Senior Digital Specialist, Service Architecture and Design - Public Infrastructure & Services

World Bank Group•Washington, DC

About The Position

Do you want to build a career that is truly worthwhile? The World Bank Group is a unique global partnership of five institutions driven by a bold vision to create a world free of poverty on a livable planet. As one of the largest sources of funding and knowledge for developing countries, we help solve the world’s greatest development challenges. When you join the World Bank Group, you become part of a dynamic, diverse organization with 189 member countries and more than 120 offices worldwide. We work with public and private sector partners, invest in groundbreaking projects, and use data, research, and technology to bring tangible and transformative changes around the globe. For more information, visit www.worldbank.org. VPU Context: The WBG Digital and AI Vertical Vice Presidency is responsible for getting the right public and private sector solutions to our operational teams and to our clients, and to produce scalable impact. Its mandate is to deliver knowledge for impact to enable and support the WBG to achieve its goals in support of our mission and specifically: providing guidance on creating more and better jobs; supporting foundational infrastructure including digital and human capital, policy environment, and private sector mobilization; focusing on agribusiness, healthcare, infrastructure, manufacturing, and tourism; and support and accelerate specific targets such as M300, Health 1.5bn, and SP 500. Digital and AI Vertical is critical to the WBG mission and mandate by enabling the use technology and its capabilities to support clients and teams. The VPU’s objectives in driving outcomes include replicating and scaling effective solutions, enhancing thought leadership and innovation, and delivering timely knowledge to client teams. Department Context: The World Bank’s Digital Public Infrastructure & Services (DPI & Services) Department helps countries build high-impact, user-centric services at scale. This includes leveraging expertise in digital public infrastructure (DPI) and service delivery to support digitalization across sectors and unlock benefits for people, businesses, and governments. The DPI & Services Department is also home to the cross-department Identification for Development (ID4D) and Digitalizing Government-to-Person-Payments (G2Px) programs, and the new World Bank Group Global DPI Program. . The DPI & Services Department provides holistic support for digital services with a focus on (1) digital service building blocks, including DPI systems (digital identity, trust services, and data sharing) and integrated architecture for digital public services, (2) enablers, including leadership and policy, service design, and capacity building, and (3) adoption of digital services across sectors, including a focus on digital G2P payments, social protection, financial inclusion, health, agriculture, and women’s economic empowerment. As part of the Digital & AI Vertical Vice Presidency, the DPI & Services Department contributes to the World Bank’s broader mission of enabling digital economies and societies through two pillars: Digital Foundations (e.g., data infrastructure, AI, cybersecurity) and DPI and Services (e.g., digital government, digital economy, digital society). The program is also aligned with cross-cutting priorities such as gender, climate, and FCV contexts. The work program of the Senior Digital Specialist - Service Architecture and Design will focus on:

Requirements

Master’s degree in service architecture and design, computer science, data engineering, data architecture, information systems, or related technical field.
Minimum 8 years of experience in digital government, DPI, service architecture, or large-scale public-sector digital transformation roles. Ideally, the candidate should have designed at least one large-scale government service system with high performance requirements.
Proven ability to frame problems early in client engagement and translate policy and service objectives into feasible digital solutions, including high-level architectures, timelines, milestones, and indicative budgets.
Strong expertise in service and solution architecture, including human-centered service design, service decomposition, interoperability design, and scalable digital service delivery models.
Hands-on experience with digital government architecture and DPI, including APIs, microservices, modular platforms, and API-first or event-driven architectures, including understanding of developing mobile applications using Java/Kotlin, Swift, or cross-platform tools.
Experience in UI/UX design, API integration, and performance optimization, with experience in SDK integration and developing modular or mini-app frameworks
Experience connecting to identity management systems (OAuth, SSO) and developing adapters for legacy systems is required. Strong understanding of data engineering and interoperability, including data modeling, metadata standards, data quality management, and international data exchange standards (REST/JSON, SOAP/XML, OData, HL7/FHIR, ISO 20022, UN/CEFACT).
Experience designing and assessing database architectures (relational, NoSQL, distributed) and applying privacy-by-design and consent management principles.
Experience with cloud platforms and architectures (AWS, Azure, GCP), including hybrid/multi-cloud, governance, and data residency in government or regulated environments, as well as knowledge of backup, recovery, and scaling strategies in cloud environments
Familiarity with AI-enabled public services and the data lifecycle for AI (analytics, automation, decision support).
Strong command of agile delivery and product management, including roadmaps, backlogs, epics, user stories, and phased implementation planning.
Hands-on experience supporting implementation and delivery, including requirements validation, system integration, data migration, testing (usability, functional, security, UAT), and operational readiness.
Strong technical communication skills, including drafting architecture blueprints, service design artifacts, technical standards, and implementation playbooks, and engaging effectively with both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
Problem-solving mindset and ability to work in a fast-paced, dynamic environment.
Excellent facilitation, communication, and stakeholder engagement skills.
Ability to work in cross-cultural, multidisciplinary teams and adapt to resource-constrained environments.

Responsibilities

Provide technical assistance to World Bank’s client countries and support design and implement digital government and digital services blueprints and roadmaps to enable data- and user-driven and integrated service delivery.
Advise and support with development of the DPI and digital public services strategies, policy and institutional design, design and transformation blueprint/s, technology & architecture guidance, frameworks, service standards, approaches and tools (and other templates and ‘how to’ advisory) to support with digital service design and implementation.
Advise on the design and implementation strategies by fostering partnerships of governments, academia, and the private sector, focusing on capacity and innovation opportunities.
Advise on emerging trends and practices, global proven practices to be considered, explored, and piloted with to support clients design future-fit public service delivery (AI-powered digital services).
Advise and provide guidance to clients’ digital teams on defining, designing and architecting digital services products, in alignment with countries’ needs, priority problems to be solved, existing digital government infrastructure and services platforms, proven and emerging good practice on digital public service delivery.
Advise on the design of a unified Digital Government Reference Architecture that moves away from siloed agency portals toward a "Life Event" model, ensuring DPI components work in sync to deliver frictionless citizen services.
Support the implementation and delivery of secure interoperability layers (e.g., X-Road, APEX) and semantic data standards (HL7/FHIR, ISO 20022) to enable the "Once-Only" principle
Act as the bridge between legislative mandates and technical execution, transforming regulatory requirements into "digital-ready" designs that automate compliance and simplify administrative workflows.
Architect sovereign cloud landing zones (Azure, AWS, GCP) and hybrid infrastructures that satisfy national security, data residency, and Privacy-by-Design requirements for sensitive citizen data.
Support creation of consistent experiences across web, in-person, mobile and other delivery channels for a seamless omnichannel experience, including the design of service components that support AI-powered delivery (NLP for local languages, predictive service triggers) and low-code prototyping to rapidly deploy services across web, mobile, and voice interfaces.
Manage the end-to-end service lifecycle using Agile/SAFe methodologies; creating product roadmaps, managing backlogs in Jira/DevOps, and ensuring institutional operating models support continuous service improvement.
Advise on relevant policy and legislative improvements and procedures streamlining for DPI and digital public services, i.e., to make policies and legislation digital-ready (rules easy to automate, use of DPI, re-use of data, allowing innovations and continuous improvements).
Advise and embrace the Service Design Lab approach in partnership with the private sector to advice and support clients to ideate, design and “stress” test prototypes of digital services products.
Advise and support countries to design and implement Service Design & Products Labs to accelerate agile experimentation, learning, and scale of innovative public services through collaboration with digital government practitioners, technology experts, domain/sector experts, private sector and startup ecosystem, and academia.
Advise clients’ digital teams on fit-for-purpose architecture designs, technology stacks and platforms and tools for digitals service delivery, aiming at the reuse of data and digital service modules (forms management, messaging/notifications, workflow management, etc), yet answering specifics of domains and sectors.

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.

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