GovStack was founded by Estonia, Germany, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), and theDigital Impact Alliance (DIAL) in 2020. It is a global, multi-stakeholder initiative that enables countries tokick-start and scale their digital transformation by adopting, deploying, and scaling digital governmentservices using a modular “building block” approach. It provides a common technical framework offundamental, reusable, and interoperable digital components – known as Building Blocks – that can beassembled to deliver citizen-centric services across any sector. Driven by an open community of expertsand partners, GovStack offers a blueprint for rapidly implementing digital public infrastructure in a way thatis scalable, secure, and aligned with international best practices.Since its foundation, GovStack has engaged with more than 20 countries across different regions and hasmobilised a community of more than 260 experts and specialists to contribute to the development ofreliable, secure, and effective digital services.

Key Responsibilities

• Strategic Vision: Provide strategic leadership and a multi-year architecture vision for GovStack’s digital identity domain, aligned with the GovSpecs 2.0 Strategy (2025–2027). This includes oversight of foundational digital identity systems as well as related trust services such as wallet, consent and electronic signature building blocks. The Digital Identity Lead will define the roadmap for evolving these components in line with GovStack’s long-term objectives, ensuring they support an AI-ready digital government stack (e.g., conversational service delivery and event-driven processes by default).
• Collaboration and Governance: Work in close collaboration with the GovStack Chief Technology Officer (CTO) and other cross-functional leads (e.g. Data Lead) to integrate digital identity considerations into the broader GovStack vision and technical governance. This includes contributing expert input to overall strategy implementation and participating in GovStack governance bodies (such as the Architecture Working Group or Technical Committee) to ensure digital identity standards align with overarching architectural frameworks and cross-cutting requirements.
• Working Group Architectural Leadership: Serve as the lead architect for the Digital Identity and related specification working groups, providing architectural guidance and general direction, to ensure specifications are valid when separated or viewed together. In close collaboration with the WG Representative, the Lead will foster an inclusive, results-driven environment within these groups to drive specification updates and resolve issues.
• AI-Readiness and Innovation: Drive innovation in GovStack’s identity and related trust specifications by ensuring they are AI-ready and implementation-centric. This involves promoting machine-readable, self-describing API definitions and event-driven architectures within the digital identity and related building blocks, so that automated agents and workflows can easily discover and orchestrate services. The Lead will ensure that strong digital identity, consent, and audit mechanisms are built in, preventing lock-in to outdated models and supporting emerging trends like conversational interfaces and personal data ownership.
• Regional Alignment and Guidance: Lead the work on implementation guides for specific regions or regulatory contexts. In particular, work with GovStack eIDAS Specialist (European Digital Identity Specialist) for creating a dedicated EU implementation guide to document the interaction between GovStack Building Blocks and the European Union’s eIDAS regulatory framework. This work will address any gaps or friction between GovStack standards and regional policies, ensuring that the GovStack digital identity framework can be confidently adopted in Europe and other jurisdictions.
• Outreach and Representation: Represent GovStack in international forums, technical conferences, and industry panels related to digital identity and digital government. The Digital Identity Lead will be expected to articulate GovStack’s approach and specifications, demonstrate thought leadership in the domain, and foster partnerships with countries, standardisation bodies, technology vendors, software products and solution providers, to identify and encourage candidate solutions for specifications . By advocating for GovStack’s open, interoperable standards, the Lead helps grow the community and encourages broad adoption of GovStack principles worldwide.

Required Skills and Competencies:

• Technical Expertise: State-of-the-art knowledge of digital identity technologies and related architectural principles – including authentication protocols, digital signature solutions, identity management systems, and emerging identity wallet frameworks. A strong grasp of interoperability challenges and modern best practices in digital ID design is essential.
• Standards and Policy Knowledge: Familiarity with international digital identity standards and regulations. Awareness of the European eIDAS 2.0 regulation and its technical implementation and other frameworks such as OSIA (Open Standards Identity APIs, an ITU-supported standard) is a plus.
• Public Sector Experience: Practical experience in the public sector implementing or architecting digital identity and/or digital wallet solutions. A background that includes work on national ID systems, electronic identity cards, federated identity, or similar government digital identity projects is highly valued.
• Collaboration & Communication: Excellent team collaboration and communication skills. The candidate should be a respectful, results-oriented team player capable of driving consensus in a diverse, international working group setting. Proven ability to communicate complex technical concepts to both technical and non-technical stakeholders is important.
• Leadership in Communities: Demonstrated experience in driving technical consensus in technical working groups or communities of practice that has resulted in deliverable outputs (e.g. standards, guidelines, or specifications) in the domain of digital government or a closely related field.

Interested candidates are invited to submit their applications, including the following:

• A cover letter outlining their suitability for the role, including salary expectations.
• A CV highlighting relevant experience and qualifications.

Start of Employment: ASAP
Duration: Until 31 Dec 2025 (with possibility of extension)

For any additional information, please contact GovStack CTO, Mr. Kristo Vaher, at kristo@waher.net or +372 5692 0873 (WhatsApp).

Please note that this is not a full-time position. The time commitment required can vary based on the project and the applicant’s needs and timelines.

Applications should be submitted to cv@estdev.ee by Monday, 1 September (17:00 EEST).

GovStack was founded by Estonia, Germany, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), and the Digital Impact Alliance (DIAL) in 2020. It is a global, multi-stakeholder initiative that enables countries to kick-start and scale their digital transformation by adopting, deploying, and scaling digital government services using a modular “building block” approach. It provides a common technical framework of fundamental, reusable, and interoperable digital components – known as Building Blocks – that can be assembled to deliver citizen-centric services across any sector. Driven by an open community of experts and partners, GovStack offers a blueprint for rapidly implementing digital public infrastructure in a way that is scalable, secure, and aligned with international best practices.
Since its foundation, GovStack has engaged with more than 20 countries across different regions and has mobilised a community of more than 260 experts and specialists to contribute to the development of reliable, secure, and effective digital services.

Context

In alignment with the GovSpecs 2.0 Strategy (2025–2027) and to extend the tools available to GovStack Building Block implementers in key regions, GovStack is initiating the first stage of a project to document the interaction between GovStack Building Blocks and the European Union’s eIDAS regulatory framework. As part of this initiative, GovStack is recruiting an eIDAS Specialist (European Digital Identity Specialist) who will report directly to the GovStack Digital Identity Lead. This specialist will focus on EU-specific implementation guidance as part of GovStack’s broader Digital Identity framework.

Key Responsibilities

• EU Implementation Guide Development: Lead the creation of a dedicated EU implementation guide for GovStack’s digital identity-related Building Blocks (Identity, Digital Wallet, Consent, and Electronic Signature). This guide will document default configurations, reference integrations, and compliance checkpoints. It will address any gaps or friction between GovStack standards and EU regional policies, ensuring that GovStack’s digital identity framework can be confidently adopted in Europe and other jurisdictions.
• EU Regulatory Alignment: Collaborate closely with the GovStack Digital Identity Lead to review identity and trust-related Building Block specifications (Identity, Wallet, Consent, and Electronic Signature) from eIDAS 2.0 regulatory requirements’ perspective.
• Collaboration and Governance: Work in close collaboration with the GovStack Chief Technology Officer (CTO) and other cross-functional leads (e.g., Data Lead) to propose how requirements of the eIDAS regulatory framework can be integrated into the broader GovStack vision and technical governance. This includes contributing expert input to overall strategy implementation and participating in GovStack governance bodies (such as the Architecture Working Group or Technical Committee).

Required Skills and Competencies

• Technical Expertise: State-of-the-art knowledge of digital identity technologies and related architectural principles – including authentication protocols, digital signature solutions, identity management systems, and emerging identity wallet frameworks. A strong grasp of interoperability challenges and modern best practices in digital ID design is essential.
• Standards and Policy Knowledge: Familiarity with international digital identity standards and regulations. Expertise of the European eIDAS 2.0 regulation and its technical implementation and other frameworks such as OSIA (Open Standards Identity APIs, an ITU-supported standard) are required.
• Public Sector Experience: Practical experience in the public sector implementing or architecting digital identity and/or digital wallet solutions. A background that includes work on national ID systems, electronic identity cards, federated identity, or similar government digital identity projects is highly valued.
• Collaboration & Communication: Excellent team collaboration and communication skills. The candidate should be a respectful, results-oriented team player capable of driving consensus in a diverse, international working group setting. Proven ability to communicate complex technical concepts to both technical and non-technical stakeholders is important.

Interested candidates are invited to submit their applications, including the following:

• A cover letter outlining their suitability for the role, incl salary expectations.
• A CV highlighting relevant experience and qualifications.

Start of Employment: ASAP
Duration: Until 31 Dec 2025 (with possibility of extension)

For any additional information, please contact GovStack CTO, Mr. Kristo Vaher, at kristo@waher.net or +372 5692 0873 (WhatsApp).

Please note that this is not a full-time position. The time commitment required will vary based on the project and the applicant’s needs and timelines.

Applications should be submitted to cv@estdev.ee by Monday, 1 September (17:00 EEST).