Summary

We are seeking a Country Support Specialist to join Giga, one of the most exciting and impactful projects coming out of the United Nations at this time. The Specialist will help strengthen the coordination and engagement of Giga team with Country Offices and relevant stakeholders for the implementation of Giga in priority countries.

Your main responsibilities will be…

Support technical requests from countries

• Develop standard materials for country level engagement (onboarding decks, guidelines and other supporting materials) and maintain a clean and updated repository of all documents
• Respond to inquiries and requests for support from UNICEF Country Offices and governments
• Define country specific needs and value add to inform engagement with potential funders, partners and financial models

Support technical requests from countries

• Support Country Offices in developing Giga-specific work plans
• Capture lessons learned from in-country implementation and share with global Country Engagement team
• Support the organization and implementation of any Giga country implementation events in-country/ at HQ through prep materials, agendas, etc.

Track country level engagement and implementation status and outcomes of technical assistance

• Maintain up-to-date data in project management tool and coordinate inputs from all teams
• Manage Country Engagement team meeting agendas and ensure notes and follow up actions are well documented

Liaise between Country Offices and Giga technical teams

• Track country requests to ensure they are responded to, and follow up with Country Offices to get responses
• Technical support/advice to deploy solutions to fill gaps

Note: Giga reserves the right to engage more than one Specialist, based on the pool of applications and budget availability.

To qualify for this position, you will have…

• An advanced university degree (Master’s or higher) in  statistics, economics, social sciences, development sciences, and management or related degree is required.
• 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 experience in the field of development, ideally within UNICEF, and with experience or strong exposure to programming in Country Offices is required.
• Experience in facilitating engagements with an array of partners at the national/regional level, i.e. international development organisations, government entities, regulators, or civil society, etc., is highly desirable.
• Experience with business/finance modelling would be considered an asset.
• Understanding of connectivity technology, telecommunications, networks would be considered an asset.
• Experience in monitoring and reporting.
• Strong planning/organizing skills.
• Knowledge of national policy frameworks related to technology development, implementation, and infrastructure development is highly desirable
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, including presentation skills.
• Proven capacity to work with collaborative teams across different locations and with different technical skills.Proven experience in translating complex ideas from various fields into unified, clear guidance.
• Fluency in English is required. Knowledge of another official UN language (Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian or Spanish) or a local language is an asset.

About Our Team

We are a fast-paced, multi-disciplinary team of software engineers, finance specialists, data scientists, policy experts, and much more. Our team is a distributed workforce and plans to remain distributed into the foreseeable future. We are growing fast. Our team has grown by over 400% in the last 6 months as we rapidly scale to meet our stated mission.