ICT Analyst – Fullstack AI Engineer – Home based position

UNOPS South East Asia Multi-Country Office (EAPMCO)

The South East Asia and Pacific Multi Country Office (EAPMCO) supports, develops and oversees the UNOPS portfolio of projects in South East Asia and the Pacific. EAPMCO was established in January 2023 following the merger of the Thailand Multi-Country Office, which covered 20 countries across North East Asia, South East Asia and the Pacific, and the Cambodia Multi-Country Office, which covered 4 countries South East Asia – 3 countries in the Mekong Sub-region (Cambodia, Lao PDR and Vietnam) and the Philippines. EAPMCO currently covers 24 countries across North East Asia, South East Asia and the Pacific. With its head office in Bangkok, the Multi-Country Office comprises nine business units: EAPMCO Thailand, EAPMCO Indonesia, EAPMCO Pacific Operations Cluster, EAPMCO Papua New Guinea, EAPMCO China, EAPMCO Vietnam, EAPMCO Mekong, and EAPMCO Philippines.

In 2023, the UNOPS EAPMCO implemented projects worth more than USD 95.7 million, in the areas of Energy Transition, Digital Transformations, Sustainable Environmental Management, Climate Change, Waste Management, Rule of Law and Access to Justice, Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH), Post Conflict Reintegration, Emergency Relief, Post COVID19 Economic Transformations, and Health, through HR, procurement, construction, contract management, fund and program management services.

The Multi Country Office head office in Bangkok provides strategic direction, operational support, delivery oversight and assurance of the excellence of business processes and quality standards across all of the entire Multi Country Office locations. It is also responsible for developing, delivering and managing the portfolio of engagements in the country of the MCO location itself.

Project Background:

UN Global Pulse (UNGP) is an initiative of the Executive Office of Secretary-General (EOSG) founded in 2009. We work in support of the Secretary-General’s priorities, in advancement of the UN Charter. UNGP serves as a cross-pillar lead and hub for experimentation and digital innovation. We have a globally distributed team in the Americas, Europe, Africa and Asia. The teams work with digital innovation, strategic foresight, real-time data and artificial intelligence to further sustainable development, humanitarian and peace outcomes. Our vision is ‘A world in which responsible and inclusive digital innovation serves to empower people and protect the planet’. Our mission is to work at the intersection of digital innovation and science to inform, inspire and support the entire UN and those it serves, to anticipate and respond to the challenges of today and tomorrow.

The goals of the UNGP Network are: i) to generate knowledge, capabilities and approaches that support the transformation of the United Nations into a more agile and resilient ‘next-generation’ institution; ii) to create and accelerate the development of globally accessible approaches that help communities and partners anticipate and address emerging global challenges; and iii) to advocate for the global transformation of policies, practices and culture required to maximize the impact of digital innovation, minimize its risk of harm, and ensure pathways to scale and sustainability.

UNOPS is seeking for the UN Global Pulse Disha team, an ICT Analyst – Fullstack AI Engineer.

Global Pulse’s Disha is an initiative managed by UNOPS and the Executive Office of the Secretary General (EOSG) and across Pulse Labs that brings together UN agencies and private, public, and social sector partners for the development of data and AI products as digital public goods (DPGs). Disha aspires to catalyze the formation of a cohesive and responsibly open ecosystem of data and AI products and services that reduces inefficiencies in the development of digital solutions for sustainable development and humanitarian action—with an initial focus on natural disaster response and recovery—to accelerate attainment of the sustainable development goals.

The Fullstack AI Engineer is a key role and is instrumental for the success of Disha. With experience in the development of and deployment of large-scale AI models, the Fullstack AI Engineer will develop supporting solutions requested by the Data Scientist and Data Engineer within the context of AI and analytics deployment for Disha’s data access and processing platform, under the supervision of the Hiring Manager. To this end, the Fullstack AI Engineer will work together with the Backend Engineer and Frontend Engineer.

The Fullstack AI Engineer’s main role is to deploy data pipelines and machine learning models on to DISHA’s cloud infrastructure to ensure a high availability. They also support the Data Scientist in developing predictive models required in any use case within the Disha platform, as well as providing any supporting data transformation pipeline as requested by the Data Engineer under the supervision of the Hiring Manager. The Fullstack AI Engineer also contributes towards model deployment and consumption on the frontend side, ensuring great UI/UX of the predictive result and the reliability of any middleware connecting the infrastructure, data layer, and the frontend layer. Finally, the AI Engineer is involved in the QA side of the model and its surrounding system.

Functional Responsibilities

Under the general guidance and supervision of the ICT Specialist- Technology Innovation, the incumbent responsibilities include the following:

1. Implementation of the supporting systems of DISHA’s analytics services
2. Support on the implementation of DISHA’s data access and processing platform
3. Quality Assurance of DISHA’s analytics services.

1. Implementation of the supporting systems of DISHA’s analytics services

• Implement a mechanism of ML experiment tracker (hyperparameters and data versions) and model deployment.
• Implement a mechanism of analytics and predictive serving through embedded business intelligence.
• Support DISHA’s data scientists in model exploration and experimentation.
• Support DISHA’s data engineers in building data pipelines that go from-and-to our analytics services, as well as the raw data that fuels the ML training.

2. Support on the implementation of DISHA’s data access and processing platform

• Support the platform engineers in implementing the external data access connection and ensure that it seamlessly flows into the data pipeline and into the analytics services
• Support the platform engineers in informing the scalability requirements of the end-to-end data processing platform.

3. Quality Assurance of DISHA’s analytics services.

• Implement a model monitoring system to detect data drift and model performance degradation.
• Support DISHA’s platform lead to implement health check for our analytics services, such as VMs that run the BI tools and model serving.
• Support DISHA’s data scientists in maintaining up a clean, non-leaking, and growing data splits for ML model development.

Impact of Results:

The effective and successful achievement of Disha objectives could accelerate the ability of social and humanitarian actors to utilize the benefits of AI and big data at a faster pace in these unprecedented times of fragility and uncertainty of climate-fuelled natural disasters and intense conflicts.

Education/Experience/Language requirements

Education:

• First-level university degree (Bachelor’s or equivalent) in computer science or a related field is required.
• An advanced University Degree (Master’s or equivalent) or higher degree in computer science or a related field is an advantage.

Experience:

• A minimum of two (2) years of experience in engineering of data-intensive applications, in machine learning, or in data science is required.
• Experience in designing and deploying data-driven applications in the cloud including data processing, predictive analysis, and reporting/visualization is required.
• Experience in programming with Python is desirable.
• Experience in deploying and using BI tools is preferred. Experience in making customized views on top the BI tools (e.g. using javascript libraries) is desirable.
• Experience in programming with one or more of currently popular ML/AI frameworks such as TensorFlow, PyTorch, etc. is desirable.
• Familiarity with MLOps best practices is desirable.
• Familiarity with the product offering of Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCP), or Microsoft Azure as used to implement data ingestion, processing, and model deployment architectures is an asset;
• Excellent communication skills are desirable with the ability to explain complex analytical concepts to people from other backgrounds and disciplines;
• Experience working with the UN system is an asset.

Language Requirements:

• Full working knowledge of English is required;
• Knowledge of another official UNOPS language is an asset

Contract type, level and duration

• Contract type: Individual Contractor Agreement (ICA)
• Contract level: ICS 8 / IICA 1 / LICA 8
• Contract duration: 6 months with a possibility of extension subject to organizational requirements, availability of funds and satisfactory performance

For more details about the ICA contractual modality, please follow this link:
https://www.unops.org/english/Opportunities/job-opportunities/what-we-offer/Pages/Individual-Contractor-Agreements.aspx