Ability to advise decision-makers on project management, financials and administrative issues.

- Ability to communicate effectively.

Please note that all candidates should adhere to FAO Values of Commitment to FAO, Respect for All and Integrity and Transparency