.NET Web Developer – Global Immunization Budget Database Consultant - Ref

at  UNICEF

Job no: 576787
Contract type: Consultant
Duty Station: New York
Level: Consultancy
Location: United States
Categories: Research, Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation
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.

EDUCATION:

Advanced university degree (Bachelors) in the area of Software Engineering, Computer Engineering, Information Technology or related degree.

KNOWLEDGE/EXPERTISE/SKILLS REQUIRED *:

• At least 6 years of experience on projects based on Microsoft technology.
• Excellent knowledge of .Net 8 with web application development and REST APIs: C# language
• A minimum of six years of experience in SQL development
• Experience with data extraction from unstructured files, using Azure services like the Document Intelligence Service
• Experience with data pipelines, data cleaning, data harmonization implementation as .NET web applications.
• Experience with integrating Machine Learning and AI solution in a .NET web application (Azure Functions, OpenAI APIs, etc.)
• A minimum of two year of experience in Microsoft Azure Cloud deployment and integration with Entra ID
• Knowledge of OO software development methodologies, programming patterns, and best practices of development in a distributed environment
• Fluent in spoken and written English. Additional official UN working languages are a plus..

REQUIREMENTS:

Completed profile in UNICEF’s e-Recruitment system and

• Upload copy of academic credentials

• Financial proposal that will include/ reflect :

• • the costs per each deliverable and the total lump-sum for the whole assignment (in US$) to undertake the terms of reference.
• travel costs and daily subsistence allowance, if internationally recruited or travel is required as per TOR.
• Any other estimated costs: visa, health insurance, and living costs as applicable.
• Indicate your availability
• Any emergent / unforeseen duty travel and related expenses will be covered by UNICEF.
• At the time the contract is awarded, the selected candidate must have in place current health insurance coverage.
• Payment of professional fees will be based on submission of agreed satisfactory deliverables. UNICEF reserves the right to withhold payment in case the deliverables submitted are not up to the required standard or in case of delays in submitting the deliverables on the part of the consultant.

PURPOSE OF ACTIVITY/ ASSIGNMENT:

Economic analysis of immunization resources constitutes an important area of work in support of countries’ efforts to protect and increase domestic investments in immunization. However, challenges remain in identifying and analyzing immunization resources in domestic government budgets. There is substantial variation in how information on vaccine procurement and immunization delivery is presented in national budget documents across different countries, and even year-to-year for a given country. Often this information is only available in non-searchable PDF files, which complicates identification and analysis. Improving the accessibility of immunization budget information and supporting its interpretation through the provision of standardized analysis and data visualizations can provide insights and evidence to strengthen advocacy at a global, regional, and country level around sustainable immunization financing.
The solution is the Global Immunization Budget Database (GIBD), a custom .NET web-based application powered by AI and machine learning models, designed to standardize and analyze global immunization budget data for insightful cross-country comparison and trend analysis. GIBD enables UNICEF to access global immunization budget data via a web browser, secured with UNICEF credentials for global reach and data protection. It utilizes artificial intelligence to tackle complex data extraction and manipulation challenges and offers dashboards designed for insightful trend visualization, supported by automated analysis for strategic decision-making.
UNICEF requires the services of an external consultant to support additional development of GIBD, geared towards making GIBD a robust enterprise-level product, capable of accommodating extensive data analysis requirements. The focus is on extending its functionalities to support new features like multi-lingual datasets and numerical systems different from the decimal system. The work shall create maintainable, automated processes to perform data extraction from unstructured data sources and harmonize multiple data streams into a central database. The work shall be designed such that it can accommodate the addition of new streams of data as and when they become available.
The consultant shall interact with the Frontier Data and Tech Unit (FDTU) and the Program Group Immunization Team (PGI) to gather data and software requirements. The consultant shall also research and test potential methods for improving existent AI solutions and increase the precision of automatic data extraction from unstructured files.
There is lack of funding to cover all planned activities that continue until the end of 2025. Some deliverables are planned to be completed if additional resources become available.

The consultant will be expected to take on the following duties:

• Facilitate with relevant stakeholders including UNICEF staff, other UN agencies, development partners, and government officials for overall planning and development of the database and the related software components.
• Design of a data model and database schema for the immunization budget database in consultation with PGI and FDTU
• Further development of a .NET web-based back-end data ingestion system, which uses Machine Learning and AI to manipulate multi-lingual unstructured data sources (data extraction, data validation, semantic enrichment) and to harmonize the data and store it in a central repository.
• Further development of a .NET REST API to provide access to the data stored in the central database.
• Iteratively release multiple versions of all the software components for user testing and incorporate stakeholders’ feedback in the development cycle.
• Development of automated testing on the software’s functionality and performance
• Research and test potential methods to improve the precision of the existing AI solution for the extraction from unstructured data sources like images and PDF files.
• Collaborate with UNICEF ICTD to comply with all security and design guidelines, and to facilitate the deployment of the software components on the UNICEF Azure cloud and the integration with the UNICEF Entra ID single sign-on