Data Scientist

DEADLINE FOR APPLICATIONS

8 September 2026-23:59-GMT+01:00 Central European Time (Rome)

WFP celebrates and embraces diversity. It is committed to the principle of equal employment opportunity for all its employees and encourages qualified candidates to apply irrespective of race, colour, national origin, ethnic or social background, genetic information, gender, gender identity and/or expression, sexual orientation, religion or belief, HIV status or disability.

ABOUT WFP

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.

To learn more about WFP, visit our website: and follow us on social media to keep up with our latest news: YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok.

WHY JOIN WFP?

• WFP is a 2020 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate.
• WFP offers a highly inclusive, diverse, and multicultural working environment.
• WFP invests in the personal & professional development of its employees through a range of training, accreditation, coaching, mentorship, and other programs as well as through internal mobility opportunities.
• A career path in WFP provides an exciting opportunity to work across the various country, regional and global offices around the world, and with passionate colleagues who work tirelessly to ensure that effective humanitarian assistance reaches millions of people across the globe.
• We offer an attractive compensation package (please refer to the Terms and Conditions section of this vacancy announcement).

JOB TITLE: Data Scientist

TYPE OF CONTRACT: Regular Consultant (CST)

UNIT/DIVISION: Private Sector Partnerships (PSP), Individual Fundraising Team

DUTY STATION (City, Country): Remote (administrative DS is Rome, HQ)

DURATION: 11 months

SUPERVISOR: Head of Insights and Strategic Enablement

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE OF THE ASSIGNMENT:

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) is the world’s largest humanitarian organization fighting hunger worldwide. Private Sector Partnerships (PSP) is responsible for growing and nurturing engagement with individual supporters, corporate partners, foundations and philanthropists to mobilize resources for WFP’s mission.

As WFP continues to expand its individual fundraising (IF) programmes across WFP.org and ShareTheMeal, there is an increasing need to leverage advanced analytics, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and predictive modelling to optimize fundraising performance and long-term donor value. The Insights & Strategic Enablement function provides analytics, business intelligence, forecasting and strategic insight services to support evidence-based decision-making across PSP.

The Data Scientist will play a critical role in transforming large and complex datasets into actionable insights, predictive models, and AI-driven solutions that improve fundraising effectiveness and supporter engagement.

The role will work closely with fundraising, digital, technology, business intelligence, and data engineering teams within IF and more broadly PSP.

ACCOUNTABILITIES/RESPONSIBILITIES:

Reporting to the Head of Insights and Strategic Enablement, the data scientist will be responsible for providing data science, machine learning, and AI services in support of IF’s global data and analytics priorities, including deriving insights from large-scale datasets including transactional, web, app and experimentational.

• Collaborate with PSP stakeholders, data owners, product teams, and technical counterparts to translate business needs into analytical solutions, document methods and results, and support adoption of data-driven recommendations.
• Design, build, train, evaluate, and deploy machine learning and data science models that support segmentation, clustering, prediction, fundraising optimization and donor engagement. Apply the correct modeling technique; supervised or unsupervised to meet the differing business need.
• Apply advanced AI techniques, including natural language processing, large language models, retrieval-augmented generation, prompt engineering, and agentic workflows, where appropriate to automate analysis, improve decision support, and enhance knowledge discovery.
• Perform exploratory data analysis, feature engineering, model evaluation, hyperparameter tuning, and model optimization to ensure analytical outputs are accurate, explainable, scalable, and fit for purpose.
• Implement or assist tech and product teams to implement and operationalize data science models.
• Rigorously review model performance and refine or retire where appropriate, maintaining a repository of solutions.
• Contribute and collaborate with wider community of data scientists within WFP and sister agencies, keeping abreast and raising awareness to PSP colleagues of cutting-edge developments.
• Other tasks as required.

DELIVERABLES AT THE END OF CONTRACT

• Development of a data science pipeline for Individual Fundraising; capturing needs, data assets and projects with an implementation model.
• Continually develop data science infrastructure and capabilities. Work with the engineering teams to operationalize models.
• Development of a repository of data science models that have been developed; define review periods and maintain a code library.
• Become a champion of Data Science, Machine Learning and AI within PSP; showcase possibilities and successful implementations.

QUALIFICATIONS & EXPERIENCE REQUIRED:

Minimum Qualifications And Experience

Six years of relevant experience plus a university degree in Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Data Science, Statistics, Engineering, or a related quantitative field. Demonstrated experience working with large-scale datasets and building machine learning or AI solutions is required. Working knowledge of cloud platforms and modern data science tooling is considered an advantage.

Skills and Competencies:

• Proficiency in programming languages such as Python or R is crucial for a data scientist.
• Solid understanding of statistics is essential. The candidate should be familiar with concepts such as hypothesis testing, regression analysis, probability distributions, and statistical modeling techniques.
• Expertise in traditional machine learning techniques, including supervised and unsupervised learning, segmentation, clustering, prediction, classification, regression, feature engineering, model evaluation, and model selection.
• Strong experience with sentiment analysis, natural language processing, large language models, prompt engineering, retrieval-augmented generation, and agentic AI workflows, with the ability to identify practical use cases and implement responsible AI solutions.
• Excellent oral and written skills; excellent drafting, formulation, reporting skills.
• Excellent interpersonal skills; culturally and socially sensitive; ability to work inclusively and collaboratively with a range of partners, including grassroots community members, religious and youth organizations, and authorities at different levels; familiarity with tools and approaches of communications for development.
• Ability to work and adapt professionally and effectively in a challenging environment; ability to work effectively in a multicultural team of international and national personnel.
• Self-motivated, ability to work on MVPs in an agile environment; ability to work with tight deadlines.
• Sound security awareness.
• Have affinity with or interest in leveraging AI in humanitarian domain volunteerism as an enabler for durable development, and the UN System.

Languages:

Proficiency (read/ write/ speak) in English.

WFP LEADERSHIP FRAMEWORK

WFP Leadership Framework guides to the common standards of behavior that guide HOW we work together to accomplish our mission.

Click here to access WFP Leadership Framework

REASONABLE ACCOMMODATION

WFP is committed to supporting individuals with disabilities by providing reasonable accommodations throughout the recruitment process. If you require a reasonable accommodation, please contact: Visualizzare la mail su trk.iohire.com

NO FEE DISCLAIMER

The United Nations does not charge any application, processing, training, interviewing, testing or other fee in connection with the application or recruitment process. Should you receive a solicitation for the payment of a fee, please disregard it. Furthermore, please note that emblems, logos, names and addresses are easily copied and reproduced. Therefore, you are advised to apply particular care when submitting personal information on the web.

REMINDERS BEFORE YOU SUBMIT YOUR APPLICATION

• All applications must be submitted exclusively through our online recruiting system. We do not consider CVs or applications sent by email, LinkedIn, or any other channel.
• We strongly recommend that your Workday profile is accurate and complete, and that all sections are filled in, including your employment history, academic qualifications, language skills, and UN grade (if applicable). Once your profile is completed, please apply, and submit your application.
• If you experience technical issues while submitting your application, you may contact us at Visualizzare la mail su trk.iohire.com. Please note that this email is only for technical issues with an application - unsolicited applications or documents sent to this inbox will not receive a reply.
• At the application stage, the only required documents are your CV and Cover Letter. Additional documents (passport, certificates, recommendation letters, etc.) may be requested later in the process.
• Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted and invited to proceed to the next stage of the recruitment process.

All employment decisions are made on the basis of organizational needs, job requirements, merit, and individual qualifications. WFP is committed to providing an inclusive work environment free of sexual exploitation and abuse, all forms of discrimination, any kind of harassment, sexual harassment, and abuse of authority. Therefore, all selected candidates will undergo rigorous reference and background checks.

No appointment under any kind of contract will be offered to members of the UN Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions (ACABQ), International Civil Service Commission (ICSC), FAO Finance Committee, WFP External Auditor, WFP Audit Committee, Joint Inspection Unit (JIU) and other similar bodies within the United Nations system with oversight responsibilities over WFP, both during their service and within three years of ceasing that service.