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UNICEF works in over 190 countries and territories to save children’s lives, defend their rights, and help them fulfill their potential, from early childhood through adolescence.

At UNICEF, we are committed, passionate, and proud of what we do for as long as we are needed. Promoting the rights of every child is not just a job – it is a calling.

UNICEF is a place where careers are built. We offer our staff diverse opportunities for professional and personal development that will help them reinforce a sense of purpose while serving children and communities across the world. We welcome everyone who wants to belong and grow in a diverse and passionate culture, coupled with an attractive compensation and benefits package.

Visit our website to learn more about what we do at UNICEF.

For every child, the right to innovate…

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.

The Office of Innovation is a creative, interactive and agile team in UNICEF that sits at the unique intersection of working on material global issues, start up thinking, technology and partnerships that can scale solutions. We look to form partnerships around frontier technologies (including AI, drones and UAVs, blockchain, wearables and sensors, and 3D-printing) that exist at the intersection of $100 billion markets and 1 billion person needs.

The Office of Innovation’s Venture Fund is a pooled funding vehicle specially designed to finance early stage, open-source technology that can benefit children. The core motivation of the Innovation Fund is to identify clusters or portfolios of initiatives around emerging technology – so that UNICEF can both shape markets and learn about and guide these technologies to benefit children. We invest in solutions that can impact the lives of the most vulnerable children.

 How can you make a difference? 

UNICEF’s Office of Innovation (OOI) is looking for an experienced Technical Advisor to provide expert technical support and guidance to the Open-Source (OS) and Digital Public Goods (DPGs) related work of the Venture Fund, at the Office of Innovation, as well as across UNICEF through engagements at HQ, Regional and Country level.

Sitting in the Ventures’ Emerging Tech team, this consultant will have a belief that Tech, OSS and DPGs can be a powerful tool to help UNICEF rapidly accelerate positive results for children. The successful consultant will have a strong desire to guide and inform early-stage OS and DPG projects developed for, and implemented in, UNICEF program countries. Understanding the complexities between theory and practice and what it takes to make future ideas work in different contexts will be a characteristic of the consultant.

Your main responsibilities will be:

• Providing technical and strategic guidance to inform investment strategy and investment decisions for the UNICEF Venture Fund.
• Providing ongoing technical guidance for the UNICEF Venture Fund portfolio investments.
• Supporting the technical exploration, development and rollout of early-stage OS & DPG initiatives and prototypes, including within UNICEF, with an aim to accelerate results for children.

If you would like to know more about this position, please review the complete Job Description here:  TOR for Technical Advisor (Venture Fund) - v1.3.pdf

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

Minimum requirements:

• An advanced university degree (master’s or higher) in engineering, technology, computer science, 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.
• At least 5 years of experience in coding and building technology products, with a clear focus on open-source technologies.
• Demonstrated leadership, strategy, and management level experience for development of technical platforms
• Experience engaging at senior levels with stakeholders in the open source, digital public goods and frontier technology space.
• A track record of architecting and prototyping systems rapidly within large open conceptual spaces and across different frontier technology platforms and areas, including blockchain, AI, ML
• Demonstrated ability to lay out technical vision for product and engineering work end-to-end.
• Capacity to forecast timelines and anticipate challenges
• Well developed, extensive open-source experience.
• Effective communication skills to collaborate cross-functionally
• Experience working with, and mentoring technology start-ups is desired
• Superior project management skills for managing tasks and dependencies
• Must be able to write and review code as an individual contributor and provide a track record of own open-source development
• Deep understanding of engineering considerations and tradeoffs for different product and business decisions
• Demonstrated experience managing teams, and an ability to inspire and mentor teammates
• Ability to summarize and communicate technical considerations to non-technical people.
• Piloting and scaling of technology solutions in UNICEF programme countries desired; developing country work experience and/or familiarity with emergency is considered an asset.
• Familiarity with international development.
• Fluency in English is required. Knowledge of another official UN language (Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian or Spanish) or a local language is an asset.
• Relevant experience at country level, particularly in development, fragile settings and humanitarian contexts

Travel:

• The consultant is expected to have mission travel to New York for 5 days and Valencia for 5 days x 2.
• The consultant is responsible for arranging his/her own travel, including travel visa and travel insurance.

Payment details and further considerations

• Payment of professional fees will be based on the submission of agreed deliverables. UNICEF reserves the right to withhold payment in case the deliverables submitted are not up to the required standard or in case of delays in submitting the deliverables on the part of the consultant.

How to apply:

• Interested applicants are required to submit a technical proposal and a financial proposal with all-inclusive fee.   Consultancy Financial Offer template.docx
• Please see the financial proposal template.
• Applications without a financial proposal will not be considered.

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's values of Care, Respect, Integrity, Trust, Accountability, and Sustainability (CRITAS).

To view our competency framework, please visit 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.

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.

Additional information about working for UNICEF can be found here.