Consultancy – Blockchain Product Manager, Office of Innovation, New York, 11.5 months

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

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. We sit at a unique intersection, where an organization that works on huge global issues meets the startup thinking, the technology, and the partners that turn this energy into scalable solutions.

UNICEF’s Office of Innovation creates opportunities for the world’s children by focusing on where new markets can meet their vital needs. We do this by:

• Connecting youth communities (or more broadly — anyone disconnected or under-served) to decision-makers, and to each other, to deliver informed, relevant and sustained programmes that build better, stronger futures for children.
• Provoking change for children through an entrepreneurial approach — in a traditionally risk-averse field — to harness rapidly moving innovations and apply them to serve the needs of all children.
• Creating new models of partnership that leverage core business values across the public, private and academic sectors in order to deliver fast, and lasting results for children.

The Office of Innovation specifically looks to form partnerships around frontier technologies (like drones and UAVs, blockchain, 21st century skills, urban technologies, new banking tools, wearables and sensors, or 3D-Printing) that exist at the intersection of $100 billion business markets and 1 billion person needs – and to identify how they can grow and scale profitably and inclusively.

OUR TEAM

We’re an interdisciplinary team around the world tasked with identifying, prototyping, and scaling new technologies and practices. With our partners, we focus on convening and collaborating on new and different solutions, low- and high-tech, by:

• Looking at the 2-5 year horizon to evaluate emerging and trending technologies and to see how UNICEF can work with the private sector on doing better business while improving essential services for children;
• Investing in early stage solutions that show great potential to positively impact children in the 0-2 year future including the Venture Fund that invests in open source technology solutions from start-ups based in UNICEF’s programme countries;
• Identifying proven solutions that can be implemented at national scale in multiple countries – taking the ideas that help thousands in one country, bringing them to dozens of countries across multiple sectors, and impacting the lives of millions of children.”

How can you make a difference?

You’ll be part of a blockchain team that builds prototypes and supports startups and UNICEF country offices in their own exploration of the technology.

You will work with a cross-functional team to build applications to help solve large challenges. You should have experience building blockchain and cryptocurrency products, as well as be familiar with building intuitive user interfaces for diverse user groups. You should have a strong sense of the particular considerations of building web3 applications (managing private keys, network latency, transaction costs, etc.).

Your main responsibilities will be:

This consultancy provides the following support in UNICEF Ventures. In your role as a Product Manager, you will be expected to contribute in the following ways:

1. Oversee Product Development and Management

• Lead the planning, delivery, and scaling for the toolkit required for the CryptoFund (design, development and maintenance)
• Coordinate support for such products, including internally with various contributing partners and with external vendors

2. Technical Advisory

• Provide support, including advisory, project oversight, and vendor coordination, to Country Offices who are exploring the use of blockchain.
• Advise start-ups that UNICEF Ventures invests in, assist the teams in working through challenges, refer them to additional resources, or act as a connector to mentors
• Advise Digital Public Goods Alliance on blockchain-related DPGs (and nominees)
• Participate in ideation and design of software prototypes. This may include, requirements gathering, UX/UI design, architectural design, and technology roadmap
• Lead the software reviews for start-ups that UNICEF Ventures considers investing in

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

• University degree in　Computer Science, Engineering, or other relevant fields
• A minimum of　four years　of relevant professional experience in building full-stack applications, preference given to open-source and distributed ledger technology projectsKnowledge of IT practices for products, as well as various software development practices such as waterfall and agile
• Strong handle on various programming languages and frameworks such as React JS, Vue JS, Angular JS, Node JS, ES6, TypeScript
• Understanding and experience with system integration: interface design, API development
• Basic understanding and experience with various blockchain platforms; can quickly learn new tooling systems and platforms such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, Truffle, Solidity, Infura, GoLang, web3.js, ethers.js, bitcoinjs-lib, etc.
  Experience working with large amounts of data and databases
• Strong grasp on architectural best practices; specifically, knowledge in parallelization, and distributed systems design is desired
• Familiar with industry best practices for security
• Knowledge of environment in which UNICEF operates, and understanding the constraints of working in a developing-world environment. This should include experience developing low-bandwidth applications in challenging work environments.
• 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) and core competencies in Communication, Working with People and Drive for Results.

The functional competencies required for this post are…

• Applying Technical Expertise – Lv 2
• Creating and Innovating – Lv 2
• Deciding and Initiating Action – Lv 2

View our competency framework at

http://www.unicef.org/about/employ/files/UNICEF_Competencies.pdf

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.

Payment details and further considerations

• Monthly payment, based on monthly tasks and progress reports, approved upon monthly review with supervisor.
• Consultant is responsible for his/her own health and travel insurance
• Consultant is eligible for standard DSA for all work-related travel

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.