IT Officer, Information Management Services I Job #: req34923 Organization: World Bank Sector: Information Technology Grade: GF Term Duration:ย 2 years 0 months Recruitment Type: Local Recruitment Location: Washington, DC,United States Required Language(s): Preferred Language(s): Closing Date: 12/5/2025 (MM/DD/YYYY) at 11:59pm UTC
Description
Do you want to build a career that is truly worthwhile? The World Bank Group is a unique global partnership of five institutions driven by a bold vision to create a world free of poverty on a livable planet. As one of the largest sources of funding and knowledge for developing countries, we help solve the worldโs greatest development challenges. When you join the World Bank Group, you become part of a dynamic, diverse organization with 189 member countries and more than 120 offices worldwide. We work with public and private sector partners, invest in groundbreaking projects, and use data, research, and technology to bring tangible and transformative change around the globe. For more information, visit www.worldbank.org.
Position Overview
In support of its development mission, the World Bank Group generates and manages vast amounts of development knowledge across sectors and countries. A critical enabler of knowledge sharing, retrieval, and reuse is the effective use and management of taxonomiesโstructured classification systems that underpin knowledge organization, discovery, and flow.
To strengthen the WBGโs ability to curate, access, and apply its knowledge assets, the organization is seeking a seasoned
Taxonomist to support the modernization and strategic integration of taxonomies across information and knowledge ecosystem.
The Taxonomist will support the development, maintenance, and strategic alignment of the WBGโs knowledge taxonomies.ย The role will contribute to the institutional knowledge strategy by ensuring taxonomies reflect operational priorities and evolving user needs across the institutions. The Taxonomist will engage operational and non-operational stakeholders to:
- Ensure WBGโs taxonomies remain current, comprehensive, and aligned with institutional priorities.
- Ensure the enterprise taxonomies are always the \"source of truth\" across the WBG institutions and manage change in the enterprise systems and knowledge platforms.
- Facilitate collaboration across technical teams and operational units to harmonize and modernize semantic structures.
Duties & Responsibilities
Strategy and Governance
- Guide the formulation and implementation of the WBG Taxonomy strategy in alignment with the operational priorities and knowledge management framework.
- Support the taxonomy governance efforts, ensuring consistency, quality, and sustainability of taxonomy structures and metadata schemas.
- Contribute to the integration of taxonomy practices with the information policies, procedures, and standards, including change management processes.
- Adopt external trends and standards in information architecture, semantic technologies, and taxonomy design, incorporating modern practices.
- Standardize taxonomy metrics to inform decisions on taxonomy improvements.
Stakeholder Engagement and Technical Integration
- Collaborate with operational units to align taxonomy structures with sectoral and regional priorities.
- Liaise with taxonomy custodians, knowledge and information specialists, IT teams, and other stakeholders to ensure taxonomies are effectively integrated into digital platforms, enterprise systems, and AI tools.
- Provide guidance on metadata tagging, classification rules, and vocabulary use to knowledge curators and systems developers.
- Facilitate taxonomy working groups and communities of practice related to support knowledge management and information governance.
Taxonomy Design, Development, and Maintenance
- Design, update, and maintain controlled vocabularies, hierarchies, thesauri, and other classification systems that support enterprise information and knowledge management and search.
- Analyze knowledge usage patterns and feedback to propose enhancements to existing taxonomies.
- Identify opportunities to automate recurring processes related to taxonomy management to increase efficiency, reliability, and quality.
- Support mapping and alignment between internal taxonomies and external standards (e.g., UN ISIC, OECD Sector, other IFI institutions).
- Coordinate efforts to ensure multilingual support where applicable.
- Conduct regular audits and assessments of taxonomy usage and effectiveness.
Capacity Building and Support
- Provide training, tools, and documentation to support taxonomy adoption across WBG institutions.
- Respond to taxonomy-related inquiries and provide technical assistance to operational and knowledge teams.
- Promote taxonomy use as part of broader knowledge and learning activities.
- Participate in the scientific dialogue related to discovery and access tools and trends, and keep current in the field through regular participation in professional communities, readings, etc.
Selection Criteria
* Masterโs degree in Information Science, Library Science, Knowledge Management, Computer Science, or a related field.
* 5 -10 years of experience in taxonomy development, content strategy, content management, knowledge management, information architecture, or library science, ideally within a large or international organization.
* Possible certifications: Taxonomy certificate from the Special Libraries Association (SLA); Taxonomy Book Camp participant; Certified Knowledge Specialist - Taxonomy by KM Institute, Certified Information Professional (CIP) by AIIM (Association for Intelligent Information Management); Certified Records Manager (CRM) from the Institute of Certified Records Managers (ICRM)
* Demonstrated knowledge of taxonomy standards, metadata schemas (e.g., Dublin Core, MARC, and the Library of Congress Subject Headings, SKOS, RDF, OWL, DCAT, schema.org, BIBFRAME, etc.), controlled vocabularies, classification principles, and ontologies.
* Familiarity with tools for taxonomy management (e.g., PoolParty, Synaptica, etc.), enterprise content management platforms (e.g., Microsoft SharePoint), and graph databases and platforms (e.g. Neo4j, etc.)
* Familiarity with Python or other programming languages used for working with data and text, is desirable.
* Familiarity with Safe Agile methodologies and working with globally distributed teams.
* Experience integrating taxonomies and ontologies into knowledge repositories, enterprise search, and AI tools.
* Strong analytical skills and ability to translate complex subject matter into structured taxonomic systems.
* Proven ability to work collaboratively across teams and engage with both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
* Excellent communication, facilitation, and interpersonal skills and experience coordinating tasks with product vendors, external partners, and internal stakeholders.
* Experience in international development organization is a plus.
WBG Culture Attributes:
1. Sense of urgency: Anticipate and quickly respond to the needs of internal and external stakeholders.
2. Thoughtful risk-taking: Challenge the status quo and push boundaries to achieve greater impact.
3. Empowerment and accountability: Empower yourself and others to act and hold each other accountable for results.
World Bank Group Core Competencies
The World Bank Group offers comprehensive benefits, including a retirement plan; medical, life and disability insurance; and paid leave, including parental leave, as well as reasonable accommodations for individuals with disabilities.
We are proud to be an equal opportunity and inclusive employer with a dedicated and committed workforce, and do not discriminate based on gender, gender identity, religion, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or disability.
Learn more about working at theย World Bankย andย IFC, including our values and inspiring stories.