Chief Technology Officer

Responsibilities

• Strategic Technology Leadership and Accountability
• Provide authoritative technical leadership for the definition, implementation, and continuous evolution of UNHCR's Enterprise Architecture (EA), ensuring alignment with organizational strategic priorities, operational realities, and long-term digital transformation objectives.
• Maintain and enforce enterprise technology standards, leading the architecture review board (ARB), reference architectures, and technology roadmaps, ensuring that IT investments collectively strengthen the coherence, integrity, and sustainability of UNHCR's digital ecosystem.
• Ensure that the Enterprise Architecture remains current, promotes interoperability across systems, enables effective and secure data sharing, optimizes total cost of ownership, and supports the adoption of secure, resilient, and widely adopted cloud-based technologies.
• Governance, Design Authority, and Assurance
• Exercise design authority to ensure that solution architectures are cohesive across projects and fully compliant with UNHCR's enterprise architecture principles, security requirements, and governance frameworks.
• Serve as secretariat of the Architecture Review Board (ARB), convening meetings in accordance with established technology governance processes, facilitating informed decision making, and ensuring that outcomes and decisions are formally recorded and communicated.
• Review, assess, and endorse or reject architectural and technical design documentation, including solution options and recommendations, prior to submission to the Architecture Review Board for formal endorsement.
• Data and Digital Enablement
• Participate in the service's technical contribution to the Data Transformation Programme, ensuring that data is consistently managed as a strategic asset and can be securely shared across applications

Benefits

Additional Information

Please note that this vacancy is only open to eligible staff members who have been individually notified of their eligibility to apply for positions advertised in the Accelerated Posting Compendium. Deadline for Applications June 12, 2026 Hardship Level H (no hardship) Family Type Family Residential location (if applicable) Grade PR5 Staff Member / Affiliate Type Professional Reason Regular > Regular Assignment Target Start Date 2026-08-01 Standard Job Description Chief Technology Officer Organizational Setting and Work Relationships The Chief Technology Officer (CTO) is responsible for ensuring overall coherence in the delivery of enterprise scale digital transformation, aligning technology strategy with business objectives, and enabling secure, resilient, and scalable platforms. The role ensures that the value, integrity, and sustainability of UNHCR's IT architecture are progressively strengthened and extended through each project investment and ongoing evolution. The incumbent provides expert oversight and consultation to ensure that business and technical requirements-both functional and non‑functional-are clearly defined, consistent with business needs, and aligned with enterprise architecture standards. This includes validating system design specifications, defining criteria for system testing and user acceptance, and ensuring the delivery of cost effective, high performing, and functionally‑ sound systems and services, via the project management lifecycle. The CTO works closely with senior managers across ITS, in particular the Chief Business Relationship Officers, Chief of IT operations as well as with Managed Service Providers and external contractors. While the role is primarily focused on project delivery, the incumbent may also provide expert support to business-as-usual operations and IT procurement activities as required. The incumbent is expected to engage closely with technical teams, enterprise architects, data scientists, and other stakeholders across all Divisions, notably DRM, DPM, DEPS, DIPS, and the Global Data Service. Travel to other HQ locations (Budapest, Copenhagen) is an integral part of this role, and occasional missions to Regional Bureaux or Country Operations should be anticipated. The post is located within the Office of the Chief Information Officer and reports directly to the CIO. The incumbent has direct supervisory responsibility over the cross functional and IT vendor management teams to ensure alignment to the UNHCR technology architecture is adhered to. All UNHCR staff members are accountable to perform their duties as reflected in their job description. They do so within their delegated authorities, in line with the regulatory framework of UNHCR which includes the UN Charter, UN Staff Regulations and Rules, UNHCR Policies and Administrative Instructions as well as relevant accountability frameworks. In addition, staff members are required to discharge their responsibilities in a manner consistent with the core, functional, cross-functional and managerial competencies and UNHCR's core values of professionalism, integrity and respect for diversity.

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