IAEA Junior Professional Officer Program

In 2006, the U.S. Mission to Internal Organizations in Vienna concluded a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to support a Junior Professional Officer (JPO) Program at the International Atomic Energy Agency.  This agreement  makes it possible for the United States to prepare young professionals for careers in the nuclear industry and international civil service and to reinforce the multilateral co-operation activities of the U.S. Government.  Other Member States including France, the Netherlands, Germany, Japan and Italy also have JPO programs.  This employment mechanism promotes U.S. interests by providing basic yet essential support to the IAEA in conjunction with our Cost Free Expert program.

JPOs can be funded by the U.S. Support Program to IAEA Safeguards or by individual U.S. government agencies.  IAEA program managers are required to initiate requests for JPOs in a manner similar to how CFEs are requested including the preparation of a job description.  Current vacancies are advertised at www.bnl.gov/ispo/jpo/jpo.asp.

Key features of this program include:

• JPOs shall be persons with suitable academic and professional qualifications who, as a rule, are not over 32 years old and lack the practical experience required for employment as safeguards experts or as regular IAEA staff members in accordance with IAEA standards for recruitment.

• Assignments are expected in the areas of engineering, equipment development and maintenance, technical writing, information collection and analysis, software development, information security, and other technical areas.

• Letters of Appointment establish JPOs as members of the staff of the IAEA, subject to the IAEA Staff Regulations and Rules and entitled to most staff benefits.  As such they will have the status of international civil servants and will be subject to the authority of the Director-General of the IAEA and will be responsible to him/her in the exercise of their functions.

• The U.S. expects to fund approximately ten JPOs per year, subject to the availability of funding. Each JPO would normally be assigned for a period of twelve months.

• JPOs would be recruited on the basis of salary grade P-1 or P-2 as full-time staff of the IAEA.  Two years of relevant work experience, after graduation of first university degree, is for a P2 salary grade.

• JPOs may be assigned to mission/program critical tasks that cannot be assigned to interns.

Additional information about the program is available from the ISPO Office or the ISPO Task Monitor assigned to a specific vacancy.