DOTS (foundry) Technical Engineering Lead, CST II

WFP Technology Division Engineer

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.

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) is the world's largest humanitarian agency, fighting hunger worldwide. WFP Technology Division (TEC, formerly known as IT) 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.

WFP has launched its digital transformation program with a strong focus on utilizing data for better informed decision-making. We are investing heavily in our deployment of Palantir Foundry, a leading data integration platform to enable solving optimization problems with data at scale, alongside platforms for deep field data collection, visual analytics, and corporate reporting.

Under the supervision of the DOTS Service Manager (TEC) Division, the incumbent will be a key team member in leading the design, implementation, operation and optimization of engineering services to support WFP HQ and field offices worldwide. In addition, this role will function as the anchor for the team of developers that are currently part of the Foundry work program. In this capacity, this role will be responsible for setting the bar and ambition for the rest of the team, ensuring the long-term success of the overall output as well as individual growth for members of the team.

Programming & Technical

• Review and design overall Foundry pipeline structure and architecture
• Review all workflow designs and approve budget (relevant to developer and maintenance resources).
• Monitor health checks and performance, and assess pipeline changes on a larger scale, including upstream and downstream implications and communicate findings to engineering team
• Optimize Resource Management of DOTS (computing and storage)
• Own development/coding best practices and standards in the Platform
• Manage and run the technical part of the release process (i.e. merge to master), follow up on required code changes with developers prior to release
• Work closely with the release manager to bridge the gap between business needs and tasks and technical implementation
• Identify gaps and develop engineering testing processes
• Ensure that the platform is developed with a holistic and long-term approach in mind — tactically this will -among other things, translate to manage the overall tech debt and refactoring efforts needed and weigh that against new developments efforts on a larger scale
• Liaise with non-technical stakeholders such as UI designers, business POCs and surface needs to Foundry program management
• Own the definition of Ready and ensure processes and documentation are optimized for handing over DOTS workflow to maintenance.
• Define the hub and spoke services for engineering to implementation teams and user groups.

Leadership & Management

• Overall supervision of the Maintenance Team working with the Maintenance Lead to ensure alignment across the activities for active projects and maintenance and ensure correct level of knowledge transfer. Optimize the maintenance model together with the Maintenance Lead,
• Manage the developers as they work on projects. Monitor cadence, ensure peer reviews are conducted, run retrospectives, and mentor developers. Provide regular performance assessments.
• Promote transparency and accountability across all developer streams by building and improving standard operating models for engineering team(s)
• Develop methodology and practice to assess engineering team skills meet best practices
• Assigning tasks with the Release Managers in weekly/biweekly sprints and ensuring that team's workload is feasible
• Resource allocation across multiple work streams
• Onboarding/offboarding processes for new developers defined and adjusted (running technical interviews, etc.)
• Provide feedback to individual team members on how they can improve their work
• Quarterly feedback to LTA Vendors on performance of contractors.
• Bridge between Platform Governance team(s) and implementation teams - making sure the implementation teams adhere to internal governance standards and proactively communicates problems or improvements that can be made to the existing governance processes that affects technical teams

Deliverables at the end of the contract:

• Demonstrated progress on delivery of duties as outlined above, with relevant documentation
• Processes for developer hiring, onboarding, upskilling and offboarding defined, implemented, and documented.
• Processes for code reviews, code standards, refactoring pipelines, and performance management and monitoring implemented and in continuous improvement.
• Pipeline architecture and structure, Workflow designs and review of data ecosystem application designs reviewed and approved.
• All tasks and workload monitored and tracked consistently in Azure DevOp s.

HR resource management:

• Work with Maintenance Lead to establish workplan and KPI, keep regular meeting to discuss progress and issues, and assess performance.
• Work with developers to establish workplan and KPI, communicate on progress and mentor and coach developers as they mature their capabilities working on DOTS.
• Weekly updates on progress of activities and escalation of issues and input into monthly updates.
• Other duties as needed.

Qualifications & Experience Required:

• Advanced University Degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Information Systems, Information Management, Data Management, or other relevant disciplines
• At least 6 years of experience working with software development
• At least 4 years of experience working on data and analytics projects
• At least 4 years of experience with Python, PySpark, Java, or C#
• At least 4 years of leading and mentoring technical team members
• Experience with data integration or analytics solutions such as Palantir Foundry, Alteryx, Talend, SAP Hana, Tableau, etc.
• Experience working with database technologies such as Postgres, Hadoop, Amazon S3, Oracle, SQL Server, etc.
• Experience with agile/scrum methodologies
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills
• Excellent problem solving and analytical skills
• Solid technical understanding of data management & ETL
• Strong Project or Product Management skills

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.