Internal Services Lead

The CGIAR Excellence in Breeding Platform (EiB) (www.excellenceinbreeding.org) is a cross-commodity platform that supports the modernization of breeding programs targeting Africa, Asia, and Latin America for greater impact on food and nutrition security, climate change adaptation, and development. By providing important outcomes to under-resourced peoples, the CGIAR centers help realize the founding mission of the CGIAR system – they target low-and-middle-income countries for greater impact on food and nutrition security, climate change adaptation, and development.

The Platform is part of the new CGIAR portfolio of research programs and platforms (www.cgiar.org/our-strategy) and is led by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center, known by its Spanish acronym, CIMMT®, a not-for-profit research, and training organization with partners in over 100 countries www.cimmyt.org

The CGIAR Excellence in Breeding Platform (EiB) is recruiting an Internal Services Lead to guide the DevOps, Quality Assurance, and Database teams for Enterprise Breeding System (EBS), an internationally developed, cross-team project at CGIAR.

This is a leadership position that will be responsible for the DevOps, Software Quality Assurance, and Database teams for EBS.  Their mission is to enable the success of the EBS development teams. They will report to the EBS Engineering Lead.  The teams and stakeholders for EBS are geographically dispersed, multicultural, and multi-disciplinary so the selected candidate will be proactive at communicating and documenting processes. The candidate will have the authority and responsibility to improve development practices and processes as a member of the EBS Engineering Leadership team.  The selected candidate will value people’s diversity and diversity of opinions within the EBS teams and stakeholders.

The position will be based in CIMMYT’s campus in Texcoco, State of Mexico, located 45 km northeast of Mexico City, Mexico.

Specific Duties:

• Works with development teams to provide operations tools and process guidance on AWS cloud Technologies including CICD build pipelines, application monitoring, backup, and recovery.
• Guides Software Quality Assurance team to deliver tools and process improvements.
• Collaborates with Database team on data modeling, data infrastructure, and monitoring and performance optimization.

Preferred Academic Qualification, Skills and Attitude:

• Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science or equivalent work experience
• Experience as a leading cross-functional software development team.
• Domain knowledge in plant breeding, genomics, analytics.
• Knowledge of and skills in applying:
  • Software development life cycle and system architecture
  • Experience implementing CICD practices
  • Experience implementing QA best practices
  • Agile Scrum principles and values
• Highly motivated with strong interpersonal skills, the candidate must have the ability to work successfully with multi-functional teams, principles, and architects and coordinate effectively across organizational boundaries and geographies
• Additional skills that the candidate must exhibit are a sense of urgency, commitment to deadlines, flexibility/adaptability, and basic notions of Project Management.
• The selected candidate must exhibit the following competencies: Negotiation and Conflict Resolution, Critical Thinking, Client Orientation, Communication, and Team Leadership.

The position is for an initial fixed-term for three (3) years, after which further employment is subject to performance and the continued availability of funds. CIMMYT’s internationally competitive salary and benefits include housing allowance, car, comprehensive health, and life insurance, assistance for children’s education, paid vacation, annual airfare, contribution to a retirement plan, and generous assistance with relocation shipment.

Candidates must apply here for IRS22113_Internal Service Lead. Screening and follow-up of applications will begin on Monday, April 11^th, 2022. Applications must include a CV and a cover letter. Incomplete applications will not be taken into consideration. For further information on the selection process, please contact Yessica Castillo, at y.castillo@cgiar.org

Please note that only short-listed candidates will be contacted.

This position will remain open until filled. 

CIMMYT is an equal opportunity employer. It fosters a multicultural work environment that values gender equality, teamwork, and respect for diversity. Women are encouraged to apply.