Design Specialist (Programme Adviser), P3, TA, Office of Innovation, Stockholm, Sweden (#00118612)

Contract

This is a P-3 contract. This kind of contract is known as Professional and Director staff. It is normally internationally recruited only. It's a staff contract. It usually requires 5 years of experience, depending on education.

Salary

The salary for this job should be between 74,649 USD and 97,747 USD.

Please keep in mind that the salary displayed here is an estimation by UN Talent based on the location and the type of contract. It may vary depending on the organization. The recruiter should be able to inform you about the exact salary range. In case the job description contains another salary information, please refer to this one.

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, hope

The fundamental mission of UNICEF is to promote the rights of every child, everywhere, in everything the organization does — in programs, in advocacy and in operations. The equity strategy, emphasizing the most disadvantaged and excluded children and families, translates this commitment to children’s rights into action. For UNICEF, equity means that all children have an opportunity to survive, develop and reach their full potential, without discrimination, bias or favoritism. To the degree that any child has an unequal chance in life — in its social, political, economic, civic and cultural dimensions — her or his rights are violated. There is growing evidence that investing in the health, education and protection of a society’s most disadvantaged citizens — addressing inequity — not only will give all children the opportunity to fulfill their potential but also will lead to sustained growth and stability of countries. This is why the focus on equity is so vital. It accelerates progress towards realizing the human rights of all children, which is the universal mandate of UNICEF, as outlined by the Convention on the Rights of the Child, while also supporting the equitable development of nations.

The Office of Innovation (OoI) works to catalyze UNICEF's and all its partners’ expertise and resources against key children-outcomes bottlenecks, with a view to continuously ideate and scale the most effective solutions with transformational potential at scale to achieve the child-related SDGs.

The office is doing this by continuously exploring new ways of accelerating results for children, investing across a range of early stage solutions, and harnessing internal and external expertise towards continuously iterating and fine-tuning the most promising solutions for children through a systematic portfolio management approach, and leveraging all stakeholders’ innovation energy, know-how and resources from intergovernmental, multilateral, private sector and non-governmental fora (think tank, academia)

How can you make a difference?

1. Develop the design strategy for the Office of Innovation and an implementation plan

• Review best practice in the social innovation space and capture lessons learned
• In close collaboration with management team, propose a strategy, including resource needs
• Design a monitoring plan to assess strategy and review its progress on ongoing basis
• Develop a project plan and execute start-up phase of the strategy

2. Set-up a pool of design talent for the Office of Innovation, including through staffing, consultants, vendors etc

• Identify human capacity and talent needs in design and support related recruitment processes
• Develop a design consultant pool
• Support technical assistance team managing Global HCD LTAs and other recruiting/resourcing solutions
• Work with other HCD focal points on the PCS team to develop OOI briefing session + supporting materials
• Conceptualize and run a recorded HCD LTA focused webinar that showcases 1) how they can be used and 2) gets vendors to talk about their expertise
• Advise on, explore and test HCD office hours with other HCD focal points and potentially with LTA vendors

3. Provide guidance to select priority initiatives across the Office of Innovation

• In close collaboration with management team, identify priority initiatives and allocate appropriate design resources (including for direct support)
• Provide direct design-related guidance for select initiatives
• This could include facilitating ideation, validation and strategy sessions, structuring sprint exercise that can be piloted and templatize; user testing and prototyping of technical explorations; evaluating effectiveness of platforms.

4. Provide technical guidance to design resources within the Office of Innovation

• Develop and oversee execution of relevant technical standards for design
• Provide mentorship and knowledge sharing among team members with design-related responsibilities
• Identify needs for technical design programmes and tools and facilitate access

5. Engage in relevant planning processes and externally in relevant fora to represent the OOI on design

• Identify opportunities for and contribute to documentation, communications and external engagement on OOI’s design work

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

• An advanced university degree (Master’s or higher) in interaction design, product design, human-computer interaction, information design and information architecture or other relevant field. *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 communication strategy, design strategy, media design, digital and print design, service design, systems design or related – and proven experience in translating complex ideas into unified storytelling visuals.
• Experience with leading creative teams on multiple projects of varying degrees and timelines and managing design resources and capacity.
• Experience in developing design-related strategies and approaches, including defining staffing needs and developing teams and building capacity.
• Experience in independently managing and following through multiple projects and teams simultaneously, including establishment of systems to manage competing demands.
• Technical knowledge of digital public goods and open source solutions and of specific design challenges related to prototyping and piloting frontier technology solutions and in low-resource settings.
• A portfolio which exemplifies strong work for both print and web, which shows both strong research, processes and attention to detail.
• Design skills across the print and digital spectrum and professional-level knowledge of design platforms like Adobe Creative Suite.
• Knowledge of capabilities and limitations of web and mobile technologies and experience that extends beyond-screen based designs.
• A strong understanding of UNICEF programmes, goals and principles, UNICEF Innovation approaches and experience in a UNICF programme country desired.
• Experience working in complex, resource poor contexts is a plus
• 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.

For every Child, you demonstrate...

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

The UNICEF competencies required for this post are

• Relating and Networking (2)
• Apply Technical Expertise (3)
• Creating and Innovating (3)

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 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:

This position is not considered an elevated risk role. However, UNICEF reserves the right to conduct further vetting/assessment within the scope of child safeguarding as appropriate.

UNICEF only considers higher educational qualifications obtained from an institution accredited/recognized in the World Higher Education Database (WHED), a list updated by the International Association of Universities (IAU) / United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The list can be accessed at http://www.whed.net/

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

The VA is open to all (internal and external) candidates.