Consultancy - Product Manager, Home-based, Office of Innovation, 11.5 months

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, connectivity

UNICEF has a 70-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.

UNICEF and ITU have launched “Giga”, a new initiative to connect every school to the internet, and every young person to information, opportunity and choice. It also serves as a platform to create the infrastructure necessary to provide digital connectivity to an entire country, for every community, and for every citizen.

Providing connectivity to the world remains a challenge. According to the ITU, nearly 3.7 billion people remain unconnected from the internet, and by extension, unconnected to digital products and services that could dramatically improve their lives. Approximately 29% of 18-24-year-olds, most of them in Sub-Saharan Africa, do not have digital access (~360m people) and thereby lack access to the same information, opportunity and choice as their more-connected peers. Unless things change, a big part of this rapidly growing group of young people is in danger of being left behind, excluded from the modern digital world.

Closing the digital divide requires global cooperation, leadership, and innovation in finance and technology. Giga leverages data, innovative finance and new technologies to bring the power of meaningful connectivity to fast-track young people’s access to educational resources and opportunities.

How can you make a difference?

We seek a strong self-motivated Blockchain Product Manager who can maintain the quality of their work even under tight time constraints and who can work with a diverse interdisciplinary team of engineers, designers, data scientists and researchers to lead the prototyping and development of quality blockchain based products for Giga. Some examples include:

• NFTs and tokens for things like fundraising, attracting investments or crowdsourcing school data.
• Accounting platform to track gigabyte flow and manage crypto-denominated payments for Giga.
• Staking and other innovative financing instruments for financing school connectivity costs.
• A connectivity credit marketplace to incentivize equitable investments in internet connectivity.

In particular, working closely with the Giga’s Technology Lead, you will:

• Drive product development for the blockchain related work for Giga.
• Coordinate work with vendors and other tech partners that are supporting us build different blockchain related products.
• Assist the technology lead in hiring a team to build prototypes.
• Work with a team of engineers, designers, data scientists and researchers to define, design and build features.
• Set up product team processes based on best practices.
• Build prototypes to explore and proof new technologies like blockchain.
• Conduct user/market research and gather user requirements from different stakeholders and users.
• Validate prototypes.
• Analyze the impact of products and user adoption & satisfaction by defining and tracking key metrics.
• Drive the scale-up of proven prototypes.
• Create relevant documents and communication materials and communicate the work to internal and external audiences.

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

• An advanced university degree (Master’s or higher) in Computer Science, Engineering or similar, or equivalent work experience *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 experience in building and shipping technical products
• Experience in creating product roadmaps and defining go-to-market strategies
• Experience working with a multidisciplinary team of designers, engineers, researchers
• Experience working in an agile software development environment
• Knowledge of project management tools like Jira, Asana, Trello
• Good verbal and communication skills
• Knowledge and experience with blockchain technology
• Developing country work experience and/or familiarity with emergency is considered an asset.
• Fluency in English is required. Knowledge of another official UN language (Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian or Spanish) or a local language is an asset.

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

For every Child, you demonstrate…

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

To view our competency framework, please visit here.

UNICEF is committed to diversity and inclusion within its workforce, and encourages all candidates, irrespective of gender, nationality, religious and ethnic backgrounds, including persons living with disabilities, to apply to become a part of the organization.

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.