Consultancy 12 months: Senior Full Stack Software Engineer, Office of Innovation (Giga), Barcelona, Spain

UNICEF/Giga seeks an experienced, creative, and passionate Senior Full Stack Software Engineer to join Giga. Giga is a joint initiative between UNICEF and ITU, with a specific goal to connect every school to reliable internet, and every young person to information, opportunity and choice. To achieve this goal, we have been mapping schools' geolocations and their real-time internet quality, demographics and potential internet infrastructure around them across the globe. We have been doing this through products like Project Connect, Daily Check app, Machine learning for school detection and multiple data collaborations. The Senior Software Engineer will work with a multidisciplinary team to lead the development of these diverse range of products that will help us achieve the ambitious goal of connecting every school, and every community to the Internet.

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.

UNICEF and ITU have launched “Giga”, a new initiative to connect every school to the internet, and every young person to information, opportunity and choice. It also serves as a platform to create the infrastructure necessary to provide digital connectivity to an entire country, for every community, and for every citizen.

Providing connectivity to the world remains a challenge. According to the ITU, nearly 3.7 billion people remain unconnected from the internet, and by extension, unconnected to digital products and services that could dramatically improve their lives. Approximately 29% of 18-24-year-olds, most of them in Sub-Saharan Africa, do not have digital access (~360m people) and thereby lack access to the same information, opportunity and choice as their more-connected peers. Unless things change, a big part of this rapidly growing group of young people is in danger of being left behind, excluded from the modern digital world.
Closing the digital divide requires global cooperation, leadership, and innovation in finance and technology. Giga leverages data, innovative finance and new technologies to bring the power of meaningful connectivity to fast-track young people’s access to educational resources and opportunities.

You can read more about Giga’s work at https://giga.global/ and by following us on twitter @Gigaglobal

How can you make a difference? 

• Work closely with the Product Manager and the Mapping & Tech Lead, to lead the development of the Project Connect, Daily Check App and an open-source platform to map real-time school connectivity globally.
• Coordinate the work of vendors and other software partners that are supporting us to build new products, API and distributed infrastructures worldwide.
• Build new prototypes and tools that support the current Giga project, as well as scale features in existing ones.
• Support and maintain, including documentation, software and products related to Giga
• Work closely with other parts of the team (like blockchain and data science team) to explore collaboration and integration.
• As a Senior technical member, you will contribute to product strategy and help develop the engineering team.

Description of assignment 

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

• Advance University degree in Computer Science or equivalent work experience.
• A minimum of five (5) years of relevant professional experience in full-stack software development.
• Advance experience in building software prototypes and extensible API.
• Experience in collaborating with designers and building products with UI/UX mockups and design libraries like IBM carbon design system.
• Advance knowledge of JavaScript front-end frameworks, ReactJS is preferred.
• Advance knowledge of NodeJS, Django frameworks for API Development.
• Advance experience in building scalable app backend preferably using python and Azure or open-source backend app services.
• Advanced knowledge of desktop application development technologies.
• Experience in development of Headless CMS.
• Advanced knowledge of SQL and NoSQL database systems, particularly Geospatial DBs, libraries and data structures.
• Experience with git, pull requests, and continuous integration and deployment through Azure DevOps and Github.
• Experience with Azure cloud services.
• Experience in scaling products and leverage right tech stack including but not limited to caching, optimizing search and resource distribution (Kubernetes).
• Active contribution to open-source tech community.
• Experience in ETL implementation for structured/unstructured data source.
• Experience in interacting with users and collecting user feedback on prototypes.
• Familiarity with Agile development environments and practices.
• Ability to learn other coding languages as needed.
• Developing country work experience and/or familiarity with emergency conditions is considered an asset.
• Fluency in English is required. Knowledge of another official UN language (Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian or Spanish) or a local language is an asset.

Travel:

• The consultant is responsible for arranging his/her own travel, including visa and travel insurance.

Payment details and further considerations:

• Payment of professional fees will be based on the submission of agreed deliverables. UNICEF reserves the right to withhold payment in case the deliverables submitted are not up to the required standard or in case of delays in submitting the deliverables on the part of the consultant. 

How to apply:

• Interested applicants are required to submit a financial proposal with an all-inclusive fee.  Please see the financial proposal template here:  Consultancy Financial Offer template.docx
• Financial proposal must include travel costs (economy class) and daily subsistence allowance, if travel is required as per TOR and any other estimated costs: visa, travel/health insurance
• Applications without a financial proposal will not be considered.

For every Child, you demonstrate… 

UNICEF's values of Care, Respect, Integrity, Trust, Accountability, and Sustainability (CRITAS). 

To view our competency framework, please visit  here. 

 UNICEF is here to serve the world’s most disadvantaged children and our global workforce must reflect the diversity of those children. The UNICEF family is committed to include everyone, irrespective of their race/ethnicity, age, disability, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, nationality, socio-economic background, or any other personal characteristic.

UNICEF offers reasonable accommodation for consultants/individual contractors with disabilities. This may include, for example, accessible software, travel assistance for missions or personal attendants. We encourage you to disclose your disability during your application in case you need reasonable accommodation during the selection process and afterwards in your assignment. 

UNICEF has a zero-tolerance policy on conduct that is incompatible with the aims and objectives of the United Nations and UNICEF, including sexual exploitation and abuse, sexual harassment, abuse of authority and discrimination. UNICEF also adheres to strict child safeguarding principles. All selected candidates will be expected to adhere to these standards and principles and will therefore undergo rigorous reference and background checks. Background checks will include the verification of academic credential(s) and employment history. Selected candidates may be required to provide additional information to conduct a background check. 

Remarks:  

Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted and advance to the next stage of the selection process. 

Individuals engaged under a consultancy or individual contract will not be considered “staff members” under the Staff Regulations and Rules of the United Nations and UNICEF’s policies and procedures, and will not be entitled to benefits provided therein (such as leave entitlements and medical insurance coverage). Their conditions of service will be governed by their contract and the General Conditions of Contracts for the Services of Consultants and Individual Contractors. Consultants and individual contractors are responsible for determining their tax liabilities and for the payment of any taxes and/or duties, in accordance with local or other applicable laws. 

The selected candidate is solely responsible to ensure that the visa (applicable) and health insurance required to perform the duties of the contract are valid for the entire period of the contract. Selected candidates are subject to confirmation of fully-vaccinated status against SARS-CoV-2 (Covid-19) with a World Health Organization (WHO)-endorsed vaccine, which must be met prior to taking up the assignment. It does not apply to consultants who will work remotely and are not expected to work on or visit UNICEF premises, programme delivery locations or directly interact with communities UNICEF works with, nor to travel to perform functions for UNICEF for the duration of their consultancy contracts.