UNDP Jobs - 53819- National Consultant - Junior Data Engineer UN Glob

National Consultant - Junior Data Engineer UN Global Pulse Lab Kampala

Location :

Kampala, UGANDA

Type of Contract :

Individual Contract

Starting Date :

02-Mar-2015

Application Deadline :

23-Feb-15 (Midnight New York, USA)

Post Level :

National Consultant

Duration of Initial Contract :

6 months

Languages Required :

English

Expected Duration of Assignment :

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

Global Pulse is an innovation initiative of the United Nations Secretary-General, established to harness today’s new world of digital data and real-time analytics to gain a better understanding of changes in human well-being. Global Pulse aims to contribute a future in which access to better information sooner makes it possible to keep international development on track, protect the world's most vulnerable populations, and strengthen resilience to global shocks. Global Pulse is being implemented as a global network of Pulse Labs, bringing together expertise from UN agencies, governments, academia, and the private sector to research, develop, test and share tools and approaches for harnessing real-time data for more effective and efficient policy action. For more information on Global Pulse go to http://www.unglobalpulse.org.

Pulse Lab Kampala

United Nations Pulse Lab Kampala (PLK) (http://www.unglobalpulse.org/kampala) is an inter-agency initiative of the United Nations under the Office of the Resident Coordinator in Uganda that fully commenced operations in December 2013. The first of its kind in East Africa, PLK supports the United Nations Country Team (UNCT) by bringing together partners from academia and the private sector to collaboratively develop new approaches on data innovation for sustainable development.

Duties and Responsibilities

.The Junior Data Engineer will be a part of a team that will focus on accessing and deriving insights from large data sets to solve problems.

He/she will support the team in the acquisition, analysis and visualization of data from a variety of sources in order to:

Help understand emerging human vulnerabilities to socio-economic shocks;
Detect and highlight patterns that could indicate how people are coping with emerging hardship and;
Gather evidence of changes in behaviour and perception correlated with public sector policies and programmes. He/she will support specially the visualization of data on the research conducted by PLK.

Specifically, the Junior Data Engineer will:

Interface application development using technologies such as HTML5, D3 and InfoVis;
Data processing and statistical analysis with programming languages including Python;
Deployment of applications on Linux servers.

Specifically, the Junior Data Engineer will:

Contribute to the efforts of the team in defining, designing and building projects harnessing data innovation to address global challenges;
Help to develop interactive data visualisations for the web;
Develop and use software tools to extract, process and analyze data sets from a variety of sources;
Assist the team in the development of working prototypes and applications for the Pulse Library that will be used by UN agencies and partners.

Institutional Arrangement:

With overall reporting to the Data Scientist and manager, he/she will work on day-to-day basis with the basis with the Data Engineer;
The consultant will report to the Manager on a regular basis on the progress but this will be done in line with the set deliverables of the assignment The consultant will liaise, interact, collaborate/meet staff and partners.

UNDP (GPL) will support the consultant in the following:

Access to all past reports and data relevant to the assignment. These will include donor reports and project documents:

Access to GPL and its infrastructure;
Support and assistance to gain access to relevant stakeholders for consultations to the extent possible.

Competencies

Functional Competencies:

Mathematical and statistical aptitude;
Plans and produces quality results to meet established goals;
Generates innovative, practical solutions to challenging situations;
Demonstrates substantive and technical knowledge to meet responsibilities and post requirements with excellence;
Demonstrates openness to change and ability to manage complexities;
Ability to conceptualize, plan and execute innovative ideas;
Displays open, co-operative behavior with other team members;
Remains calm and in control, and good humoured even under pressure;
Responds positively to critical feedback and differing points of view;
Sets priorities, produces quality outputs;
Meets deadlines and manages time efficiently;
Excellent oral and written skills.

Corporate competencies:

Demonstrates integrity and ethical standards;
Displays cultural, gender, religion, race, nationality and age sensitivity and adaptability.

Required Skills and Experience

Education:

BSc in Computer Science, Electrical engineering, Mathematics, Statistics, or related field. A combination of a first degree and relevant experience may be accepted;

Experience:

At least 2 years of experience of web application development, preferably having worked on examples of interactive data visualisation;
Working knowledge of various programming languages and experience with software development. Experience with Python is an advantage;
Experience of writing software to process different types of data (e.g. numerical data, text, images or audio);
Experience of working with Linux servers;
Excellent communication skills;
Familiarity with statistical programming and discrete mathematics;
Experience working with open source data processing frameworks desirable

Language:

Fluency in English (oral and written).

Price Proposal and Schedule of Payments

Payment to the individual consultant will be made on a monthly basis upon satisfactory completion of assigned tasks.

Evaluation Method and Criteria

The award of the contract shall be made to the individual consultant whose offer has been evaluated and determined as:

Responsive/compliant/acceptable; and
Highest Combined Score (based on the 70% technical offer and 30% price weight distribution) where the minimum passing scores of technical proposal is 70%.

Evaluation Criteria:

Technical Proposal (Maximum 70 points):

Relevance of education – 5 points;
Language skills – 5 points;
Interpretation of the assignment and methodology- 30 points;
Relevance of experience (professional/work experience)- 30 points.

Financial Proposal (Maximum 30 points): To be computed as a ratio of the Proposal’s offer to the lowest price among the proposals received by UNDP.

Application Procedure

The consultant is required to submit an electronic application by directly uploading all their documentation in one single pdf on this website no later than February 23, 2015. For clarifications, please send your email to; justine.naiga-bagonza@undp.org with copy to diana.nabbanja@undp.org and agnes.kintu@undp.org.

The application should include the following documents/information:

Duly accomplished Letter of Confirmation of Interest and Availability using the template provided by UNDP (see Annex II);
Updated Personal CV highlighting past experience in similar assignments and with 3 professional references with contact details (email and telephone);
Financial proposal (in template provided in Annex II) stating an all-inclusive fixed lump sum fee for this assignment in Ugandan Shillings, supported by a breakdown of costs. Such total lump sum price must include professional fee, and costs necessary to conduct the assignment such as communication costs, etc. The consultant will be paid against the completion of specific, measurable deliverables as identified in this TOR.

Annexes (Please down load these on the Procurement Notices Website, Ref # 20568 / http://procurement-notices.undp.org/view_notice.cfm?notice_id=20568):

Annex I: Individual Contractor General Terms and Conditions;
Annex II: Template to Confirmation of Interest and Availability and Submit the Financial Proposal.