Working at FAO
Careers, recruitment routes and current opportunities at the Food and Agriculture Organization
Explore FAO careers in food security, agriculture, fisheries, forestry and related operations, with practical application guidance and current vacancies from official listings.
Overview
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) works on food security, nutrition, sustainable agriculture, fisheries and aquaculture, forestry, animal health and rural livelihoods. It combines normative work including standards, statistics and policy advice, with field programmes and emergency agricultural response.
Its headquarters is in Rome, with regional, subregional and country offices worldwide. Because a large part of the portfolio is delivered through country-level projects, many advertised posts are field-based and funded by a specific project, which is why fixed-term appointments, project personnel contracts and consultancies appear frequently alongside regular professional posts.
The technical spread is wide, ranging from agronomy, veterinary and plant health, fisheries, forestry, food safety, agricultural economics and statistics, natural resource management, and the programme, procurement and finance functions that support them. Emergency and resilience work adds a steady flow of roles in countries facing conflict, drought or animal disease outbreaks.
Organization profile
FAO is a technically specialised agency, and subject matter credibility matters more here than in other development organisations. Staff are often expected to hold an advanced degree in their technical field and to be able to represent the organisation in front of ministries of agriculture and technical bodies.
Its normative role also shapes daily work with much of the output including guidance, data and standards that member states use. Candidates who can show published technical work, relevant experience in member states standards or national policy advisory work tend to stand out. Working knowledge of a second FAO language is a practical advantage in regional and headquarters posts.
Recruitment at a glance
138 vacancies advertised in the last 12 months in our database.
Grades and levels
| Level | Vacancies |
|---|---|
| Not stated | 138 |
Contract types
| Contract | Vacancies |
|---|---|
| Not stated | 138 |
Where the roles are
| Duty station country | Vacancies |
|---|---|
| Home Based | 15 |
| Various Locations | 13 |
| Chile | 8 |
| Based | 8 |
| Italy | 7 |
| Colombia | 6 |
| El Salvador | 6 |
| Philippines | 5 |
| Sierra Leone | 4 |
| Dominica | 3 |
Which roles are advertised
| Career field | Vacancies |
|---|---|
| administration | 15 |
| programme | 14 |
| finance | 9 |
| monitoring-evaluation | 5 |
| protection | 4 |
| environment | 4 |
| information-technology | 3 |
| engineering | 3 |
| communications | 3 |
| logistics | 3 |
Most frequently advertised job titles
- Coordinador/a de Areas de Cambio Climático, Recursos Naturales y Resiliencia de Sistemas Agroalimentarios, Dominica (2)
- Agronomist and Extension Specialist, Mykolaiv, Ukraine (1)
- Asistente de Programas (Apoyo a Programación, Notas Técnicas y Movilización de Recursos), Havana, Cuba (1)
- Aquaculture and Recirculating Aquaculture Systems (RAS) Specialist, Home Based (1)
- Asistente de Compras , Guatemala City, Guatemala (1)
- Asistente de Gestión del Conocimiento, Cochabamba, Bolivia (1)
- Analista en mercadeo y cadenas de valor, El Salvador (1)
- Asistente técnico/a ambiental, Buenos Aires, Argentina (1)
- Assistant FAO Representative (Programme), Honiara, Solomon Islands (1)
- Administrative Support (Auxiliar/a administrativo/a), Colombia (1)
How to apply
Apply through FAO's own recruitment portal and complete the online profile in full, because it is the record the panel reads.
Read the contract modality on the notice before you apply. Professional and national posts, project personnel, consultants and personal service agreements have different eligibility rules, durations and benefits, and the same technical expertise is sometimes advertised under more than one of them. National posts are restricted to nationals or legal residents of the duty station.
Write to the technical specification. Name crops, species, systems, models or standards you have worked with, the scale of the operations involved, and the counterparts you advised. Interviews are competency-based and usually paired with a technical discussion; for statistical and analytical posts a written exercise is common. Recruitment for fixed-term posts typically runs several months, and rosters are used, so a strong unsuccessful application can lead to a later offer.
Salary and conditions
UN Global Jobs does not publish salary, allowance, benefits or contract-condition guidance for FAO - Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Pay and conditions differ by grade, contract type and duty station, and they change over time. The authoritative statements are the ones in the vacancy notice and in the offer made by the organisation, which is where you should verify them. Where a vacancy notice states pay, we reproduce it on the listing; where it does not, ask the recruiting team before making commitments.
Sources
Vacancy figures on this page are calculated from notices published by FAO and collected by UN Global Jobs. Organisational facts are taken from FAO's own published material.