Application Engineer - Short Term Consultant (STC)

Job Summary

The World Bank Group is seeking an Application Engineer for a Short Term Consultant (STC) engagement to support the Department for Outcomes. This is a delivery-focused, hands-on role where you will take technical ownership of a submission portal used by teams across the institution to prepare, draft, and submit structured reports. The portal generates formatted outputs (PDF/DOCX/XLSX) and feeds a downstream reporting pipeline. You will maintain and improve the platform, provide direct user support, lead QA/UAT testing, and implement feature improvements during the current reporting cycle. This is a unique opportunity to apply your R, Shiny, and Posit Connect expertise in a mission-driven global institution dedicated to ending extreme poverty and promoting sustainable development. The role is remote and offers a contract of approximately 70 working days.

Key Responsibilities

• Act as first-line and second-line technical support for portal users, triaging reported issues, reproducing them, and resolving them within agreed response times.
• Diagnose and fix issues in Shiny applications, including state-management defects, data bleeding, stale inputs, and dynamic UI problems.
• Harden the draft and submission lifecycle, including reliable auto-save and versioned resubmissions.
• Manage user accounts, roles, and access control, including password/hash handling and permission changes, in line with World Bank information-security requirements.
• Monitor Posit Connect logs, investigate deployment-specific failures, and maintain the distinction between local and deployed behavior.
• Maintain and extend a plumber storage API so that pin writes remain serialized and robust under concurrent multi-user load; maintain and test backups and recovery procedures.
• Convert non-technical feedback received in Word documents into a tracked, prioritized todo list and then into discrete, reviewable commits.
• Clear open items in feedback rounds, comprising bug fixes and UI/field changes required to align the form with official templates.
• Implement new form fields, validation logic, dynamic UI behavior, and export formats as requested by the business team.
• Improve the maintainability of the application without disrupting the production service.
• Document all changes and maintain high standards of accuracy and traceability.

Role Requirements & Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, information systems, statistics, or a related field. Equivalent combinations of education and professional experience will be considered.
• At least two years of professional experience in a relevant field.
• Proven ability to work systematically and rigorously, maintaining high standards of accuracy and documentation under demanding timelines.
• Experience working with cross-functional teams, bridging technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Strong attention to detail and commitment to producing high-quality, traceable deliverables.
• Proactive communication with team members and supervisors on progress, risks, and issues.
• Ability to work effectively in multicultural teams and environments.
• Excellent written and spoken English.

Skills Inventory

• Production-level R and Shiny, including reactivity (reactiveVal, reactiveValues, observe/observeEvent, req), dynamic UI (renderUI, insertUI), and shinyjs.
• Posit Connect deployment, manifest and bundle handling, .rscignore, environment variables and API keys, log interpretation, and resolving local vs deployed issues.
• pins as a datastore, including read-modify-write patterns.
• SQL databases, relational data modelling, transactions and concurrency control, hands-on experience with PostgreSQL and/or Databricks (Delta tables, SQL warehouses) connected from R or Python (DBI, RPostgres, pool, psycopg).
• plumber APIs for extending, deploying, and debugging a single-process storage API.
• Authentication and data hygiene, including custom auth layers, role and access control, security instinct (no secrets in Git, correct handling of .secrets/ directory, PII awareness, no credential logging).
• Git with feature-branch workflow and disciplined commit messages.
• R data wrangling and Office/PDF I/O using jsonlite, openxlsx, officer, DOCX import, and report/PDF generation.
• Quarto and LaTeX, including .qmd to PDF with TinyTeX/TeX Live, template editing, and LaTeX build failure diagnosis.
• Desirable: Python/FastAPI, uv dependency management, server-sent events and streaming endpoints.
• Desirable: Azure DevOps repositories, environment-specific configuration (local/QA/prod).

Salary & Compensation Estimation

This is a Short Term Consultant (STC) role with the World Bank Group, typically compensated as a daily rate. For a consultant with at least two years of experience and specialized skills in R, Shiny, and Posit Connect, a competitive daily rate would range from 350 to 600 USD per day, depending on experience and location. For approximately 70 working days, the total compensation would be estimated between 24,500 and 42,000 USD. The World Bank Group offers a prestigious and mission-driven work environment, with the flexibility of remote work and the opportunity to contribute to global development outcomes. Final compensation is determined by the institution based on qualifications and internal equity.