Programme Specialist (User Experience), P-3, Office of Innovation, Stockholm, Sweden, (, 364 days)

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, innovate.

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 Ventures team in UNICEF’s Office of Innovation Fund 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 has been specifically designed to finance early stage, open-source 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 also learn about and guide these technologies to benefit children. We invest in solutions that can impact the lives of the most vulnerable children. The current Ventures portfolio of solutions consists of early and growth stage solutions data science and artificial intelligence, blockchain, UAVs and other emerging technologies.

How can you make a difference?

Under the leadership of the Innovation Manager (Emerging Technology) the User Experience Specialist will work closely across the Ventures team and its portfolio of solutions to provide UX/UI, Human Centered Design and product design support. For technical alignment, this role will work closely with the Innovation Manager (Design Lead).

We seek a strong self-motivated top-level User Experience & Interaction Specialist who can maintain strong design sensibilities even under tight time constraints, who can work with a diverse interdisciplinary team to support product development and go-to-market strategies and to communicate ideas visually and who can maintain clarity in their work while juggling and prioritizing several projects at once.

Overall, this position is responsible for:

• Providing UX/UI support for open-source technology products developed in-house by UNICEF Ventures team, including early stage. This includes identification of user needs, building stakeholder alignment on the identified needs, with a focus on feasibility, executing in low and high-fidelity and rapid testing for the prototypes.
• Strategic support using frameworks for consensus building.
• Providing technical guidance to the Venture Fund portfolio of startup and country office solutions on UX/UI, human centered design principles and practices
• Managing UX/UI resources

Key functions, accountabilities, and related duties/tasks:

1) Providing technical guidance to the Venture Fund portfolio on UX/UI, human centered design principles and practices

• Identifying needs within the portfolio
• Designing and identifying technical assistance options based on needs assessment, including basic support for early-stage solutions that are receiving first round of investment from the fund, and more robust support for companies receiving larger, second stage bridge or acceleration funding.
• Supporting companies on packaging products for growth, and on combining solutions into larger open-source platforms
• Ensuring solutions have in place robust prototyping and piloting plans that capture data and insights for product development and acceleration.
• Coordinating provision of technical assistance and ensuring that priority needs are met, including through the development of key resources and interactions.

2) Providing UX/UI for open-source technology products developed in-house by UNICEF Ventures team.

• For ideas and product at an early stage the support includes identification of needs, development of initial concepts, creating and validating mockups and wireframes, producing user requirements, personas, storyboards, journey maps, scenarios, flow charts etc. to give shape to any preliminary idea.
• Developing UX/UI strategies for products
• Rapid testing to validate the prototypes.
• For products at acceleration and scale stage the support includes adapting design and product development to allow for acceleration and tailoring for different internal and external users

3) Strategic support using frameworks for consensus building – Providing the Ventures team with design support for strategic review and planning processes, building alignment and bringing cross-pollination of ideas across different functional verticals of the team.

4) Managing UX/UI resources

• managing vendors and other resources to develop the early and later stage products developed in-house, as needed.
• Developing and applying standards and quality assurance, based on best practices.

Please see attached the complete the JD for this post: JD TA Programme Specialist (User experience) P3.docx

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 another 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 five [5] years of relevant professional experience in progressively responsible relevant professional experience in UX/UI product design experience, some of which should be in an international setting. Seven years of experience in lieu of an advanced degree.
• Strong expertise in user experience and interaction design, research and consultation for web-based designs, apps, and data information systems, information architecture and systems mapping design.
• Strong understanding of design systems and front-end architecture
• Experience in creating interactive prototypes in tools like Sketch, Adobe CC, Invision, etc.
• Preferred knowledge of capabilities and limitations of Web technologies such as HTML, JavaScript, and CSS
• Experience with complex systems
• Experience in independently managing and following through multiple projects simultaneously.
• Experience in coordinating activities within and across teams, including project teams for specific initiatives and use of current project management and tracking platforms and tools.
• Demonstrated ability of extrapolating information from team members that can be translated in a simplified and articulate way.
• A strong understanding of UNICEF programmes, goals and principles, and experience in a UNICF programme country desired
• Experience working in complex, resource poor contexts is a plus.
• 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 Core Values of Care, Respect, Integrity, Trust and Accountability and Sustainability (CRITAS) underpin everything we do and how we do it. Get acquainted with Our Values Charter: UNICEF Values

UNICEF competencies required for this post are…

(1) Builds and maintains partnerships (2) Demonstrates self-awareness and ethical awareness (3) Drive to achieve results for impact (4) Innovates and embraces change (5) Manages ambiguity and complexity (6) Thinks and acts strategically (7) Works collaboratively with others.

During the recruitment process, we test candidates following the competency framework. Familiarize yourself with our competency framework and its different levels: competency framework 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. We offer a wide range of benefits to our staff, including paid parental leave, breastfeeding breaks and reasonable accommodation for persons with disabilities. UNICEF strongly encourages the use of flexible working arrangements. 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 is committed to promote the protection and safeguarding of all children.

Remarks:

UNICEF appointments are subject to medical clearance. Issuance of a visa by the host country of the duty station, which will be facilitated by UNICEF, is required for IP positions. Appointments are also subject to inoculation (vaccination) requirements, including against SARS-CoV-2 (Covid). Should you be selected for a position with UNICEF, you either must be inoculated as required or receive a medical exemption from the relevant department of the UN. Otherwise, the selection will be cancelled.

All selected candidates will undergo rigorous reference and background checks and will be expected to adhere to these standards and principles. 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.

Government employees that are considered for employment with UNICEF are normally required to resign from their government before taking up an assignment with UNICEF. UNICEF reserves the right to withdraw an offer of appointment, without compensation, if a visa or medical clearance is not obtained, or necessary inoculation requirements are not met, within a reasonable period for any reason.

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