Consultancy (12 Months) - Product Manager (Frontier tech), Ventures, Office of Innovation, Stockholm, Sweden (Remote)

Contract

This is a Consultancy contract. More about Consultancy contracts.

Summary

UNICEF works in some of the world’s toughest places, to reach the world’s most disadvantaged children. To save their lives. To defend their rights. To help them fulfill their potential. Across 190 countries and territories, we work for every child, everywhere, every day, to build a better world for everyone. And we never give up.

For every child...innovate

UNICEF has a 75+-year history of innovating for children. We believe that new approaches, partnerships and technologies that support realizing children’s rights are critical to improving their lives. The Office of Innovation is a creative, interactive, and agile team in UNICEF that sits at the intersection of working on material global issues, start up thinking, technology and partnerships that can scale solutions. We look to form partnerships around frontier technologies (including AI, drones and UAVs, blockchain, wearables and sensors, and 3D-printing) that exist at the intersection of $100 billion markets and 1 billion person needs. The Office of Innovation’s Ventures team exists to challenge frontier technologies that have the potential to bring radical change for children. We add value by testing and investing in early-stage just open innovation and priming the most suitable solutions for scale. The Venture Fund is a pooled funding vehicle specially designed to finance early stage, opensource technology that can benefit children. The core motivation of the Venture Fund is to identify clusters or portfolios of initiatives around emerging technology – so that UNICEF can both shape markets and learn about and guide these technologies to benefit children. We invest in solutions that can impact the lives of the most vulnerable children.

How can you make a difference?

UNICEF’s Office of Innovation (OOI) is looking for an experienced Frontier Technology Product Manager to drive the prototyping and development of Frontier Tech products and solutions that will drive global engagement and the work of UNICEF’s country programmes. The successful consultant will have a broad palate of tech interests and experience across Web 3, Data Science, AI and the next big thing. Sitting in UNICEF Ventures’ Emerging Tech team, this consultant will have a strong belief that Frontier Tech based solutions can truly help UNICEF rapidly accelerate positive results for children. This role will support a diverse portfolio of prototypes and their pilots – including applications of AI to improve accessibility of content for all children and to automate translation across languages, the use of digital assets to improve financial inclusion and explorations into web3 to create a more inclusive marketplace for open source digital solutions. Focused on projects ideated and prototyped for UNICEF program countries, understanding the complexities between theory and practice and what it takes to make future ideas work in different contexts will be a characteristic of the consultant.

Your main responsibilities will include:

• Product Lifecycle Management for Ventures prototypes and products:

Drive the lifecycle of the team’s products from ideation and development to prototyping, iteration and, if required, retirement.

• Cross Team Collaboration:

Facilitate the Frontier Tech and wider Ventures team’s work through identification and articulation of integrated work seams, convening regular cross team and resource allocation support.

• Market Vision and Strategy:

Guide the evolution of Ventures’ prototypes and products with informed trend, opportunity and needs analysis.

Please access the full Term of Reference (ToRs) and read a more detailed description of the assignment in this file in order to prepare your financial proposal and know more about the role: PM-FT-ToR-v175.pdf

To qualify as an advocate for every child you will have…

• An advanced university degree (Master’s or higher) in Computer Science, Engineering, Business, Design or any other field of study relatable with product management . *A first University Degree in a relevant field combined with 2 additional years of professional experience may be accepted in lieu of an Advanced University Degree.

• A minimum of five years of relevant professional, practical experience.

• Proven track record of managing all aspects of a successful product throughout its lifecycle.

• Practical experience with rapid prototyping and evaluation of user feedback

• Practical experience with research – esp. around market trends and analysis

• Strong technical background with the ability to quickly understand and apply new technologies.

• Demonstrated understanding of open source and open data principles and practices.

• Demonstrated experience managing products with applications for social challenges, in UNICEF’s programme countries or for marginalized communities desired

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.

• Fluency in English is required. Knowledge of another official UN language (Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian or Spanish) or a local language is an asset. Travel:

Travel:

• The consultant is expected to travel to Stockholm (or another location) for onboarding, training and knowledge management facilitation purposes over a period of 10 working days. The exact dates to be confirmed.

• The consultant is responsible for arranging his/her own travel, including visa and travel insurance.

Payment details and further considerations:

• Payment of professional fees will be based on the submission of agreed deliverables. UNICEF reserves the right to withhold payment in case the deliverables submitted are not up to the required standard or in case of delays in submitting the deliverables on the part of the consultant.
• Consultant is responsible for his/her own health and travel insurance.
• Consultant is responsible for arranging his/her own travel, including visa.

How to apply:

• Interested applicants are required to submit a financial proposal with an all-inclusive fee. Please see the financial proposal template here: Consultancy Financial Offer template.docx
• Financial proposal must include travel costs (economy class) and daily subsistence allowance, if travel is required as per TOR and any other estimated costs: visa, travel/health insurance
• Applications without a financial proposal will not be considered.

For every Child, you demonstrate…

UNICEF's values of Care, Respect, Integrity, Trust, Accountability, and Sustainability (CRITAS).

To view our competency framework, please visit here.

UNICEF is here to serve the world’s most disadvantaged children and our global workforce must reflect the diversity of those children. The UNICEF family is committed to include everyone, irrespective of their race/ethnicity, age, disability, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, nationality, socio-economic background, or any other personal characteristic.

UNICEF offers reasonable accommodation for consultants/individual contractors with disabilities. This may include, for example, accessible software, travel assistance for missions or personal attendants. We encourage you to disclose your disability during your application in case you need reasonable accommodation during the selection process and afterwards in your assignment.

UNICEF has a zero-tolerance policy on conduct that is incompatible with the aims and objectives of the United Nations and UNICEF, including sexual exploitation and abuse, sexual harassment, abuse of authority and discrimination. UNICEF also adheres to strict child safeguarding principles. All selected candidates will be expected to adhere to these standards and principles and will therefore undergo rigorous reference and background checks. Background checks will include the verification of academic credential(s) and employment history. Selected candidates may be required to provide additional information to conduct a background check.

Remarks:

Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted and advance to the next stage of the selection process.

Individuals engaged under a consultancy or individual contract will not be considered “staff members” under the Staff Regulations and Rules of the United Nations and UNICEF’s policies and procedures, and will not be entitled to benefits provided therein (such as leave entitlements and medical insurance coverage). Their conditions of service will be governed by their contract and the General Conditions of Contracts for the Services of Consultants and Individual Contractors. Consultants and individual contractors are responsible for determining their tax liabilities and for the payment of any taxes and/or duties, in accordance with local or other applicable laws.

The selected candidate is solely responsible to ensure that the visa (applicable) and health insurance required to perform the duties of the contract are valid for the entire period of the contract. Selected candidates are subject to confirmation of fully-vaccinated status against SARS-CoV-2 (Covid-19) with a World Health Organization (WHO)-endorsed vaccine, which must be met prior to taking up the assignment. It does not apply to consultants who will work remotely and are not expected to work on or visit UNICEF premises, programme delivery locations or directly interact with communities UNICEF works with, nor to travel to perform functions for UNICEF for the duration of their consultancy contracts.