Senior AI Solution Architect
Organizational Context
The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Kenya focuses on poverty eradication and sustainable development, aligning with the Sustainable Development Goals and national governance reforms. UNDP supports Kenya's Vision 2030, enhancing democratic governance, rule of law, and public service delivery. In partnership with the Ministry of Information and the Technopolis Development Authority, UNDP is establishing an integrated Artificial Intelligence Programme. This initiative aims to connect national compute infrastructure, public sector capabilities, and the innovation ecosystem to develop and scale responsible AI-enabled solutions for development challenges.
Job Purpose
This UN Volunteer assignment is crucial for the implementation phase of UNDP Kenya's Artificial Intelligence Programme. The role involves leading the architecture, engineering, integration, and deployment of priority AI-enabled solutions. The incumbent will provide day-to-day technical leadership to the AI solution development team, ensuring the effective operationalization of national AI compute infrastructure. The objective is to translate identified development, institutional, and enterprise challenges into appropriate AI solutions that can be responsibly developed, adopted, and scaled, contributing to the programme's goal of leveraging AI for sustainable development and governance improvements in Kenya.
Responsibilities
The UN Volunteer will establish technical architecture and engineering standards for selected AI solutions, reviewing use cases for technical feasibility and creating detailed solution blueprints and roadmaps. This includes defining end-to-end technical architectures, specifying data sources, models, applications, interfaces, and infrastructure. Practical engineering standards for version control, code review, reproducibility, containerization, and security will be established. The role involves leading data pipeline, application, and integration engineering, designing and implementing these components, and integrating AI models into coherent solutions. Responsibilities also include establishing CI/CD and MLOps practices, configuring and operating GPU compute environments, optimizing inference, and implementing monitoring and observability for deployed solutions. System performance validation, architecture reviews, and ensuring security-by-design are key. The volunteer will coordinate and mentor junior developers, foster reusable engineering practices, produce technical documentation, and ensure a comprehensive handover of code, infrastructure, and knowledge.
Work Experience
Requires 3 years of experience, with 5 years of relevant experience preferred. Must have strong Python proficiency and production software engineering experience for AI/ML systems, including APIs and data pipelines. Demonstrated experience in architecting and delivering end-to-end AI systems, container technologies, MLOps/DevOps practices, and deploying GPU-accelerated workloads is essential. Experience with security-by-design, OpenStack/KVM, integrating AI with existing systems, and developing AI for public sector domains is advantageous. Strong code-review, debugging, documentation, and mentoring skills are also required.
Skills
Key competencies include accountability, adaptability, communication, leadership, planning, professionalism, and teamwork. Technical skills encompass Data Science, Information Management, and Artificial Intelligence. Values such as integrity, ethics, and respect for diversity are important. Specific technical expertise in AI solution architecture, MLOps, software engineering, and GPU computing is necessary.