Senior Digital Specialist, Data Architect โ Digital Government Job #: req33448 Organization: World Bank Sector: Digital Development Grade: GG Term Duration:ย 4 years 0 months Recruitment Type: International Recruitment Location: Washington, DC,United States Required Language(s): English Preferred Language(s): Closing Date: 6/24/2025 (MM/DD/YYYY) at 11:59pm UTC
Description
Do you want to build a career that is truly worthwhile? Working at the World Bank provides a unique opportunity for you to help our clients solve their greatest development challenges. The World Bank consists of two entities โ the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) and the International Development Association (IDA). It is a global development cooperative owned by 189 member countries. As the largest development bank in the world, the World Bank provides loans, guarantees, risk management products, and advisory services to middle-income and creditworthy low-income countries, and coordinates responses to regional and global challenges. For more information, please visit www.worldbank.org.
Digital Transformation Vice Presidency
The Digital Transformation Vertical Vice Presidency was established on July 1, 2024, and guides World Bank Group efforts to establish the foundations of a digital economy, build and enhance digital and data infrastructure, ensure cybersecurity and data privacy for institutions, businesses, and citizens, and advance digital government services. Digital technologies, including AI and data, present a unique opportunity to accelerate development. The Digital Transformation Vertical has the critical mission of delivering on this development promise. The Digital Vice Presidency and its global and regional teams supports client countries in building the foundational and cross-cutting elements of digital transformation through two engagement pillars, six business lines, and multiple cross-cutting areas:ย
โข Digital Core: Building digital infrastructure through broadband network, affordable devices; Enhancing data infrastructure including data centers, cloud solutions and data governance; Enabling AI and cutting-edge technology applications; and Protecting institutions, businesses, and citizens through cybersecurity, data protection & privacy, trust services as well as online safety.
โข Digital Use: Supporting the Regions and the Verticals of People, Prosperity, Planet, and Infrastructure in the digitalization efforts of clients throughย
Digital Government (digital public infrastructure, digital government services, and digital literacy and training), Digital Economy (national ICT planning, ICT industry and jobs, and smart infra and industry) and Digital Society (digital school, digital health, etc.).ย
Both pillars are the channels through which this Vice Presidency supports World Bank achieving its objectives in cross-cutting areas like jobs and skills, climate and green, fragility, conflict and violence, and gender and inclusion. ย
Digital Government Unitย
The World Bankโs Digital Government helps countries build high-impact, user-centric services at scale. This includes leveraging expertise in digital public infrastructure (DPI) and service delivery to support digitalization across sectors and unlock benefits for people, businesses, and governments. The Digital Government unit is also home to the cross-department Identification for Development (ID4D) and Digitalizing Government-to-Person-Payments (G2Px) programs, and the new World Bank Group Global DPI Program.ย
The Digital Government unit provides holistic support for digital services with a focus on (1) digital service building blocks, including DPI systems (digital identity, trust services, and data sharing) and integrated architecture for digital public services, (2) enablers, including leadership and policy, service design, and capacity building, and (3) adoption of digital services across sectors, including a focus on digital G2P payments, social protection, financial inclusion, health, agriculture, and womenโs economic empowerment.ย
As part of the Digital Transformation Vertical Vice Presidency, the Digital Government Unit contributes to the World Bankโs broader mission of enabling digital economies and societies through two pillars: Digital Foundations (e.g., data infrastructure, AI, cybersecurity) and DPI and Services (e.g., digital government, digital economy, digital society). The program is also aligned with cross-cutting priorities such as gender, climate, and FCV contexts.
Job Duties and Responsibilities
As governments increasingly explore the potential of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance public services, improve decision-making, and drive innovation, the need for robust, secure, and interoperable data infrastructure is critical. Such infrastructure must support seamless data exchange, sharing, and interoperability across government departments, agencies, and external stakeholders while ensuring compliance with data governance, privacy, and security standards and regulations.ย ย
To this end, the Senior Digital Specialist - Data Architect will play a key role in advising and supporting countries design and implement AI-ready data sharing infrastructure and service delivery platforms that enable efficient, secure, and scalable data exchange, interoperability, and service delivery across the public and private sectors. The role will focus on advising with the design data management and architectures that support AI-ready data operations and sharing while adhering to national and international standards for data management and privacy.
The primary objective of Senior Digital Specialist - Data Architect is to advise on design and oversee the development of scalable, AI-ready data infrastructure and data exchange architectures that enable seamless data sharing, interoperability, service delivery, and analytics across government entities. This role will support World Bank client countries in aligning their infrastructure with DPI and digital government principles, ensure that countriesโ data infrastructure is scalable, secure, aligned with AI-driven use, while enabling responsible AI applications in the public sector, in compliance with relevant regulations.
Key Responsibilities:ย
The work program of the Senior Digital Specialist -Data Architect will focus on:
Data Sharing Platform Design
โข Advise and oversee the design of modular and scalable AI-ready/optimized data architectures to support government data ecosystems (including data lakes, data warehouses, and cloud-based storage solutions and specialized data stores for AI use cases)ย ย for data sharing infrastructureโincluding centralized, federated, and decentralized solutionsโadapted to different country context and sectoral needs (e.g., financial inclusion, social protection, health and agriculture among other).
โข Advise and support with the development of MLOps infrastructure for complete AI lifecycle management, including development of data models and schemas optimized for AI applications, ensuring compatibility with machine learning (ML) and analytics workflows for digital government.
โข Advise and guide on the architecture designs are interoperable with existing government systems and comply with global best practices on data governance.ย ย
โข Advise on the design and implementation of synthetic data generation capabilities to create privacy-preserving datasets for AI model training, testing, and validation, particularly for sensitive government data scenarios where real data usage may be restricted or prohibited.
โข Advise on the design of edge computing solutions for real-time citizen-facing AI applications.ย
โข Advise on infrastructure design to support government-scale real-time and batch data processing for AI use cases, such as predictive analytics, natural language processing, and decision support systems with appropriate response times.ย ย
โข Advise on data quality frameworks to ensure clean, consistent, and reliable data for AI training and inference.
Advisory on data sharing and service implementation
โข Provide technical assistance in selected countries receiving World Bank support to design and implement national data sharing capabilities and the deployment of AI for digital public services, enabling secure decentralized data sharing while maintaining data sovereignty.
โข Advise on the design of interoperability frameworks that align with open standards (e.g., FHIR, HL7, GraphQL, OpenAPI or other relevant protocols) to enable seamless data integration, including data mesh, APIs implementation, data pipelines, and middleware to facilitate standardized data access and exchange.
โข Advise on the development of standardized data models and taxonomies for government contexts.
โข Advise on implementation of data architectures, Support the development of strategic and technical implementation plans, including identifying required procurements (platforms, APIs, integration services), sequencing, and timelines.
โข Advise on data governance frameworks to ensure alignment with local laws and international regulations (e.g., GDPR, CCPA).
โข Recommend technical controls and policy measures for privacy, cybersecurity, and ethical use of AI in systems development, deployment, and service delivery.
โข Facilitate inter-department collaboration and stakeholder consultations to ensure broad buy-in and interoperability across users and systems.
AI-enabled Digital Public Service Deliveryย
โข Identify and prioritize high-impact AI use cases to improve service delivery and public sector efficiency.
โข Support countries in piloting selected AI applications, ensuring proper data flows, model testing, and ethical safeguards.
โข Recommend open-source tools, data platforms, and machine learning frameworks suited to the identified use cases.
โข Document results, challenges, and lessons learned to inform scale-up and replication in other contexts.
The Specialist will collaborate with the Vice Presidencies and the regionsโ cross-functional teams, and provide technical expertise to strengthen digital infrastructure, including digital literacy programs and access to essential services. Additionally, the specialist will work closely with key stakeholders to foster partnerships, support capacity-building initiatives, and ensure the sustainability and scalability of digital solutions, driving long-term impact and fostering inclusive growth.ย
With respect to expected outputs, the senior specialist will deliver on key global analytical work, design technical assistance for the teams and governments, and as requested by the Vice Presidencies and regions, convene teams to discuss and design solutions that are tailored to specific environments.ย ย
โข Operational Engagement: The specialist will lead efforts to ensure that digital government initiatives are effectively integrated into broader development programs with collaboration across the World Bankโs Vice Presidencies, regional teams, and external stakeholders. As members of project teams led by the regions and or the Vice Presidencies, the specialist will work closely with government ministries, multilateral organizations, private sector partners, and civil society to design and implement inclusive digital government platforms for service delivery that cater to all citizens. By fostering strategic partnerships and facilitating dialogue among key stakeholders, the specialist will ensure that digital government solutions drive measurable improvements in service delivery, social inclusion, and citizen empowerment. The specialist will join implementation missions as requested by the regions and Vice Presidencies, produce knowledge to be shared with clients and teams to further digital society.ย
Selection Criteria
โข Masterโs degree in computer science, Data Engineering, Information Systems, or a related field.ย ย
โข Minimum of 8 years of experience in data architecture, data engineering, or related roles.ย ย
โข Proven experience designing large-scale data infrastructure for AI or analytics applications.ย ย
โข Proven technical skills in data modeling, ETL/ELT processes, and database technologies (SQL, NoSQL, graph databases); and in modern data architectures, including data mesh, data fabric, and lakehouse patterns.ย
โข Proficiency in designing APIs, microservices, and data integration frameworks; and knowledge of AI/ML frameworks and their data requirements (e.g., TensorFlow, PyTorch) and hands-on experience in their production deployment and optimization.ย ย
โข Understanding of data security practices, including encryption, tokenization, and access control, zero-trust architectures, and privacy-preserving / enhancing technologies.
โข Experience with government data systems, interoperability standards, or public sector projects is highly desirable, notably with low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).
โข Familiarity with open standards, data exchange protocols (e.g., APIs, X-Road, HL7 FHIR) and emerging decentralized standards for data sharing (W3C verifiable credentials, EUDI wallet, ISO/mDL, etc.), and digital public goods is a strong asset.
โข Strong communication and stakeholder engagement skills, with the ability to effectively collaborate with both technical and non-technical audience across government and non-government partners.ย ย
โข Problem-solving mindset and ability to work in a fast-paced, dynamic environment.
WBG Culture Attributes:
1. Sense of Urgency โ Anticipating and quickly reacting to the needs of internal and external stakeholders.
2. Thoughtful Risk Taking โ Taking informed and thoughtful risks and making courageous decisions to push boundaries for greater impact.
3. Empowerment and Accountability โ Engaging with others in an empowered and accountable manner for impactful 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.