Data Engineering Head

DEADLINE FOR APPLICATIONS

14 January 2025-23:59-GMT+01:00 Central European Time (Rome)

WFP celebrates and embraces diversity. It is committed to the principle of equal employment opportunity for all its employees and encourages qualified candidates to apply irrespective of race, colour, national origin, ethnic or social background, genetic information, gender, gender identity and/or expression, sexual orientation, religion or belief, HIV status or disability.

ABOUT WFP

The World Food Programme is the world’s largest humanitarian organization saving lives in emergencies and using food assistance to build a pathway to peace, stability and prosperity, for people recovering from conflict, disasters and the impact of climate change.

At WFP, people are at the heart of everything we do and the vision of the future WFP workforce is one of diverse, committed, skilled, and high performing teams, selected on merit, operating in a healthy and inclusive work environment, living WFP's values (Integrity, Collaboration, Commitment, Humanity, and Inclusion) and working with partners to save and change the lives of those WFP serves.

WHY JOIN WFP?

• WFP is a 2020 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate.
• WFP offers a highly inclusive, diverse, and multicultural working environment.
• WFP invests in the personal & professional development of its employees through a range of training, accreditation, coaching, mentorship, and other programs as well as through internal mobility opportunities.
• A career path in WFP provides an exciting opportunity to work across the various country, regional and global offices around the world, and with passionate colleagues who work tirelessly to ensure that effective humanitarian assistance reaches millions of people across the globe.
• We offer an attractive compensation package (please refer to the Terms and Conditions section of this vacancy announcement).

JOB TITLE: Data Engineering Head

TYPE OF CONTRACT: CST Level 2

UNIT/DIVISION: Global Data Office, TECX

DUTY STATION (City, Country): WFP HQ, Rome, Italy

DURATION: 11 months

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE OF THE ASSIGNMENT:

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) is the world's largest humanitarian agency, fighting hunger worldwide. WFP Technology Division (TEC) is the digital business engine of the World Food Programme, providing the business with multi-pronged and resilient technical capabilities able to respond with the agility required in humanitarian operations, be they manmade or in a natural disaster setting. TEC Division continues to increase its activities to meet the constantly growing demand from the organization and implement the initiatives related to digital transformation.

Under the WFP Global Data Strategy, a key pillar for implementation is effective data management. WFP is seeking a senior Data Engineer to lead the building, management and optimization of data architectures and services to support the production of analytics, use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) tools and algorithms in compliance with data governance, protection, privacy, and security requirements. The Data Engineering Head will actively work with data analysts, data scientists, and architects (enterprise, data, integration, and application architects) to ensure the platforms and tools are fit for purpose.

Under the supervision of the Chief Data Officer, the Data Engineering Lead will be a key team member in leading the design, implementation, operation and optimization of data engineering services to support initiatives.

ACCOUNTABILITIES/RESPONSIBILITIES:

• Identify key data extraction, transformation, and loading requirements for enterprise and local solutions.
• Implement and maintain complex data engineering solutions to acquire and prepare data. Create and maintain data pipelines to connect data within and between data stores, applications, and organizations.
• Collaborate with stakeholders including Business, Analytics and Design teams to develop implementation roadmaps to address data-related technical problems and meet their data infrastructure needs.
• Develop roadmaps for the development and implementation of data engineering tools to assist analytics and data scientist team members in building and optimizing products.
• Utilize next generation AI tools to support data infrastructure as code with the aim to reduce vendor costs.
• Support data scientists and data analysts in understanding data features and testing use-cases of data features in analytical environments.
• Collaborate with key organization stakeholders to ensure compliance with data governance, protection, privacy, and security requirements across systems and architectures.
• Support projects validating the design artefacts applying data engineering best practices and standards, efforts, and budget for engineering resources. Provide oversight and quality control on project deliverables from data engineers.
• Develop and implement onboarding program for new data engineers joining WFP.
• Develop and monitor performance metrics for projects and the engineering team.

DELIVERABLES AT THE END OF THE CONTRACT:

• Develop and implement an enterprise data engineering framework for WFP which will be used by all WFP data engineers for engineering activities (including performance metrics and DataOps practice).
• Develop and implement an annual and 3-year workplan for data engineering services team.
• For TEC Division processes, provide validation and inputs on data engineering artefacts.
• Implementation and continuous improvement of the Modern Data Platform and data ecosystem.
• Collaboration with business stakeholders and other partners to ensure best practices for data engineering are fostered and followed.
• Collaboration with GDO and other TEC teams to ensure requirements are met and alignment to enterprise data architecture and strategies.
• Manage and coach data engineering team. Recruit resources as needed.
• Manage the Humbot platform implementation and the use of AI bots.
• Add to team culture of diversity, equity, inclusion, and respect.

QUALIFICATIONS & EXPERIENCE REQUIRED:

Education:

• Advanced university degree (Master’s degree or equivalent) in computer science, statistics, applied mathematics, data management, information systems, information science or a related quantitative field. A first-level university degree in combination with qualifying experience may be accepted in lieu of the advanced university degree.

Experience, Knowledge & Skills:

• 10-12 years of progressively responsible experience in data engineering, management, integration, modeling, optimization, and other relevant areas.
• A minimum of 5 years hands-on project-based experience with one or more higher-level Python or Java based data processing frameworks such as Beam, Dataflow, Glue, Scalding, Storm, Spark etc.
• A minimum of 5 years hands-on project experience in designing data integration and pipeline architectures which must include ingesting data through different methods such as message queues, database connections, flat files, REST, or specific API’s, is required.
• A minimum of 3 years of experience in leading, managing and coaching small teams of data engineers deployed on multiple projects.
• Strong Python programming abilities and experience working with data containerization, orchestration and workflow technologies such as Docker and Luigi, Airflow, or similar tools.
• A minimum of 3 years of hands-on experience with practices and techniques for building data pipelines for large scale generative models, including cleaning, filtering, classifying and labeling. Familiarity with concepts of bias and fairness in algorithmic systems and data is particularly desirable.
• A minimum of 3 years of hands-on experience automating DataOps tool chains.
• Cloud Platform experience: Palantir, AWS, Azure, GCP.
• Experience with database programming languages (SQL, etc.) is required.
• Experience working with analytics applications like Microsoft PowerBI, Tableau, Qlik, AWS Quicksight and others for data discovery.
• Experience working in cross-functional teams and collaborating with stakeholders in support of analytics initiatives is required.
• Highly Desirable: Understand 'Source to Target mapping' (STTM) documents, containing data structures, business & data transformation logics.
• Highly Desirable: Understand data structures and data model (dimensional & relational) concepts like Star schema or Fact & Dimension tables, to design and develop ETL patterns/mechanisms to ingest, analyze, validate, normalize and cleanse data.
• Highly desirable: Knowledge or experience of DataVault (DV2).

Languages:

Fluency (level C) in English language. Intermediate knowledge (level B) of a second official UN language: Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian, Spanish, and/or WFP’s working language, Portuguese.

WFP LEADERSHIP FRAMEWORK

WFP Leadership Framework guides to the common standards of behavior that guide HOW we work together to accomplish our mission.

REASONABLE ACCOMMODATION

WFP is dedicated to fostering diversity, equity, and inclusion. Our recruitment process is inclusively crafted to welcome candidates of all backgrounds, celebrating diversity and ensuring a respectful environment for all. We aim for an accessible and fair recruitment journey. Should you need any reasonable accommodations or have accessibility concerns, please reach out to us confidentially at Our DEI team is here to ensure your full participation in our recruitment process.

NO FEE DISCLAIMER

The United Nations does not charge any application, processing, training, interviewing, testing or other fee in connection with the application or recruitment process. Should you receive a solicitation for the payment of a fee, please disregard it.