Job Description

E T Consultant

Job #: req38356 Organization: World Bank Sector: Agriculture Grade: EC2 Term Duration: 1 year 0 months Recruitment Type: Local Recruitment Location: Washington, DC,United States Required Language(s): English Preferred Language(s): Closing Date: 9/21/2026 (MM/DD/YYYY) at 11:59pm UTC

Description

At the World Bank, a member of the World Bank Group (WBG), you’ll join a diverse, global community working across cultures, disciplines, and borders to address the world’s most pressing development challenges. With 1.2 billion young people reaching working age in the decade ahead, the challenge of job creation has never been greater. Through partnerships across 145 countries and more than 182 offices worldwide, we work with governments, private sector, development partners and other stakeholders to invest in people, strengthen markets, and deliver scalable, data-driven solutions that generate more and better jobs and improve lives. For more information, visit International Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

Context and Rationale

• Ukraine holds a central place in the Agriculture and Food portfolio in ECA, reflecting both the acute emergency created by Russia's invasion and the country's longer-term strategic trajectory toward European Union (EU) membership. Since February 2022, Ukraine's agricultural sector has operated under extraordinary pressure: production area contracted, farmgate prices collapsed, access to credit dried up, and cumulative damage, losses and needs in agriculture exceeded $144.5 billion by end-2025. At the same time, Ukraine's application for EU membership in February 2022 and the opening of accession negotiations in December 2023 have placed deep institutional reform — including the alignment of agri-food policy, sector operators, payment systems, and digital infrastructure with EU standards — at the heart of the country's recovery agenda.
• The World Bank's agri-food operations in Ukraine are deliberately designed to respond to both imperatives in parallel: providing immediate, market-preserving financial relief to keep farms operational during the war, while simultaneously investing in the institutional foundations — particularly the State Agrarian Register (SAR) and its EU-compatible architecture — that will position Ukraine to absorb and manage EU agricultural support effectively both prior to and upon accession.
• Ukraine is expected to remain a priority country for the ECA’s agri-food program in the years ahead and a key participant in the AgriConnect initiative, the World Bank Group's flagship effort to transform smallholder farming, catalyze agribusiness investment, and generate jobs — an agenda for which Ukraine's scale, agricultural potential, and reform momentum make it a natural anchor country in the region.
• The current flagship lending operation underpinning this engagement is the Ukraine Agriculture Recovery Inclusive Support Emergency (ARISE) project (P180732), approved in October 2023 with a total framework cost of $700 million. ARISE has delivered strong results under wartime conditions: as of end-2025, disbursements stand at 94 percent, over 87,000 agricultural producers have accessed financing — nearly half of them women, significantly exceeding inclusion targets — and more than 13.4 million hectares of agricultural land have been maintained under production, surpassing the original target of 8 million hectares. Most strikingly, the project has mobilized nearly $4 billion in private capital, more than double its original target of $1.5 billion, demonstrating the power of a blended design that combines interest rate subsidies under the government's 5-7-9 affordable credit program with targeted per-hectare or per-animal grants to small farms administered through SAR. ARISE will continue implementation through its extended closing date of September 30, 2028. The project is being restructured to reallocate existing funds to a newly introduced matching grants component. It also expects receiving additional financing from the EU Ukraine Investment Framework (UIF) for the new component.
• Looking ahead, a critical building block in the pipeline is the project on Strengthening the Capacity of the State Agrarian Register in Ukraine (P506719), whose development objective is to sustain and expand the Farm Register integrated in the SAR by scaling up successfully piloted elements of a future EU-compliant Integrated Administration and Control System (IACS), laying the foundation for a functional Paying Agency in Ukraine. The SAR, launched in August 2022, has already proven its value as a transparent, digital platform for targeting state support and has become the mandatory channel for all government agricultural programs, with over 176,000 producers registered. Moving from this emergency-born instrument to a fully EU-compliant IACS — comprising the Farm Register, the Land Parcel Identification System (LPIS), an area monitoring system, and a Paying Agency function — is a technically demanding undertaking that requires specialized knowledge of EU IT architectures, data standards, and governance models as implemented in existing and recently acceded member states. This is precisely why building or leveraging expertise in EU agricultural IT systems is not a peripheral concern but a core project design requirement: the trajectory of Ukraine's IACS must be calibrated to EU standards from the outset. In this context, the project benefits from important analytical complementarities with the work led by the Development Economics Research Group (DECPT), whose body of research has used SAR administrative data, satellite-based crop maps, and parcel-level registry records to evaluate support program targeting, assess war-induced agricultural damage, and analyze land market performance. This work, which has also contributed directly to the design of IACS pilot elements under EU trust fund support, provides an evidence base and methodological toolkit that will directly inform the SAR project's approach to area monitoring, beneficiary eligibility verification, and LPIS development.
• SCAAG seeks a highly qualified Agriculture Specialist (ETC) based in Washington DC (HQ) to support delivery of the Ukraine agriculture portfolios. The position will contribute to project preparation and implementation support, policy dialogue and analytics, and coordination with internal and external partners. The Specialist will work closely with Task Team Leaders (TTLs), country management units, fiduciary and safeguards teams, and partner institutions to help ensure timely, high-quality outputs and results on the ground. He/She is also expected to contribute to the wider Europe and Central Asia program and will report to the Practice Manager for SCAAG.

Duties & Accountabilities

1. Operational Support (Ukraine)

Will focus on the SCAAG-led activities in the Ukraine agriculture portfolio, as follows: SAR project (about 48% of the time allocation, to be charged to trust funded activities associated with P506719, GFR to be submitted in FY27) and ARISE project (about 29% of the time allocation, to be charged to PE-P180732-SPN-TF0C2987). It will include the following specific tasks:

• Implementation support, Ukraine/ARISE: Monitor implementation progress of ARISE Component 2 (production support grants for small farms) and new Component 5 (matching grants program), track agreed actions from supervision missions, and flag emerging risks to the TTL.
• Implementation support, Ukraine/ARISE: Assist in the preparation of regular ARISE Implementation Support Missions, including review of disbursement data, financial management reports, and procurement status updates, and subsequently provide input into Aide-Mémoires on relevant technical mission findings.
• Implementation support, Ukraine/ARISE: Liaise with the ARISE implementing agency, i.e. MAPF, and other relevant government agencies on the updates to the Project Operational Manual required for the implementation of the matching grants program.
• Implementation support, Ukraine/SAR: Serve as the main technical liaison and counterpart in the Task Team's discussions with MAPF on improving and expanding SAR.
• Implementation support, Ukraine/SAR: Support the task team in both the remaining project preparation activities and subsequently implementation support activities for the new project supporting the strengthening of SAR capacities.
• Implementation support, Ukraine/SAR: Provide leadership of the technical oversight of the preparation of the Project Operational Manual for the implementation of SAR, and of the procurement and development of data systems and infrastructure foreseen under the SAR project.

1. Policy Dialogue, Analytics and Partner Engagement (Ukraine)

Will focus on the DECPT-led Supporting transparent land governance in Ukraine (P165404), which will finance about 23% of the time allocation, to be charged to AA-P165404-GAD-TF0C7424 and AA-P165404-ASA-TF0B4465, and include the following specific tasks:

• Support the design and implementation of IACS pilots in Ukraine, including the Geo-Spatial Application (GSA), Area Monitoring System (AMS), and Land Parcel Identification System (LPIS), by working with the Ministry of Economy and Agrarian Ecosystem Affairs (MEEA) to test these components under Ukrainian conditions, identify operational gaps, and ensure alignment with EU Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) requirements and relevant national regulations.
• Lead or contribute to the evaluation of IACS pilots, assessing their technical functionality, institutional readiness, and compliance with EU accession standards, including the development of a control and penalty (traffic light) system; document findings and produce evaluation reports that will inform decisions on whether piloted elements are suitable for scaling.
• Develop supporting instruments for IACS rollout, including procedures enabling farmers to demonstrate eligibility for public support programs, draft regulatory frameworks underpinning future IACS implementation at scale, and contribute to a roadmap for the progressive expansion of successfully piloted IACS elements across Ukraine's agrarian administration system.

Selection Criteria

Minimum Requirements:

• Degree (Bachelor or Master’s) in a relevant field, complemented by extensive professional development through progressively senior roles in project coordination, agricultural governance and EU integration within international development organizations.
• A minimum of 10 years of progressively responsible professional experience, including more than 5 years of direct, hands-on operational experience with World Bank projects.
• Demonstrated involvement in project preparation, supervision and implementation support missions, procurement coordination, and financial management oversight, with a strong working knowledge of World Bank operational policies and procedures.
• Solid knowledge of the agriculture sector in Ukraine in particular, across both public sector reform and IFI-funded agricultural development projects, and the region in general.

Technical Competencies:

• Agricultural Governance and Partner Engagement: Demonstrated expertise in agricultural governance, stakeholder engagement in the agrifood sector, and project coordination for international development programs.
• Agricultural Sector Knowledge: Complementary experience in agricultural recovery and rural finance, including exposure to climate-smart agriculture.
• Agricultural IT Platforms for Transparent Sector Governance and EU alignment: Hands-on experience supporting the piloting and implementation of Integrated Agriculture Control System (IACS) and Land Parcel Identification System (LPIS) in the context of EU-aligned agricultural policy reform.
• Operational Insight: Demonstrated leadership in preparing or supervising operations, especially in fragile or transition contexts.
• Analytical and Advisory Services: Ability to translate evidence into actionable policy recommendations and deliver advisory services to high-level government clients.
• Communication and Language: Excellent analytical and writing skills in English and Ukrainian with a demonstrated ability to produce high-quality outputs for both technical and non-technical audiences.

Behavioral Competencies:

• Client Orientation: Ability to build trust and credibility with a wide range of clients in diverse political and institutional settings.
• Teamwork and Inclusion: A collaborative working style, cultural sensitivity, and proven experience leading multidisciplinary teams.
• Communication: Excellent verbal and written skills in English, Arabic, and French, able to convey complex concepts clearly and effectively across stakeholders.
• Results Orientation: Ability to manage tasks and deliver high-quality outputs under tight deadlines.

WBG Culture Attributes:

1. Sense of urgency: Anticipate and quickly respond to the needs of internal and external stakeholders.
2. Thoughtful risk-taking: Challenge the status quo and push boundaries to achieve greater impact.
3. Empowerment and accountability: Empower yourself and others to act and hold each other accountable for results.

World Bank Group Core Competencies

As per WBG policy, an Extended Term (ET) appointment is subject to a lifetime maximum of three (3) years. Former and current ET staff who have completed or are in the process of completing their third-year ET appointment are not eligible for future ET appointments.

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