Information Technology Analyst - AI and Emerging Technologies, IPSA-9, New York, USA, UNCDF [Open to internal and external applicants]

About the role

The United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) is an autonomous UN organization mandated to supplement capital assistance to developing countries, especially least developed countries, through grants, loans, and guarantees. As a flagship catalytic blended financing platform, UNCDF deploys grants, loans, and guarantees to crowd-in finance for scaling development impact, focusing on SME Finance, Sub-National Finance, and Digital Finance. The Digital Transformation and Innovation Unit (DTI) leads UNCDF's enterprise-wide digital transformation, integrating artificial intelligence and emerging technologies into investment, programmatic, and operational workflows while ensuring compliance with UN AI policy. Under the Strategic Framework 2026–2029, DTI is operationalizing a portfolio of AI agents and emerging-technology pilots to strengthen catalytic capital deployment, accelerate programme delivery, and expand financial inclusion in LDCs, SIDS, and fragile settings. The Information Technology Analyst – AI and Emerging Technologies will implement and scale the AI portfolio, building on foundational AI actions and the first deployed AI system (Strategic Alignment Intelligence), translating UNCDF's strategic AI commitments into a mature, governed, and institutionally embedded ecosystem of digital solutions aligned with UN and UNDP AI frameworks.

Responsibilities

• Operate, maintain, and improve the portfolio of AI agents deployed across UNCDF's investment, programmatic, and operational workflows, including agents supporting investment pipeline analysis, investment proposal review and stress-testing, programme document drafting, donor reporting, market analysis, internal guidance on roles and workflows, and other operational processes.
• Design, prototype, test, and deploy new agents on enterprise AI platforms in use or under institutional adoption (e.g., Google Gemini Enterprise, Salesforce Agentforce, Google Agent Development Kit, and additional frontier LLM providers and agentic platforms), ensuring compliance with UN AI governance policy.
• Support identification and prioritization of new use cases through structured discovery with teams at Headquarters and Regional Offices, translating them into technical designs and delivery roadmaps.
• Extend deployed agents beyond retrieval and analysis toward document generation, forecasting, and workflow action, including production of analytical outputs and presentation materials directly from institutional data.
• Conduct iterative validation of agent outputs against historical institutional decisions and documented outcomes, record performance metrics, and refine agent reasoning logic and system instructions accordingly.
• Maintain version-controlled technical documentation and user guidance for each deployed agent, and coordinate onboarding across Headquarters and Regional Offices.
• Develop, test, and maintain assigned components of the shared technical layer connecting UNCDF AI agents to institutional and external data, including interoperable connectors (Model Context Protocol servers or equivalent) reusable across enterprise AI platforms.
• Develop and maintain retrieval and grounding capabilities over UNCDF document repositories, enabling agents to use relevant institutional documentation, results, evaluations, and lessons learned with appropriate source attribution.
• Integrate approved external development-finance, macroeconomic, and credit-risk data sources into AI-agent workflows, including sources such as the World Bank, OECD, IMF, and commercial risk-data providers.
• Contribute technical analysis to UNCDF's enterprise AI initiatives, including assessment of platform capabilities, licensing approaches, costs, and user-access requirements, to inform management decisions on the multi-platform architecture.
• Work with UNCDF ICT, enterprise-systems teams, and relevant UNDP counterparts to implement interoperability, authentication, and security requirements, and identify potential duplication across platforms.
• Contribute to UNCDF's technical exploration and integration of emerging technologies relevant to development finance, including distributed ledger technologies (e.g., Hyperledger Fabric), digital public infrastructure (DPI), digital identity and eKYC systems, tokenization, and programmable-finance applications.
• Design and implement defined feasibility assessments, technical pilots, and proofs of concept demonstrating how emerging technologies may accelerate capital deployment, reduce transaction costs, and enhance financial inclusion in LDCs, SIDS, and fragile settings.
• Translate assigned use cases from UNCDF's priority financial, programmatic, and operational areas into technical requirements, implementation options, and draft roadmaps, in line with agreed strategic direction and technical architecture.
• Research selected emerging technologies relevant to development finance — such as CBDCs, blockchain-based financial infrastructure, and interoperable payment systems — and prepare concise analysis on possible uses for UNCDF.
• Contribute to the development and implementation of UNCDF's internal AI governance framework, aligned with UN policies and governance frameworks, including model-selection criteria, prompt governance, data-handling protocols, human-in-the-loop requirements, and escalation procedures for higher-risk use cases.
• Review proposed AI use cases and deployments against applicable UN-system guidance, including the UN Principles for the Ethical Use of Artificial Intelligence, the Global Digital Compact, and relevant UNDP/UNCDF data-protection and cybersecurity policies.
• Support preparation and maintenance of responsible-AI monitoring documentation and basic evaluation materials, including benchmark results, limitation disclosures, and validation records.
• Identify and document potential risks associated with AI integration, escalate significant issues to the supervisor, and contribute to practical mitigation measures and management briefings.
• Support the Digital Transformation and Innovation Unit in engagement with external AI and emerging-technology providers, including research, meeting coordination, and follow-up related to potential partnerships and collaboration with relevant UN-system entities.
• Contribute to development and delivery of practical user-orientation, prompt-engineering, and role-specific training sessions and materials to help UNCDF personnel use approved AI tools effectively.
• Prepare and maintain technical and programme documentation, including architecture diagrams, decision logs, reports, and updates to UNCDF's AI priorities.
• Participate in relevant internal UN-system forums on AI for development finance, and support preparation of materials presenting UNCDF's work.
• Perform other duties within the functional profile as deemed necessary for the efficient functioning of the unit.