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.
To learn more about WFP, visit our website: https://www.wfp.org and follow us on social media to keep up with our latest news: YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok.
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).
BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE OF THE ASSIGNMENT
Assisting more than 115.5 million people in 120 + countries each year, the World Food Program (WFP) is the leading humanitarian organization saving lives and changing lives, delivering food assistance in emergencies, and working with communities to improve nutrition and build resilience. As the international community has committed to end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition by 2030, one in nine people worldwide still do not have enough to eat. Food and food-related assistance lie at the heart of the struggle to break the cycle of hunger and poverty.
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. Technology and connectivity are rapidly reaching some of the most vulnerable people and places affected by crisis, but they are also increasingly expanding to the services responding to those same crises. As one of the main humanitarian actors, WFP has the opportunity and the obligation to leverage data and technology to better know and serve those in need by digitally transforming the way it works.
We are seeking to build a roster for Data Scientist roles at the Associate and Assistant levels. The selected job holders will be based at WFP’s Regional Office for the Middle East, North Africa and Eastern Europe (MENAEE), located in Cairo. The Regional Office provides strategic direction, technical guidance, resource mobilization, and management support to WFP operations and activities across the region.
Reporting to the Lead Data Scientist in the MENAEE Regional Office Data & AI team, the Data Scientist will support current AI initiatives by providing the following services:
ACCOUNTABILITIES/RESPONSIBILITIES
- Identify state of the art AI models that fits the use cases at hand.
- Train/retrain AI models with relevant annotated datasets.
- Model Evaluation and Optimization: Assess model performance, identify areas of improvement, and fine-tune hyperparameters to optimize the models. Use techniques like grid search or Bayesian optimization for parameter tuning. Exploratory Data Analysis (EDA): Perform EDA to gain insights into the data, identify patterns, correlations, and outliers. Use visualizations and statistical techniques to summarize and present the findings.
- Feature Engineering: Create new features from existing data that can improve the performance of machine learning models. This includes feature extraction, transformation, and selection.
- Natural Language Processing (NLP): Work on tasks related to text data, such as sentiment analysis, text classification, or named entity recognition. Utilize NLP libraries like NLTK, SpaCy, or Transformers.
- Collaboration and Documentation: Collaborate with team members, document your work, and maintain a clear and organized record of your analysis, code, and results. Contribute to the organization's knowledge base or data science repository.
Minimum Qualifications and Experience
Two to Three years of relevant experience plus a university degree in Computer Science, AI, or Data Science. Working knowledge of AWS is considered an advantage.
Skills and Competencies
- Proficiency in programming languages such as Python or R is crucial for a data scientist.
- Solid understanding of statistics is essential. The candidate should be familiar with concepts such as hypothesis testing, regression analysis, probability distributions, and statistical modeling techniques.
- Solid understanding of machine learning algorithms and techniques such as supervised and unsupervised learning, feature engineering, model evaluation, and model selection.
- Excellent oral and written skills; excellent drafting, formulation, reporting skills.
- Excellent interpersonal skills; culturally and socially sensitive; ability to work inclusively and collaboratively with a range of partners, including grassroots community members, religious and youth organizations, and authorities at different levels; familiarity with tools and approaches of communications for development.
- Ability to work and adapt professionally and effectively in a challenging environment; ability to work effectively in a multicultural team of international and national personnel.
- Self-motivated, ability to work on MVPs in an agile environment; ability to work with tight deadlines.
- Sound security awareness.
- Have affinity with or interest in leveraging AI in humanitarian domain volunteerism as an enabler for durable development, and the UN System.
- Proficiency (read/ write/ speak) in English.
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 committed to supporting individuals with disabilities by providing reasonable accommodations throughout the recruitment process. If you require a reasonable accommodation, please contact: global.inclusion@wfp.org
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. Furthermore, please note that emblems, logos, names and addresses are easily copied and reproduced. Therefore, you are advised to apply particular care when submitting personal information on the web.
REMINDERS BEFORE YOU SUBMIT YOUR APPLICATION
- All applications must be submitted exclusively through our online recruiting system. We do not consider CVs or applications sent by email, LinkedIn, or any other channel.
- We strongly recommend that your Workday profile is accurate and complete, and that all sections are filled in, including your employment history, academic qualifications, language skills, and UN grade (if applicable). Once your profile is completed, please apply, and submit your application.
- If you experience technical issues while submitting your application, you may contact us at global.hrerecruitment@wfp.org. Please note that this email is only for technical issues with an application - unsolicited applications or documents sent to this inbox will not receive a reply.
- At the application stage, the only required documents are your CV and Cover Letter. Additional documents (passport, certificates, recommendation letters, etc.) may be requested later in the process.
- Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted and invited to proceed to the next stage of the recruitment process.
All employment decisions are made on the basis of organizational needs, job requirements, merit, and individual qualifications. WFP is committed to providing an inclusive work environment free of sexual exploitation and abuse, all forms of discrimination, any kind of harassment, sexual harassment, and abuse of authority. Therefore, all selected candidates will undergo rigorous reference and background checks.
No appointment under any kind of contract will be offered to members of the UN Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions (ACABQ), International Civil Service Commission (ICSC), FAO Finance Committee, WFP External Auditor, WFP Audit Committee, Joint Inspection Unit (JIU) and other similar bodies within the United Nations system with oversight responsibilities over WFP, both during their service and within three years of ceasing that service.