Lead Systems Engineer
General Information
Position Title
Lead Systems Engineer
Job Category
Information and Communications Technology
Duty Station(s)
Copenhagen
Seniority Level
Senior Level
ICS Level
ICS 11
Contract Type
ICA \- IICA \- Regular
Contract Level
IICA 3
Posting Start Date
11\-May\-2026
Posting End Date
31\-May\-2026
Duration
Ongoing, subject to budget available and performance
Job Highlight
This is a rare opportunity to define the technical foundations for a global UN organization at a pivotal moment: UNOPS is actively building AI capabilities, modernising its platforms, and scaling digital solutions across 80\+ countries. The position offers significant influence over technology decisions, team leadership, and the adoption of cutting\-edge practices like AI\-assisted development.
About the Group
The UNOPS IT Group (ITG) is at the forefront of digital transformation, designing, delivering, and managing all of UNOPS IT infrastructure and business applications. We are a global team, dedicated to harnessing cutting\-edge technology to address critical business needs and empower UNOPS personnel worldwide. ITG provides the essential IT systems and tools that underpin the successful implementation of UNOPS projects and the delivery of corporate initiatives. From maintaining robust enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems and developing bespoke business applications to managing our cloud infrastructure and supporting global collaboration platforms, our work ensures operational excellence. We are committed to continuous improvement, driving effectiveness and efficiency in UNOPS products and services, ultimately helping people build better lives and countries achieve peace and sustainable development.
Job Specific Context
The Core Systems Engineering (CSE) team designs, builds, and maintains the platforms, APIs, reusable components, and developer tools that power UNOPS digital solutions \- from AI applications and integration layers to business systems and project templates. CSE serves as the technical backbone for the AI Centre of Excellence, Business Applications, and IT Operations teams, providing them with the building blocks they need to deliver their own solutions.
Role Purpose
Under the supervision of the CIO, the Lead Systems Engineer will lead the Core Systems Engineering team, setting technical direction and standards for the platforms, APIs, components, and tools that underpin UNOPS digital solutions. This role has full accountability for the delivery of platforms, standards and frameworks for all digital products across the organization, including specialized AI products for HQ and the field.
Functions / Key Results Expected
1\. Team Leadership and Engineering Standards* Provide technical leadership to a team of Systems Architects and Developers, setting engineering standards and ensuring consistent, high\-quality delivery across all CSE workstreams.
- Define and enforce the technical standards, coding practices, and architectural patterns that all CSE\-built solutions must follow.
- Make technology decisions for the CSE stack (languages, frameworks, cloud services, and tools), balancing innovation with maintainability and organisational risk.
- Recruit, mentor, and develop team members, building technical capability and ensuring the team stays current with relevant technologies.
- Guide the adoption of AI\-assisted development tools and practices within the team, ensuring responsible use and measurable productivity gains.
- Own the design and delivery of CSE's core outputs: APIs, reusable components, integration layers, AI application templates, project templates, and developer tools.
- Define cloud hosting architectures and deployment specifications for CSE solutions, providing the Infrastructure team with clear standards for automation, scaling, and orchestration.
- Design and oversee CI/CD pipelines, branching strategies, and application deployment workflows, including AIOps\-specific processes for model versioning, experimentation tracking, drift monitoring, and retraining.
- Ensure all CSE\-built platforms and components are production\-ready, well\-documented, and designed for handover to the teams that will operate and extend them.
- Manage the developer experience: ensure project templates, starter kits, CI/CD pipelines, and development tooling enable the team to deliver reliably and efficiently.
- Coordinate with the IT Infrastructure team to align on hosting environments, infrastructure dependencies, capacity requirements, and production support arrangements, ensuring CSE solutions and deployment pipelines run reliably in production.
- Coordinate with the Business Applications team to ensure CSE\-built components and platforms serve their delivery needs.
- Establish and maintain engineering governance, including architecture review processes, technical debt tracking, and security\-by\-design practices.
- In close alignment with the CISO, ensure all CSE developments and outputs comply with cybersecurity standards, data protection requirements, and cloud governance policies
- Report to ITG leadership on CSE delivery progress, technical risks, capacity, and resource needs.
Skills
Cloud Computing, Systems Engineering, Technical Leadership, Software Development Lifecycle, Coding, Software Architecture
Competencies
Develops and implements sustainable business strategies, thinks long term and externally in order to positively shape the organisation. Anticipates and perceives the impact and implications of future decisions and activities on other parts of the organisation.
Treats all individuals with respect; responds sensitively to differences and encourages others to do the same. Upholds organisational and ethical norms. Maintains high standards of trustworthiness. Role model for diversity and inclusion.
Acts as a positive role model contributing to the team spirit. Collaborates and supports the development of others. For people managers only: Acts as positive leadership role model, motivates, directs and inspires others to succeed, utilizing appropriate leadership styles.
Demonstrates understanding of the impact of own role on all partners and always puts the end beneficiary first. Builds and maintains strong external relationships and is a competent partner for others (if relevant to the role).
Efficiently establishes an appropriate course of action for self and/or others to accomplish a goal. Actions lead to total task accomplishment through concern for quality in all areas. Sees opportunities and takes the initiative to act on them. Understands that responsible use of resources maximizes our impact on our beneficiaries.
Open to change and flexible in a fast paced environment. Effectively adapts own approach to suit changing circumstances or requirements. Reflects on experiences and modifies own behavior. Performance is consistent, even under pressure. Always pursues continuous improvements.
Evaluates data and courses of action to reach logical, pragmatic decisions. Takes an unbiased, rational approach with calculated risks. Applies innovation and creativity to problem\-solving.
Expresses ideas or facts in a clear, concise and open manner. Communication indicates a consideration for the feelings and needs of others. Actively listens and proactively shares knowledge. Handles conflict effectively, by overcoming differences of opinion and finding common ground.
Education Requirements
Required* Bachelor’s degree (or equivalent) in in Computer Engineering, Computer Science, Software Engineering, a related technical discipline, or equivalent or related fields with 9 years of relevant experience OR
- Master’s degree (or equivalent) in any of the above or related fields with 7 years of relevant experience is required
- Professional Cloud Architect Certification (AWS, Azure, or GCP).
Experience Requirements
Required* Relevant experience is work in software engineering, system architecture, or related field (Minimum 7 years with a Master or 9 years with a Bachelor).
- Minimum 3 years of technical leadership, influencing technical direction, standards, or delivery outcomes beyond their own work.
- Experience designing and delivering platforms, reusable component libraries, or Enterprise APIs consumed by other teams or applications.
- Experience with the specific technology stack used by the team (e.g., .NET Core, Python, Angular, Google Cloud Platform).
- Demonstrated experience with all facets of Google Cloud Platform that relate to building, testing, and deploying secure production\-grade enterprise applications, including but not limited to serverless and containerized compute, managed data services, CI/CD pipelines, and IAM, IAP, secrets management, observability tooling, and AI/ML services.
- Experience building or integrating AI/ML components into production systems, such as vector databases, embedding pipelines, ML model serving, or LLM\-based applications.
- Experience establishing technical standards, architecture governance, or engineering quality frameworks for a team or organisation.
- Experience with formal engineering productivity frameworks.
- Experience with UNOPS or other UN agencies.
Language Requirements
Language Proficiency Level Requirement
English Fluent Required
French Fluent Desirable
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