Associate Product Manager

World Bank Group • Washington, DC

14h

About The Position

Working at the World Bank Group provides a unique opportunity for you to help our clients solve their greatest development challenges. The World Bank Group is one of the largest sources of funding and knowledge for developing countries; a unique global partnership of five institutions dedicated to ending extreme poverty, increasing shared prosperity and promoting sustainable development. With 189 member countries and more than 130 offices worldwide, we work with public and private sector partners, investing in groundbreaking projects and using data, research, and technology to develop solutions to the most urgent global challenges. For more information, visit www.worldbank.org

ITS Vice Presidency Context:

The Information and Technology Solutions (ITS) Vice Presidential Unit (VPU) enables the World Bank Group to achieve its mission of ending extreme poverty and boost shared prosperity on a livable planet by delivering transformative information and technologies to its staff working in over 150+ locations. For more information on ITS, see this video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=VTFGffa1Y7w

Unit Context:

The ITS Fiduciary Operations Unit (ITSFD) supports digital solutions for Procurement, Financial Management, and Environmental and Social Safeguards across Bank Operations. It provides integrated, efficient tools that enable borrowers and staff to ensure compliance with fiduciary requirements, financial audits, and environmental and social safeguards.

Duties and accountabilities:

A. Product Vision, Strategy & Roadmap

• Define and maintain a clear vision for modern procurement systems powered by AI, automation, and intelligent workflows.
• Develop multi-year product roadmaps aligned with operational procurement needs, digital transformation priorities, and emerging technology capabilities.
• Identify high value opportunities to modernize procurement processing, risk screening, document analysis, vendor evaluation, and insights delivery. value opportunities to modernize procurement processing, risk screening, document analysis, vendor evaluation, and insights delivery.

B. Requirements Definition & User Engagement

• Engage procurement specialists, policy owners, buyers, and operational staff to understand needs and pain points.
• Translate procurement policies and business rules into system capabilities, user stories, and acceptance criteria.
• Lead user validation, design reviews, and continuous feedback cycles.

C. AI, Agentic Automation & Low-Code Innovation

• Champion adoption of AI-driven capabilities such as automated document analysis, supplier risk scoring, and intelligent workflow routing.
• Integrate agentic AI models that autonomously execute procurement tasks under human supervision.
• Drive low-code/no-code solutions to accelerate delivery, reduce manual effort, and enable self-service modernization.

D. Agile Delivery & Multi-Team Leadership

• Lead Agile ceremonies, PI Planning, prioritization, and cross-team alignment.
• Coordinate multiple Scrum teams, ensuring synchronized delivery across platforms, integrations, and data layers.
• Remove blockers, manage dependencies, and ensure focus on product goals.

E. System Design, Quality & Compliance

• Ensure procurement systems align with security, governance, and policy controls.
• Support functional testing, AI model validation, workflow simulations, and UAT.
• Partner with enterprise architects to ensure scalable, modular, cloud-ready solutions.

F. Stakeholder Management & Communication

• Serve as the primary point of contact for procurement leadership and business owners.
• Provide transparent communication on roadmap progress, risks, decisions, and change impacts.
• Influence and guide stakeholders across procurement, ITS, legal, finance, and audit teams.

G. Continuous Improvement & Innovation

• Identify opportunities to enhance user experience through automation, improved analytics, and process reengineering.
• Stay current on procurement technology trends, AI evolution, regulatory changes, and best practices.
• Drive a culture of data-driven decision-making and digital-first procurement.

Note: This internal requisition is open to WB and IMF staff only (including short-term and extended term consultants/ temporaries). External candidates are requested not to apply. In case an external candidate applies, their application will not be considered.

Requirements

• Master’s degree in STEM fields (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) with 8 years of experience or a bachelor's degree with a minimum of 10 years of relevant experience, or equivalent combination of education and experience.
• Demonstrated experience delivering large-scale, high-impact digital products in complex enterprise environments.
• Proven track record leading modernization initiatives involving AI, automation, and workflow intelligence.
• Ability to translate complex business rules, policies, and risk considerations into well-structured system requirements. structured system requirements.
• Strong analytical and strategic decision-making abilities with a demonstrated capacity to prioritize competing demands under tight timelines.
• Experience coordinating cross-functional teams and managing dependencies across multiple Agile workstreams.
• Ability to collaborate effectively with procurement policy units, legal teams, risk and audit functions, ITS delivery teams, and enterprise architects.
• Demonstrated experience influencing senior stakeholders, framing technology decisions, and driving alignment in governance settings.
• Strong understanding of AI-driven systems, agentic automation models, and intelligent system design from a product delivery perspective.
• Proven ability to work in fast-paced, high ambiguity environments and drive clarity, structure, and forward momentum. ambiguity environments and drive clarity, structure, and forward momentum.
• Proven experience in product management, business analysis, or solution leadership in procurement, supply chain, or financial domains.
• Strong understanding of operational procurement policies, sourcing processes, and vendor management.
• Hands-on experience with Agile methodologies (Scrum, SAFe) and working with cross-functional teams.
• Practical knowledge of foundation models/LLMs, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), tool-use/function-calling, multi agent orchestration, autonomous workflow agents with human-in-the-loop controls, prompt engineering, and safety/guardrails.
• Familiarity with model lifecycle management (data preparation, training, evaluation, deployment, monitoring, drift detection, and rollback), feature stores, experiment tracking, and CI/CD for ML pipelines.
• Solid understanding and working knowledge of designing cloud-native, event-driven microservices following domain-driven design (DDD), API-first approaches (REST/GraphQL), asynchronous messaging and streaming platforms (such as Kafka or Event Hub), CQRS, and saga patterns. Familiarity with containerization and orchestration technologies like Docker and Kubernetes, as well as serverless architectures where applicable.
• Working knowledge of data lakes/warehouses, ELT/ETL pipelines, metadata/catalog, vector databases, and secure integration with enterprise systems (ERP, IAM) via APIs and iPaaS.
• Understanding of IAM (RBAC/ABAC), secrets management, encryption, privacy and responsible AI, auditability, and model governance in regulated environments.
• Working knowledge telemetry for apps and models (logging, tracing, metrics), reliability engineering, and cost/performance optimization.
• Exceptional communication, analytical, and stakeholder management skills.

Nice To Haves

• Deep understanding of procurement operations, policies, sourcing processes, vendor lifecycle management, and compliance frameworks will be a plus.
• Experience leading enterprise procurement transformation programs.
• Working knowledge in intelligent document processing, NLP, fraud/irregularity detection, or supplier analytics.
• Ability to shape long-term digital strategy for procurement functions.
• Experience working with multi-ART delivery structures in SAFe environments.
• Ability to represent procurement technology strategy in senior-level governance forums.
• Previous leadership of modernization initiatives using AI, automation, or low-code platforms.
• Certifications such as CSPO, SAFe POPM, PMP, or procurement-related credentials are desirable. related credentials are desirable.

Responsibilities

• Define and maintain a clear vision for modern procurement systems powered by AI, automation, and intelligent workflows.
• Develop multi-year product roadmaps aligned with operational procurement needs, digital transformation priorities, and emerging technology capabilities.
• Identify high value opportunities to modernize procurement processing, risk screening, document analysis, vendor evaluation, and insights delivery.
• Engage procurement specialists, policy owners, buyers, and operational staff to understand needs and pain points.
• Translate procurement policies and business rules into system capabilities, user stories, and acceptance criteria.
• Lead user validation, design reviews, and continuous feedback cycles.
• Champion adoption of AI-driven capabilities such as automated document analysis, supplier risk scoring, and intelligent workflow routing.
• Integrate agentic AI models that autonomously execute procurement tasks under human supervision.
• Drive low-code/no-code solutions to accelerate delivery, reduce manual effort, and enable self-service modernization.
• Lead Agile ceremonies, PI Planning, prioritization, and cross-team alignment.
• Coordinate multiple Scrum teams, ensuring synchronized delivery across platforms, integrations, and data layers.
• Remove blockers, manage dependencies, and ensure focus on product goals.
• Ensure procurement systems align with security, governance, and policy controls.
• Support functional testing, AI model validation, workflow simulations, and UAT.
• Partner with enterprise architects to ensure scalable, modular, cloud-ready solutions.
• Serve as the primary point of contact for procurement leadership and business owners.
• Provide transparent communication on roadmap progress, risks, decisions, and change impacts.
• Influence and guide stakeholders across procurement, ITS, legal, finance, and audit teams.
• Identify opportunities to enhance user experience through automation, improved analytics, and process reengineering.
• Stay current on procurement technology trends, AI evolution, regulatory changes, and best practices.
• Drive a culture of data-driven decision-making and digital-first procurement.

Benefits

• 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.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level