UNDP Jobs - 85608- Consultant as Software Developer (with United Nati

Consultant as Software Developer (with United Nations Technology Innovation Labs)

Location :

Home-Based

Type of Contract :

Individual Contract

Starting Date :

01-Jul-2019

Application Deadline :

16-Jun-19 (Midnight New York, USA)

Post Level :

International Consultant

Duration of Initial Contract :

6 months, with a possibility of extension

Languages Required :

English

Expected Duration of Assignment :

1st July to 31st December 2019, 6 months.

UNDP is committed to achieving workforce diversity in terms of gender, nationality and culture. Individuals from minority groups, indigenous groups and persons with disabilities are equally encouraged to apply. All applications will be treated with the strictest confidence. UNDP does not tolerate sexual exploitation and abuse, any kind of harassment, including sexual harassment, and discrimination. All selected candidates will, therefore, undergo rigorous reference and background checks.

Background

The UN Technology Innovation Labs (UNTIL) are designed to move humanity forward, faster by focusing on the use of innovative technology to solve some of humanity's most pressing needs.

Recognizing that innovation plays a critical role in moving the United Nations forward and acknowledging that the United Nations’ ability to innovate and engage in partnerships will be a significant factor in the efforts to successfully implement the SDGs (and the broader mandates of the United Nations), the UNTIL Lab programme is designed to support the journey to review, build, adopt and implement technology solutions to address problems that Member States are facing.

To engage the gears of innovation proactively, the United Nations Office of information and Communication Technology (OICT) is establishing “United Nations Technology Innovation Labs” (UNTIL). Using cutting-edge frontier technology currently available, such as blockchain, artificial intelligence, internet of things, fintech and the use of drones to answer Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) challenges, UNTIL aims at using technological innovation to resolve day to day issues. In line with the ICT Strategy (A/69/517) approved by the UN General Assembly at its 69th session, OICT is establishing new UNTIL Labs locations in Europe, Africa, and Asia. Labs in other regions are planned for a second implementation phase in response to specific Member State’s host requests.

In 2015, the 193 United Nations (UN) Member States adopted 17 global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as a universal call to action to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure that all people enjoy peace and prosperity. The SDGs cover a broad set of challenges such as economic inclusion, diminishing natural resources, geopolitical instability, environmental degradation and the multi-faceted impacts of climate change. Each goal has specific targets to be achieved over the next 15 years and they define the agenda for inclusive economic growth through to 2030.

The rapid advancement of technology in the past decade has changed the way organizations operate. UN General Assembly in its resolution 68/2201 recognizes the vital role that science, technology and innovation, including environmentally sound technologies, can play in development and in facilitating efforts to address global challenges. To improve on the delivery of UN mandates to create meaningful impact, a programme was designed to leverage on latest technology and harness global expertise and effort for the development of open source solutions, tools and services to achieve the SDGs. This unified innovation programme is being piloted in the form of United Nations Technology Innovation Labs (UNTIL), championed by the United Nations Office for Information and Communication and Technologies (UN-OICT).

UN-OICT and UNDP have partnered with MaGIC of Malaysian government to establish a lab at Cyberjaya, Malaysia. The mission of UNTIL Malaysia is to build solutions to needs related to UN mandates, namely in SDGs, for several thematic areas that are central to Malaysia and the region. UNTIIL Malaysia aims to bring right project interventions, global technology, expertise, and network through which and entrepreneurs to work on meaningful development of sustainable solutions. All solutions will be based on open source standards, will use open data and will eventually be available to all UN Member States.

This specific assignment of Software Programmer is to engage as an expert who will help UNTIL Malaysia to build a technology eco system in the country and in the region. He/She will provide technical leadership in the UNTIL Malaysian program and the upcoming projects under the agreed thematic areas.

Each UNTIL is based on different humanitarian themes that are central to the needs of each individual Labs specific geolocation. The Labs will use AI, Blockchain, IoT and other high-tech tools to develop technology solutions that will be open source and available globally to all Member States once operational.

Duties and Responsibilities

The goal of the UN Technology Innovation Labs is to function as a start-up environment and create a platform for collaborative problem solving between UN resources, Private sector, Academia and Civil Society. Each Lab will facilitate linking this platform with innovators and mentors from across the globe as well as to facilitate the global exchange of ideas and resources. UNTIL will function as a Laboratory and tool, offering advisory support and guidance that will facilitate problem-solving through hands-on-workshops, immersion-learning, and incubated projects.

Each Lab will focus on specific thematic areas of concern to the host country. Themes will not be duplicated to the extent possible in other global Labs, but technology will be shared and transferred creating an ecosystem of innovative technology tools and test beds for proof of concepts. UNTIL Malaysia will focus on four different thematic areas : Ethical fashion, Sustainable Tourism, Smart cities – Circular Economy and Financial Inclusion.

Within delegated authority, the “Software programmer” will be responsible for the following duties:

Create highly scalable, flexible and resilient architectures that address business problems;
Provide solutions and technical architecture for medium to Large websites;
Work closely with UI Designers to develop and maintain UI standards and create features based on mockups;
Create cascading style sheets (CSS) that are consistent across all browsers, platforms, and products;
Use a combination of markup languages to write web pages that adhere to UI and design standards;
Understand and develop code for cross-browser compatibility differences as well as identifying and troubleshooting cross-browser compatibility issues, coding problems and other various website issues and provide options for possible solutions;
Collaborate with team members to consistently improve functionality and user-friendliness of the web applications;
Stay up-to-date on emerging front-end technologies;
Ensure projects have accurate estimates, meet provided timelines, and fulfill requirements;
Participate in code reviews;
Develop technical specification documents and technical roll out plans;
Deliver end-user training and related documentations;
Plan and deploy the deliverables to the live environment;
Support and maintain the delivered project to achieve very high customer satisfaction;
Deliver weekly progress reports with all the accomplished tasks and outcomes.

Terms of Payment:

Monthly payments 100%

Submission and approval of time sheets;
Submission and approval of 4/5 weekly reports every month.
Deliverables listed below.

Financial Proposal:

Per day rate in USD (inclusive of all other expenses).

Deliverables & Timeline:

Month 1:-

Requirements analysis: Vision & business case, Stakeholder agreement on Scope definition and cost estimates;
Feasibility Study: Analyse business needs and document requirements;
Risk list & mitigation strategies: identify all project risks and document mitigation plan;
Software development plan: detailed project work plan, with milestones.

Month 2:-

Design phase: design one or more POC prototypes to support the vision;
Technical architecture: high-level diagram including network, hardware, software security design;
Functional & Technical Specification: Identify supporting portal features;
Complete system design: design model and data model.

Month 3:-

Creative design: UI design, Wireframes and templates;
Clickable mockups for users to see before development;
Prototypes development: executable architectural prototypes to explore critical functionality.

Month 4:-

Web-application for the portal;
Set-up Infrastructure and tools to support the portal;
Setup database repository and base data;
Setup developer security.

Month 5:-

Code base and Database scripts;
Testing: Use cases, Test scenarios and test plan;
Deployment plan;
QA testing plan & Performance tuning;
Production roll out plan;
Mobile app design and sign off.

Month 6:-

System release plan and release notes;
Training: User guides and user training plan;
Production deployment;
Fully functional portal with required features;
Submission and approval of time sheets and report.

Competencies

Interest and motivation in working in an international organization;
Good analytical skills in gathering and consolidating data and research for practical implementation;
Outgoing and initiative-taking person with a goal-oriented mind-set;
Communicates effectively when working in teams and independently;
Displays cultural, gender, religion, race, nationality and age sensitivity and adaptability;
Responds positively to feedback and differing points of view;
Consistently approaches work with energy and a positive, constructive attitude.

Required Skills and Experience

Advanced university degree (Master’s degree or equivalent) in Computer science, Information systems, Innovation management or related field.
A first-level university degree in combination with qualifying experience may be accepted in lieu of the advanced university degree.

Experience:

A minimum of 10 years’ experience in creating highly scalable, flexible and resilient architectures, that addresses the business problems and accelerate the adoption of best practices is required;
Experience in providing solutions and technical architecture for medium to large websites for a minimum of 2 large enterprise clients is required;
Experience in doing POC’s for resolving technological issues is required;
Experience in Panels, Views, Features and Rules, core API, CCK/Fields along with other contributed modules is required;
Possess any combination of the following languages: C++, Go, Python, Java, Solidity is required;
Strong competencies in Programming, Algorithms, Distributed system, Data Structures, Design patterns and OOPs concepts is required;
Being creative and passionate for POCs in project-related research, design, develop blockchain technologies and help evaluate applications for new tools and technologies like Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, IoT, as they continually evolve is desirable;
Actively involve and engaged in global blockchain community work on implementing and integrating the latest improvement proposals including documenting new solutions as well as maintaining existing ones is desirable;
Owns the end-to-end technical implementation through different stages of its lifecycle;
Exposure on integrating third-party APIs into Web sites;
Good understanding of responsive/adaptive design and grid systems;
Help Team to foresee technical risks and come up with a mitigation plan;
Experienced with Version control systems such as SVN, GIT, etc;
Strong problem solving, communication, and front-end development skills;
Experience with front-end JavaScript frameworks, tools & libraries like Angular, Typescript, NodeJS, NPM & Webpack;
Proficiency in design software and knowledge in web design / administration will be an advantage;
Strong problem solving, communication, and front-end development skills;
Proficiency in design software and knowledge in web design / administration.

Language:

English required;
Knowledge of other UN languages is an advantage.

How to Apply:

Kindly download the Letter of Confirmation of interest and availability and General Terms and Conditions;
Complete the Letter of interest attached financial proposal (as per the requirements mentioned above);
Read and agree to the General Terms & Conditions;
Click the ‘apply’ icon and complete what is required;
Scan all documents into 1 pdf folder and then upload;
For clarification question, please email to procurement.my@undp.org. The clarification question deadline is three (3) days before the closing. When emailing for clarification questions, please put "MyIC/2019/033" as the subject matter.

Forms and General terms & conditions to be downloaded:

The UN Personal History Form (P11) is available at:http://www.my.undp.org/content/dam/malaysia/docs/Procurement/P11%20for%20SC%20&%20IC.doc?download
The Letter of Confirmation of Interest at: http://www.my.undp.org/content/dam/malaysia/docs/Procurement/Letter%20of%20Interest%20_Annex%201.docx?download
The General Terms & Conditions for Individual contract is available at:http://www.my.undp.org/content/dam/malaysia/docs/Procurement/General%20Conditions%20of%20Contract%20for%20IC.pdf?download
The General Terms & Conditions for Reimbursement Loan Agreement is available at:http://www.my.undp.org/content/dam/malaysia/docs/Procurement/Reimbursable%20Loan%20Agreement%20_%20Terms%20&%20Conditions.pdf?download

Evaluation:

Individuals will be evaluated based on the following methodology:

Cumulative analysis

When using this weighted scoring method, the award of the contract should be made to the individuals whose offer has been evaluated and determined as:

a) responsive/compliant/acceptable, and

b) Having received the highest score out of a pre-determined set of weighted technical and financial criteria specific to the solicitation.

* Technical Criteria weight; [70%]

* Financial Criteria weight; [30%]

UNDP applies a fair and transparent selection process that will take into account the competencies/skills of the applicants as well as their financial proposals. Qualified women and members of social minorities are encouraged to apply.