INTERNATIONAL TELECOMMUNICATION UNION
ITU is the leading United Nations agency for information and communication technologies, with the mission to connect the world. To achieve this, ITU manages the radio-frequency spectrum and satellite orbits at the international level, works to improve communication infrastructure in the developing world, and establishes global standards that foster seamless interconnection of a vast range of communication systems.
ITU applies a zero-tolerance policy against all forms of harassment. ITU is committed to diversity and inclusion within its workforce, and encourages all candidates, irrespective of gender, nationality, religious and ethnic backgrounds, including persons with disabilities, to apply to become a part of the organization. Achieving gender balance is a high priority for ITU.
Roster - Software Developer and Metadata Engineer Consultant for Open Code Infrastructure (OCI)
Vacancy notice no: 2314
Sector: TSB
Department: SPD
Country of contract: Switzerland
Duty station: Geneva
Position number: [[positionNumber]]
Grade: [[PositionGrade]]
Type of contract: Roster
Duration of contract: Three months
Recruitment open to: External
Application deadline (Midnight Geneva Time): 31 December 2026
ORGANIZATIONAL UNIT
The Telecommunication Standardization Bureau (TSB) fulfills the objectives of the Union relating to telecommunication standardization, by providing secretariat support to groups studying technical, operating and tariff questions and facilitating the adoption of Recommendations in these areas with a view to standardizing telecommunications and information technology on a global basis. In order to achieve these objectives, the Telecommunication Standardization Bureau works in accordance with the instructions of the World Telecommunication Standardization Assemblies (WTSA), Telecommunication Standardization Study Groups and the Telecommunication Standardization Advisory Group. TSB, headed by an elected Director, provides the technical, administrative and logistic support for the assemblies and for the meetings of the groups mentioned.
Within the Telecommunication Standardization Bureau (TSB), the Study Groups and Policy Department (SPD) is responsible for the development of standards, international numbering resources, bridging the standardization gap, and policies guiding ITU-T and the maintenance of its relevant position in the global standardization arena. It oversees the implementation of the WTSA Action Plan, and is responsible for identifying emerging technologies and analysing technology trends in order to advise membership on emerging standardization developments. The Department is also responsible for the Bureau's human resources and finance.
The Global Initiative on Artificial Intelligence for Health (GI-AI4H), jointly operated by ITU, WHO, and WIPO since its launch in July 2023, continues the work of its predecessor, the ITU/WHO Focus Group on AI for Health (FG-AI4H, 2018–2023), on establishing an international framework for the evaluation and benchmarking of AI in healthcare. As part of this effort, two web platforms have been developed and are in active use by the international health AI community:
- AI4H Evaluation Platform (health.aiaudit.org): A benchmarking system where researchers submit AI/ML models, which are evaluated against curated health datasets and ranked through standardized leaderboards. Built with Python/Django, Angular, and deployed on AWS ECS.
- AI4H Annotation Tool (annotation.ai4h.net): A data annotation platform implementing the DEL5.3 standard for health data annotation, supporting images, text, audio, and video with structured quality control workflows. Built with Java/Spring Boot, React, and deployed on AWS Elastic Beanstalk.
Both platforms require ongoing development, maintenance, and operational support. In addition, GI-AI4H contributes to open standards for dataset metadata interoperability. The Croissant metadata format (https://github.com/mlcommons/croissant), developed by MLCommons, is a key building block for FAIR dataset descriptions. Work is underway to achieve dual compatibility between Croissant and Bioschemas (schema.org/Bioschemas) so that health datasets can be described once and validated against both standards. This requires targeted contributions to the Croissant open-source repository or the development of a BioCroissant extension. The objective of this consultancy is to carry out full-stack development and operations activities across the Open Code Infrastructure (OCI) platform.
Under the guidance of the Senior Telecommunication Engineer and in collaboration with the team developing for open-code software packages based on ITU/WHO Focus Group on AI for Health (AI4H) specifications under OCI and carrying out applied AI4H audits. Specifically, the consultant will carry out full-stack development and operations activities across both platforms, organized into the following areas:
- Feature Development & Bug Fixes:
- Implement new features and enhancements on both platforms as prioritized by the project team, covering backend logic, REST APIs, frontend interfaces, and database changes.
- Diagnose and resolve reported bugs and issues across the full stack.
- Ensure new code follows existing architectural patterns and coding standards of each platform.
- Dual-Compatible Metadata Engineering (Croissant / BioCroissant):
- Implement and test code changes in the Croissant repository to address dual-compatibility blockers with Bioschemas, including:
- Type conflicts (allowing ontology-linked values where Croissant expects strings).
- Name validation and other strict field constraints.
- Handling of keywords/citations where structures differ between the two standards.
- Create validator or linter rules or plugins that check both Croissant and Bioschemas expectations.
- Add unit and integration tests, fixtures, and CI hooks to prevent regressions on dual compatibility.
- Prepare minimal examples and documentation demonstrating successful dual validation (Croissant parsers + Bioschemas FAIR checks).
- Open PRs and upstream issues to the Croissant repository or maintain a clean BioCroissant extension package if upstream changes are not feasible.
- Documentation & Knowledge Transfer:
- Maintain technical documentation covering architecture, deployment procedures, and API specifications.
- Document operational procedures and troubleshooting guides to facilitate knowledge transfer.
- Deployment of working features and bug fixes to production on a regular basis.
- Delivery of technical documentation for the OCI platform.
- Compilation of Croissant pull requests, validator rules, or a BioCroissant extension package achieving dual Croissant/Bioschemas compatibility, with passing tests and worked examples.
- Proficiency with modern React frameworks, ideally Next.js (App Router / React Server Components).
- Strong TypeScript fundamentals; strict mode, generics, discriminated unions.
- Working knowledge of PostgreSQL and an ORM/query builder such as Prisma.
- Familiarity with RESTful API design and OpenAPI 3.x specifications.
- Coding skills in Python for the evaluation sandbox runner, validators, parsers, and tooling.
- Familiarity with AWS primitives (ECS, S3, Cognito, RDS/Aurora, IAM) and infrastructure-as-code (AWS CDK preferred).
- Experience with CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions) and secure cloud deploy patterns (OIDC, least-privilege IAM).
- Ability to read an open-source codebase, opening issues / pull requests, and responding to code reviews.
- Knowledge of FAIR principles and data interoperability concepts; exposure to Croissant / ML metadata schemas is a plus.
Education:
University degree in computer science, software engineering, information technology, or a related field OR education from a reputed college of advanced education, with a diploma of equivalent standard to that of a university degree in one of the fields above.
Experience:
At least three (3) years of progressively responsible experience in software development and documentation for the relevant technical areas below.
- Experience in full-stack development with TypeScript on both ends — Node.js services (NestJS or comparable) and a modern React framework.
- Experience with JSON / JSON-LD, schemas, and validation (e.g., Zod, JSON Schema, Croissant / BIOCroissant).
- Experience with the following technical environment; the developer will work across a single unified stack, with a small isolated Python sandbox for executing participant evaluation containers:
- Layer: OCI Platform (target stack).
- Backend: Node.js 24 LTS, TypeScript 6, NestJS 11 (modular monolith), Prisma 7, BullMQ.
- Eval sandbox: Python 3.x - only for the sandboxed runner that executes participant Docker images.
- Frontend: Next.js 16 (App Router, React Server Components, Turbopack), React 18+, Tailwind v4, shadcn/ui.
- Database: PostgreSQL 16 (AWS Aurora Serverless v2), Prisma migrations, multi-schema.
- Auth: AWS Cognito (OIDC/OAuth2), aws-jwt-verify, MFA for admin/regulator/supervisor roles.
- Infrastructure: AWS CDK (TypeScript), ECS Fargate, ALB, S3, SQS, ECR, KMS, WAFv2, Secrets Manager.
- CI/CD: GitHub Actions with OIDC role assumption (no static AWS keys); per-env deploy pipelines.
- Observability: CloudWatch, AWS X-Ray, OpenTelemetry, pino structured logging, Container Insights.
- Security tooling: Trivy, Gitleaks, CycloneDX SBOM in every PR; distroless Node base images.
- API contracts: OpenAPI 3.1 via NestJS Swagger module; Zod schemas shared FE/BE via @oci/shared-types.
- Testing: Vitest 4 (unit + integration with Testcontainers), Playwright 1.59 (E2E + a11y).
Languages:
Knowledge of English at advanced level. Knowledge of another official language of the Union (Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian, Spanish) would be an advantage.
Between CHF 1000 and CHF 1500 lumpsum to be defined according to the work experience of the consultant and to be paid in monthly instalments upon satisfactory completion and submission of the deliverables.
INFORMATION ON RECRUITMENT PROCESS
Please note that all candidates must complete an on-line application and provide complete and accurate information. To apply, please visit the ITU career website. The evaluation of candidates is based on the criteria in the vacancy notice, and may include tests and/or assessments, as well as a competency-based interview. ITU uses communication technologies such as video or teleconference, e-mail correspondence, etc. for the assessment and evaluation of candidates. Please note that only selected candidates will be further contacted and candidates in the final selection step will be subject to reference checks based on the information provided. Messages originating from a non ITU e-mail account - @itu.int - should be disregarded. ITU does not charge a fee at any stage of the recruitment process.
