UNOPS has signed an agreement with the United Nations to implement defined activities in support of Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) Innovation and Analytics Hub (IAH). In alignment with the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (henceforth referred to as “OHCHR”) Management Plan 2024/2027 (OMP), the objective of the IAH is to strengthen the organization’s culture of innovation and “inject new data, technology and innovative tools and thinking into OHCHR”.
Supported by partners, OHCHR is working to strengthen its foundational data capabilities and build digital public goods of global significance. This includes the Human Rights Data Exchange as the UN’s first open data platform for human rights, and the Human Rights Advisory Service envisioned under the Global Digital Compact. Supported by the Innovation and Analytics Hub, these initiatives will expand access to trusted human rights data, transform it into actionable insights, and provide timely, rights-based guidance to governments, civil society, and private sector entities worldwide.
The successful candidate will directly contribute to OHCHR’s digital transformation and data-driven decision-making. Their work will increase the efficiency of internal processes by integrating AI agent minimum viable products (MVPs) with OHCHR systems and improve access to relevant and actionable insights across the human rights community by developing an AI-enabled interface for human rights data as a service. The AI Engineer supports technical teams with specialized expertise, ensuring solutions successfully leverage AI technology for OHCHR’s mission and operational needs.
The incumbent of this position will be personnel of UNOPS under its full responsibility.
Under the supervision of the UNOPS Project Manager and in close collaboration with the IAH, the AI Engineer will perform the following key functions:
1. AI Agent Development & Orchestration
Implement custom retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) pipelines with vector search, document intelligence, and function calling
Develop agentic AI systems with multi-step reasoning and dynamic response generation using Model Context Protocol (MCP)
Maintain orchestrator routing logic, resolve agent coordination issues, and ensure proper response aggregation
Implement thread/run execution patterns for conversational AI with memory management
2. Enterprise Integration & Data Architecture
Engineer secure integrations between AI systems, OHCHR’s Data Foundation (Fabric/OneLake), APIs, and application layers
Build AI-driven querying capabilities and interactive data visualizations for Data as a Service
Develop and maintain APIs, microservices, and frontend code (JavaScript/React/Next.js)
Ensure compliance with UN Data Architecture standards (medallion lakehouse, data quality frameworks)
3. AI Testing, Security & Compliance
Perform evaluation, testing, and benchmarking of AI models across providers (Azure/OpenAI, Google, AWS, open-source)
Manage red teaming, validation pipelines, and bias detection/mitigation strategies
Collaborate with the UN Office of Information and Communications Technology (OICT) and Data Protection Officer on Data Protection Impact Assessments (DPIAs), personally identifiable information (PII) detection, and data classification mechanisms
Integrate information security controls and participate in audits following OICT Technical Procedures
4. Operational Excellence & Knowledge Transfer
Maintain technical documentation (architecture diagrams, API specs, deployment procedures, troubleshooting guides)
Implement monitoring, logging, and alerting for system health and performance optimization
Design and execute testing strategies (unit, integration, AI model validation)
Provide technical guidance to team members and contractors; support capacity building for OHCHR staff
