National Project Personnel (PHP Web Applications Developer)

Organizational Setting

The Office of Emergencies and Resilience (OER) is responsible for ensuring FAO’s efforts to support countries and partners in preparing for and effectively responding to food and agricultural threats and crises. It is responsible for coordinating the development and maintenance of corporate tools and standards to enable Decentralized Offices to assist member countries to prepare for, and respond to emergencies. OER ensures humanitarian policy coordination and knowledge, liaison with the Inter-Agency Standing Committee as well as with humanitarian resource partners, co-leadership with World Food Programme of the global Food Security Cluster, organizational preparedness, surge capacity and response to large-scale emergencies. OER supports food and nutrition security assessment and early warning activities related to emergency and humanitarian analysis and responses. OER plays a major role in the development and leadership of the Organization’s programme to increase the resilience of livelihoods to food and agriculture threats and crises (SP5).

Reporting Lines

The position reports to the Operations and Programme Specialist (Management Information System), OER.

Technical Focus

Support the development and adoption of information management tools and best practices in support of FAO’s resilience agenda at a global, regional, sub-regional and/or country level.

Tasks and responsibilities

Under the overall supervision of the Resilience Expert, coordinator of the OER cash and voucher team, the direct supervision of the Operations and Programme Specialist, and in close collaboration with the IT Division and responsible Information Technology Officer; the PHP developer will act as part of a DevOps team tasked with adapting existing FAO MIS tools for managing beneficiary data to develop a corporate MIS tool to be used in support of the implementation of FAO’s agenda at a global, regional, sub-regional and/or country level.

FAO currently uses Java desktop and PHP web-based, database-driven software to register beneficiaries (including the collection of biometric data), and leverages this information to facilitate their entitlement disbursements. A skilled PHP developer is needed to join the team to assist in both the assessment of these existing applications and their adaptation and roll-out in additional FAO country offices.

In line with industry best-practice standards as well as FAO software development standards, the PHP Developer will:

• Gain a deep technical understanding of existing systems in use within FAO, including identification of relative strengths and weaknesses as well as potential overlap between systems.
• Contribute to defining the FAO MIS corporate software suite and the DevOps team timeline.
• Contribute to developing a corporate software suite for FAO DOs, leveraging and building upon existing systems, particularly by developing and implementing the web applications.
• Support planned pilots of systems within FAO’s field operations, including by developing adjustments in order to guarantee adaptability to different country contexts.
• Setup local DOs instances and train field staff.
• Guarantee continued support to DOs as needed.
• Support the development of the FAO MIS corporate software suite.
• Undertake testing and post implementation review of the systems.
• Develop technical documentation in parallel with the development.
• Perform any other tasks relevant to the profile as may be assigned.

CANDIDATES WILL BE ASSESSED AGAINST THE FOLLOWING

Minimum Requirements

• University degree (Bachelor or equivalent) in Information Technologies, Computer science or other relevant fields;
• A minimum of three (3), preferable five (5) years of work experience in PHP web application development involving application development and/or front-end UI design and database administration using MySQL.
• Working knowledge (level C) of the FAO official language used for communication (English) is required; working knowledge of the local language(s) (French, Arabic or Spanish) will be an advantage.
• National of Kenya

FAO Core Competencies

• Results Focus
• Teamwork
• Communication
• Building Effective Relationships
• Knowledge Sharing and Continuous Improvement

Technical/Functional Skills

• At least three (3) years of programming experience in PHP is a core requirement.
• Developing web applications using CodeIgniter is a core requirement.
• Ability to work with MySQL is required, other databases an added advantage
• Ability to work with Git is required.
• Proven previous experience in creating and consuming REST APIs is a strong advantage.
• Knowledge of CI/CD tools will be an added advantage.

IT Skills

• Ability to effectively use standard office software, such as MS Office (Windows, Word, Outlook, Excel, Exchange). Ability to use accounting software and other information systems and databases to insert data, make inquiries, retrieve/define ad hoc reports and analyses and edit results in an appropriate format.

Interpersonal Communications and Teamwork Skills

• Cooperative spirit, flexibility and openness to work in an international environment.
• Tact and courtesy.
• Ability to establish and maintain effective working relationships with people of different national and cultural backgrounds.
• Ability to effectively carry out training and capacity development activities for the end-users of the application

Travel and location

• The incumbent must be ready and able to travel to support different FAO field offices with training and seminars.