The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) is the UN agency for food security, agriculture, fisheries, forestry, and rural development, headquartered in Rome. Its work ranges from setting international standards and gathering global data to supporting farmers and governments in the field and responding to threats to food production. If your background is in agriculture, natural resources, economics, nutrition, or the operations that support technical programmes, FAO is highly relevant.
FAO combines a strong technical and normative role at headquarters and regional offices with country-level programmes, including emergency and resilience work where food production is at risk. This guide explains the mandate, the roles and contracts, how recruitment works, and the realistic ways in.
Specifics change over time, so confirm the current detail on FAO’s official careers site before relying on anything here.
What FAO does
FAO helps countries improve agriculture, fisheries, and forestry, strengthen food security and nutrition, manage natural resources sustainably, and respond to threats such as pests, diseases, and climate shocks. It is both a knowledge organisation, producing standards, statistics, and analysis, and an operational one delivering programmes in the field.
For job seekers, this dual character means two broad streams: technical and policy work concentrated at headquarters and regional offices, and country-level programme and project work, including emergency and resilience operations.
The kinds of roles FAO hires for
- Technical: agronomy, animal health and production, fisheries and aquaculture, forestry, plant protection, land and water, and agricultural economics.
- Food security, nutrition, statistics, and data.
- Programme and project management, including emergency and resilience work.
- Operations and support: finance, procurement, human resources, ICT, and administration.
- Policy, partnerships, and communications.
Contract types
FAO uses the common UN grade structure for staff posts (international Professional, National Officer, and General Service) and relies heavily on non-staff arrangements such as consultants and Personal Services Agreements (PSAs) for time-bound technical and project work. These non-staff routes are frequently the realistic first contact, especially for specialists.
Because much of FAO’s field work is project-funded, project-based contracts are common, and openings tend to follow active programmes.
How FAO recruitment works
FAO advertises on its own careers portal and assesses against its competencies. Expect to map your experience to the role, often a technical assessment for specialist posts, and a competency-based interview. Technical depth matters a great deal for the specialist streams.
As across the UN, recruitment takes time, and a focused application that demonstrates the exact technical or operational experience the post needs will outperform a generic one.
Realistic entry routes
- Consultancies and PSAs in your technical area, the most common fast first contact for specialists.
- National posts in your own country.
- Internships and volunteer schemes for students and recent graduates.
- JPO posts hosted by FAO where your government sponsors them.