Consultancy - Data Engineering, Data & Analytics, DAPM, Florence, Italy (Remote) - Req # 576854

UNICEF works in some of the world’s toughest places, to reach the world’s most disadvantaged children. To save their lives. To defend their rights. To help them fulfill their potential. 

Across 190 countries and territories, we work for every child, everywhere, every day, to build a better world for everyone. 

And we never give up. 

For every child, hope

Vacancy Announcement: Consultant

Consultancy Title: Data Engineering Consultant

Section/Division/Duty Station: Data & Analytics Team, DAPM NYHQ

Duration: 1 February 2025 to 31 January 2026

Home/ Office Based: Florence / Remote

About UNICEF 

If you are a committed, creative professional and are passionate about making a lasting difference for children, the world's leading children's rights organization would like to hear from you. For 70 years, UNICEF has been working on the ground in 190 countries and territories to promote children's survival, protection and development. The world's largest provider of vaccines for developing countries, UNICEF supports child health and nutrition, good water and sanitation, quality basic education for all boys and girls, and the protection of children from violence, exploitation, and AIDS. UNICEF is funded entirely by the voluntary contributions of individuals, businesses, foundations and governments. UNICEF has over 12,000 staff in more than 145 countries.

BACKGROUND

Purpose of Activity/ Assignment:

UNICEF requires the services of an external consultant to support the development and maintenance of spatial and other data discovery, harmonization, validation, curation and analytics in several areas, especially the Wash Insecurity Analysis (WIA), and also including Children in Conflict (CIC) and Children’s Climate and Disaster Risk Model (CCDRM), deployed to multiple platforms including GeoSight and its Indicator Data Warehouse.

All work performed shall create maintainable, automated processes over the data lifecycle, also accommodating the addition of new streams of data as and when they become available.

The WIA work shall be performed iteratively in coordination with the Global WASH Cluster (GWC), PG-WASH  and Joint Monitoring Programme (JMP) team, beginning with the current set of 2024 focus countries, delivering on the 2025 set of focus countries as they are determined. Working with the GWC, PG-WASH and JMP team and a regular part of virtual and physical team meetings, the consultant will also work to identify novel frontier data technology approaches as an innovation workstream.

The consultancy shall also assist in further testing, validation, and refinement of spatial data assets and indicator data in GeoRepo and the Indicator Data Warehouse, development and production launch of a new dynamic CIC data pipeline and dashboard, continue to support the data management needs of CCDRM with respect to the Indicator Data Warehouse, and assist the Data and Analytics section in further automating its data lifecycle.

Finally, the consultancy will support the Frontier Data Network as it continues to enable new data and technology capabilities at Frontier Data Nodes and with other UNICEF data science teams including leveraging big data assets with spatial analytics, machine learning, and other AI approaches.

Scope of Work:

Coordinate with relevant stakeholders (e.g., UNICEF staff, other agencies, national government, private sector partners) to identify relevant spatial and other data sources at subnational level for analytic needs.

Working with WASH analysts and the Frontier Data and Technology Unit (FDTU), design data structures to hold data sources, maximizing reuse of available reference data standards.

Undertake data preparation, including data identification, data compilation from different sources, cleaning, standardization, and validation. Create reusable scripts in R or Python to harmonize data from multiple sources into common data structures, including sources from dynamic APIs, managing those scripts in UNICEF’s common analytics environment, Data Bricks and in its GitHub repository.

Store data in agreed upon data warehouse and spatial platforms (such as ArcGIS Online/Enterprise, Indicator Data Warehouse, GeoSight, GeoRepo) using scripts and available APIs.

Collaborate through the Frontier Data Network team with Frontier Data Nodes in Regional Offices, and other UNICEF data