Innovation Specialist (AI-assisted Quality Assurance)

Job Posting: 26/Mar/2026 Closure Date: 09/Apr/2026, 4:59:00 PM Organizational Unit: OIN Job Type: Non-staff opportunities Type of Requisition: Consultant / PSA (Personal Services Agreement) Grade Level: N/A Primary Location: Italy-Rome Duration: Up to 11 months Post Number: N/A IMPORTANT NOTICE: Please note that Closure Date and Time displayed above are based on date and time settings of your personal device * FAO is committed to achieving workforce diversity in terms of gender, nationality, background and culture. * Qualified female applicants, qualified nationals of non-and under-represented Members and person with disabilities are encouraged to apply; * Everyone who works for FAO is required to adhere to the highest standards of integrity and professional conduct, and to uphold FAO's values * FAO, as a Specialized Agency of the United Nations, has a zero-tolerance policy for conduct that is incompatible with its status, objectives and mandate, including sexual exploitation and abuse, sexual harassment, abuse of authority and discrimination * All selected candidates will undergo rigorous reference and background checks * All applications will be treated with the strictest confidentiality *FAO’s commitment to environmental sustainability is integral to our strategic objectives and operations.* **Organizational Setting** The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) contributes to the achievement of the 2030 Agenda through the FAO Strategic Framework by supporting the transformation to more efficient, inclusive, resilient, and sustainable agrifood systems for better production, better nutrition, a better environment, and a better life, leaving no one behind. The Office of Innovation (OIN) is an important instrument within FAO to provide strategic direction and help drive and coordinate innovation across the work of the Organization, i.e., to consolidate and strengthen FAO’s innovative spirit, including innovation of approaches and cooperation models. The Office identifies, strengthens, and complements priority areas for collective action, ensures that FAO mainstreams innovation in its programmes, facilitates cross-collaboration between the various FAO units and aids in forging and reinforcing transformative partnerships. OIN's ATIO unit is responsible for leading the ATIO initiative. The Office of Innovation (OIN) leads the Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) portal and the Agrifood Systems Technologies and Innovations Outlook (ATIO), including a federated, AI-assisted Knowledge Base (KB) and STI indicators. The ATIO Knowledge Base integrates content from partners and crowdsourcing and applies AI for enrichment, classification, and quality assurance. The Innovation Specialist (AI-assisted Quality Assurance) will contribute conceptually and technically to the design and implementation of automated testing and AI-assisted QA protocols and indicators across ingestion pipelines, Knowledge Base content quality, and database integrity, enabling reliable scaling of features such as harvesting, taxonomy/tagging, feedback tracking, and performance dashboards. **Reporting Lines** The incumbent reports to the reports to the Technical Officers leading the work on the ATIO initiative (including the Knowledge Base) and the STI Portal. **Technical Focus** Support the development and implementation of quality assurance (QA) mechanisms for the Agrifood Systems Technologies and Innovations Outlook (ATIO) Knowledge Base (KB) and the Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) portal. This includes designing and operationalizing automated and AI-assisted quality assurance protocols to ensure the reliability, integrity and performance of data pipelines, platform features and Knowledge Base content. **Tasks and responsibilities** In close collaboration with ATIO technical team the incumbent will: * Contribute to the establishment of the ATIO Knowledge Base QA mechanism, including the development of QA indicators, integration of technical experts and human-in-the-loop validation processes and related communication workflows. * Design and implement automated test frameworks (unit, integration, UI, API and data pipeline testing) for Knowledge Base and database features, including harvesting, crawling, federation, crowdsourcing input interfaces and editorial workflows. * Operationalize AI-assisted QA protocols: build/test prompt based and dataset-trained validation for record quality, classification, and metadata integrity; support improvement loops and model evaluation. * Support the establishment of CI/CD-driven QA gates and monitoring systems to assess platform reliability (availability and latency), ingestion success rates, taxonomy and tagging accuracy, duplicate detection and regression control across releases, in alignment with the ATIO CAPEX design streams. * Implement performance tracking systems: define KPIs, instrument telemetry and dashboards for content quality and user feedback tracking; pilot, collect feedback, and iterate protocols. * Ensure interoperability and data governance compliance, including alignment with FAIR and CARE principles and FAO data security standards, and contribute to QA documentation and standard operating procedures (SOPs) for partner data ingestion. * Collaborate with product and content teams to refine information modelling (e.g. taxonomies and tagging), address edge cases for grassroots innovation records and align QA mechanisms with usability and search features such as advanced search, matchmaking and multilingual functionality. * Support incident response and defect triage processes by identifying, documenting and tracking system issues, maintain test datasets for validation and regression testing, and contribute to root cause analysis for ingestion and processing issues, proposing preventive QA improvements to enhance system reliability and data quality. * Develop and test core functionalities, including natural-language interaction grounded in FAO-approved knowledge assets. * Develop a prototype with an STI/ATIO KB data pipeline with multiple stages, including data import, cleaning, filtering and quality assurance, applying emerging AI-based approaches to strengthen automation, validation and system reliability. * Contribute to the assessment of the role and integration of existing FAO and non-FAO LLM/chatbot tools (e.g. Tellus, AIDIA and AgriLLM) in relation to the STI Portal and ATIO Knowledge Base. * Contribute to the preparation and documentation of the ATIO Knowledge Base QA protocol, including the definition of QA mechanisms, workflows and operational guidelines. **CANDIDATES WILL BE ASSESSED AGAINST THE FOLLOWING** **Minimum Requirements** * **For Consultants:** Advanced university degree from an institution recognized by the International Association of Universities (IAU)/UNESCO in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Data Science or a related field; Consultants with a bachelor's degree require two additional years of relevant professional experience. * **For PSAs:** Relevant technical degree or certificate in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Data Science or a related field. * Two (2\) years of relevant experience in software quality assurance, software engineering, data engineering, or related technical areas, including experience with QA automation for data-intensive platforms (web applications, APIs and data pipelines). * Experience applying AI, machine learning or natural language processing techniques for content validation, metadata checks, classification or semantic consistency. * Working knowledge (Level C) of English and limited knowledge (Level B) of one of the other FAO official languages (French, Spanish, Arabic, Chinese or Russian). For PSA.SBS positions, working knowledge of English is sufficient. **FAO Core Competencies** * Results Focus * Teamwork * Communication * Building Effective Relationships * Knowledge Sharing and Continuous Improvement **Technical/Functional Skills** * Extent and relevance of experience in software QA automation and testing frameworks for web platforms, APIs and data pipelines. * Experience with test automation tools and frameworks (e.g. Playwright, Selenium or Cypress; pytest or JUnit), API testing tools (e.g. Postman or Rest Assured), data pipeline testing tools (e.g. dbt tests, Great Expectations or equivalent), and CI/CD platforms (e.g. GitLab, GitHub Actions or Azure DevOps). * Experience designing QA strategies for federated or crowdsourced data systems and interoperability workflows (e.g. APIs, data contracts and schema evolution). * Familiarity with FAIR and CARE principles, privacy and security practices and platform observability tools (metrics, logs and traces). * Experience with taxonomy and tagging QA, duplicate detection, multilingual search QA and accessibility testing. * Ability to translate complex QA findings into actionable improvements for product and content teams. **Selection Criteria** * Experience working with AI-assisted validation approaches for content quality, metadata integrity and classification in knowledge platforms or digital repositories. * Experience working in international or multi-stakeholder environments, including collaboration with product, data and content teams. * Demonstrated ability to develop documentation, protocols or standard operating procedures for technical systems or quality assurance processes. Please note that all candidates should adhere to FAO Values of Commitment to FAO, Respect for All and Integrity and Transparency **ADDITIONAL INFORMATION*** FAO does not charge any fee at any stage of the recruitment process (application, interview, processing) * Please note that FAO will only consider academic credentials or degrees obtained from an educational institution recognized in the IAU/UNESCO list * Please note that FAO only considers higher educational qualifications obtained from an institution accredited/recognized in t