Consultancy - INVENT Project Manager, Home-based, Office of Innovation, 11.5 months (full-time)

Contract

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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 70-year history of innovating for children. We believe that new approaches, partnerships, and technologies that support the realization of children’s rights are key to improving children’s lives.

Worldwide, we innovate to tackle the most pressing problems faced by the most vulnerable children. We take a systematic approach to innovation, applying skills and energy across new tools and technologies, products, innovative financing, and new ways of working to boost our impact.

The Office of Innovation is a creative, unique, and agile team in UNICEF. We sit at a unique intersection, where an organization that works on huge global issues meets the startup thinking, the technology, the tools, the know-how and the partners that turn ideas and energy into scalable solutions for children.

Within the Office of Innovation, the Portfolio, Culture and Scale Team has a crucial role in ensuring groundbreaking innovations meet children and young people’s most urgent needs. By managing UNICEF’s global innovation portfolios, we help identify priorities for the application of innovations. We also strengthen the capacity of UNICEF offices to scale proven innovations to millions. Through co-design, shared learning, storytelling, and exploration, we also aid efforts to build a culture of innovation throughout UNICEF, including on virtual and remote learning and collaboration.

The Portfolio, Culture and Scale Team also leads the development of the INVENT platform, UNICEF’s internal hub for Innovation and Technology for Development.

How can you make a difference?

This role will be key to the development of the INVENT platform. Under the supervision of the INVENT Product Manager, you will support a product development process designed to ensure that this platform meets the needs of users across UNICEF.

This is a new role which will require experience in digital product development and deployment, ideally in a UN context.

Your main responsibilities will be:

• Engaging with INVENT users across all UNICEF divisions to raise awareness of the product’s capabilities
• Providing inputs and insights to the product development process using product indicators and user input
• Maintaining effective project documentation and knowledge management
• Producing regular and one-off reporting documents
• Identifying UNICEF reporting requirements and indicators where INVENT may play a useful role
• Collaborating with Office of Innovation’s Monitoring and Evaluation Lead to capture reporting requirements across the division
• Coordinating with UNICEF stakeholders and external partners to support the definition of and delivery of new features, fixes, and improvements to INVENT
• Collaborating closely with ICTD and Supply Division and Office of Innovation to collect platform feedback and feature requests.

Please see Terms of Reference here: 2022-11-08 TOR INVENT Project Manager.pdf, including delivery schedule.

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

• An advanced university degree (Master’s or higher) in one of the following fields: Project Management, Information Systems, Innovation, Design, Computer Science. *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 5 years of relevant professional experience in project management, ideally in the field of digital product development.
• Familiarity with Agile methods and the creation and management of digital products.
• Experience working with UN processes and systems, including procurement and budgeting.
• Proven capacity to communicate effectively across different mediums to engage and influence complex stakeholders (including senior stakeholders) to deliver against challenging targets.
• Proven capacity to work with collaborative teams across different locations and with different technical skills.
• A professional qualification in project management is an asset.
• Excellent written and oral communication skills in English required. Knowledge of another official UN language (Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian or Spanish) or a local language is an asset.

For every Child, you demonstrate…

UNICEF's values of Care, Respect, Integrity, Trust, Accountability, and Sustainability (CRITAS) and core competencies in Communication, Working with People and Drive for Results.

The competencies required for this post are….

• Works collaboratively with others (2)
• Drive to achieve results for impact (1)
• Innovates and embraces change (1)

To view our competency framework, please visit here.

Payment details and further considerations

• Monthly payment, based on monthly tasks and progress reports, approved upon monthly review with supervisor.
• Consultant is responsible for his/her own health and travel insurance
• Consultant is eligible for standard DSA for all work-related travel

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.