Innovation Manager (Emerging Tech), P4, FTA, Office of Innovation, Stockholm, Sweden (# 00117524)

Contract

This is a P-4 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 7 years of experience, depending on education.

Salary

The salary for this job should be between 90,970 USD and 117,287 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 Office of Innovation (OoI) works to catalyse 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 against 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 finetuning the most promising solutions for children through a systematic portfolio management approach, and leveraging all stakeholders’ innovation energy, knowhow and resources from intergovernmental, multilateral, private sector and non-governmental fora (think tank, academia).

How can you make a difference?

1. Contribute to and execute the strategy for portfolio of early-stage pilots • Inform investment strategy contributing expertise and networks in frontier technology trends • Propose regularly new technology applications and areas for consideration • Input into selection and assessment processes for pilots and assessments of results with a focus on ensuring alignment with novelty, latest technology developments, technical quality assurance and standards and potential for scaling

2. Provide technical support to various portfolios across UNICEF COs and external companies focusing on the following results: • Develop, maintain and manage team resources across priority frontier tech areas, including relevant staff and consultants • Develop and oversee execution of relevant technical standards to guide development, piloting and acceleration of frontier tech solutions in the Fund portfolio and the Ventures team • Design and develop a pool of technical expertise for COs, hubs and others to access for assistance to specific projects • Provide ongoing support to individual early stage projects and pilots to ensure alignment with best practices, relevant standards and in line with market developments

3. Provide thought leadership and maintain knowledge sharing strategy on frontier technology • Tracking of relevant technology and market trends as they relate to UNICEF priorities and strategies • Develop market studies and trends analyses across frontier technology areas • Translate trends and opportunities into guidance for early-stage portfolio of investments and projects • Develop and implement knowledge capture and sharing strategy to increase access across OOI

4. Oversee product development, strategy and team by developing and applying relevant technical standards and practices • Identify opportunities for in-house digital product and infrastructure development to support early stage and acceleration of frontier solutions • Oversee related product development strategies and teams for priority platforms, including for acceleration of promising solutions from the Fund portfolio • Develop product standards and oversee adherence across the team’s and Fund’s portfolio, including alignment with open source practices, the Digital Public Goods standards and other development standards • Collaborate with relevant internal divisions where relevant to ensure compliance and packaging of solutions and platforms for internal use across UNICEF

5. Maintain and coordinate UNICEF Ventures’ open source leadership and expertise • Oversee Ventures’ online presence and repositories, including alignment to best practices • Explore models for technical guidance on open source for OOI and UNICEF • Guide UNICEF’s technical engagement in relevant platforms, like the Digital Public Goods Alliance

6. Provide inputs to strategic decisions, team and budget management and oversight of Ventures, focusing on the following results: • Provide strategic guidance and prioritization across work areas • Representation to internal and external stakeholders, as requested, to ensure consistent participation in priority processes and events

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

• An advanced university degree (Master’s or higher) in Information Technology, Software Engineering, or related areas *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 8 years of relevant professional experience.
• Demonstrated leadership, strategy and management level experience for development of technical platforms, especially those leveraging blockchain and artificial intelligence
• Demonstrated technical expertise in frontier technology areas, including market trends, main stakeholders, best practices and standards
• A track record of architecting and prototyping systems rapidly within large open conceptual spaces and across different technology platforms and areas, in line with industry best practice and standards
• Experience in coding and building technology products and well developed, extensive open source experience with demonstrated track record as individual contributor and of own open source development
• Experience engaging at senior levels with stakeholders in the open source, digital public goods and frontier technology space
• Ability to think ahead in terms of product and engineering implications for potential design, understanding of engineering considerations and tradeoffs for different product and business decisions
• Experience in establishing, growing and managing global teams, including project teams for specific initiatives
• Experience working in a headquarters environment of a multi-national entity desirable
• Ability to synthesize technical information and translate it into accessible products and systems
• A strong understanding of UNICEF’s mission and vision as well as its programmes through direct or indirect work experience with UNICEF
• 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...

• Demonstrates Self Awareness and Ethical Awareness (1) • Works Collaboratively with others (1) • Builds and Maintains Partnerships (1) • Innovates and Embraces Change (1) • Thinks and Acts Strategically (1) • Drive to achieve impactful results (1) • Manages ambiguity and complexity (1)

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.