Title: Technical Manager

Employment Classification: Regular, Full-Time Employee

Location: Kinshasa, DRC

Pay Grade: DRC - 14

Supervisor’s Name and Title: Jennifer Pancholi, Team Lead, Digital Solutions (tentative)

Team or Country Office: Digital Solutions

FLSA Status (only applies to US employees):  Choose an item.

Full Time Equivalent: 1.0

Travel %: 10%

Date Last Updated:  September 16, 2021

ABOUT VILLAGEREACH

VillageReach transforms health care delivery to reach everyone, so that each person has the health care needed to thrive. We develop solutions that improve equity and access to primary health care. This includes making sure products are available when and where they are needed and primary health care services are delivered to the most under-reached. Radical collaboration with governments, the private sector and other partners strengthen our ability to scale and sustain these solutions. Our work increases access to quality health care for more than 46 million people in sub-Saharan Africa. VillageReach is incorporated in Washington State and has offices in Seattle (USA), Democratic Republic of Congo, Malawi, and Mozambique.

DESCRIPTION

Summary

VillageReach invites qualified candidates to apply for the position of Technical Manager, Digital Solutions – Francophone Africa. This temporary full-time employment will be for a period of approximately one year with the potential to extend dependent on funding and mutual good fit. The Technical Manager, working in collaboration with global staff, will play a key technology solution management and coordination role of the DRC’s HealthAlert implementation, which is part of a program operating in DRC, Malawi and Mozambique to expand the VillageReach health center by phone platform to support coordinated COVID-19 messaging, including on COVID vaccination. This position will provide managerial and technical oversight and/or advice to ensure successful and timely completion of project activities. Their main responsibilities include overall project management, technical leadership and partnership building and management, monitoring and evaluation. The successful candidate will be a person fluent in both French and English with experience managing digital technology or software project activities and who is motivated by VillageReach’s mission of health care reaching everyone.

Description

Essential Duties and Responsibilities include the following. Other duties, responsibilities, and activities may change or be assigned at any time.

• Provide overall Technical Project Management in a multi-vendor, multi-stakeholder environment with both agile and work plan-driven management. Work effectively with technologists and non-technical stakeholders.
• Maintain oversight of the overall project schedule, key milestones, and deliverables. Track work plan activities and facilitate meetings including sprint team meetings and technology vendor coordination meetings.
• Learn technology tools including call center hotline platforms and messaging/chatbot services in order to be able to use and configure these tools. Prepare training materials and transfer selected skills to other staff and partners.
• Contribute to content development (such as working with subject matter experts to contribute to call operator scripts and IVR messaging campaigns). Coordinate translations and approvals of content and documents.
• Create written documentation including meeting notes, work plan status reports, and progress updates.
• Facilitate knowledge management and collaboration among global and country staff including developing, documenting, and disseminating lessons learned, best practices, and case studies.
• Lead technology vendor relationship management including expectation setting, establishing specifications and requirements, and holding vendors and partners accountable to timelines and deliverables. This includes facilitating technical conversations with vendors and with VillageReach software engineering experts.
• Provide review and quality assurance for documents and technical deliverables.
• Coordinate and support data export, data cleaning, dashboard preparation, and KPI reporting.
• Contribute to ongoing improvement and dissemination of VillageReach’s work by cultivating an understanding of stakeholders and staying up to date about significant initiatives for digital solutions in global health.
• Actively identify, develop and manage new partnerships and business development opportunities.
• Mentor and manage less experienced/junior employees with the goal of developing their skills, experience, and ability to contribute to VillageReach work.

Competencies:

The following competencies reflect what is expected of all VillageReach employees; including examples of how one might demonstrate each of these competencies in one’s role.

• Personal Motivation and Drive: Is self-directed in one’s approach to work, but asks for help when needed; holds oneself accountable; undertakes self-development activities; seeks to build and master new skills; looks for and takes advantage of opportunities within the organization

• Collaboration & Effective Communication: Establishes and maintains effective relations with coworkers, partners & stakeholders and external parties; works collaboratively with others to accomplish organizational and team goals and objectives; works actively to resolve conflicts; expresses ideas and thoughts effectively; selects and uses appropriate communication methods and maintains meaningful communication with virtual coworkers and other parties to keep them informed

• Commitment to Diversity & Inclusion: Takes personal responsibility for and supports others across the organization in creating and sustaining a diverse work environment where individuals are welcomed, valued, respected and supported; personally committed to attaining cultural competency including self-awareness of one’s own attitudes about culture and cross-cultural interactions; exhibits the willingness and ability to engage openly and respectfully around issues of race, colonialism, identity and culture; upholds equity in access to sharing of information, ideas, and opportunities throughout VillageReach

• Commitment to Excellence: Produces a high output of work, both in terms of quality and quantity; looks for ways to improve and promote quality; monitors work to ensure quality; has a personal commitment to the mission of VillageReach

• Solution Orientation & Innovation: Focuses on results and desired outcomes and how to best achieve them; gets the job done; sees opportunities for creative problem-solving while staying within the parameters of good practice; sees old problems in new ways and has novel approaches to solving those problems; contributes original and/or resourceful ideas to their area of responsibility; is able to consider and articulate risks and consequences of proposed innovations and factor these into decision-making

REQUIREMENTS

To perform this job successfully, an individual must be able to perform each essential duty satisfactorily. The requirements listed below are representative of the knowledge, skill and/or ability required. Reasonable accommodation may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

Supervisory Responsibilities:

This position has no supervisory responsibilities.

Education & Experience:

• A Bachelor’s degree or higher in IT, information systems, project management, public policy, development studies, resource management, public administration, public health, or a related field.
• A minimum of 5 years of experience working in technology in global health or international development.
• Experience in digital solutions deployment, configuration, implementation, monitoring and evaluation in the context of public health. Experience working directly with software developers is a plus.
• Experience working at or with technology vendors or technology providers. (Examples could include telecom providers, chatbot/messaging services, USSD, SMS or IVR service providers, or electronic health records.)
• Experience in Project/Program management: Familiar with program and project management principles and strategies. A project management certification is a plus.

Other Qualifications:

• Strong verbal and written French and English.
• Strong communication and cross-cultural management skills including experience with political officials.
• Open mindedness to accommodate the non-traditional mix of disciplines within VillageReach and interpersonal skills to work effectively in partnership with others in the organization and externally.
• Proficient in Microsoft Office (Word, PowerPoint, Excel) and comfortable in a fast-paced technical environment.
• Established cultural competency in partnering with racial, cultural and linguistically diverse groups.
• Demonstrated understanding of challenges with working in rural, underserved and low-income context; experience living in and/or working in a low-income country a plus.
• Knowledge of last mile health infrastructure challenges (e.g. of rural communities in an African context).
• Ability to collect and analyze data quickly and efficiently. Ability and confidence to identify and recommend creative solutions to a diverse group of stakeholders. Identifies both opportunities and needs for change. Ability to identify issues or problems and provide a respective solution that is feasible and acceptable to the local context. Explores and shares innovative best practices with others. 
• Energy, intelligence, diplomacy, sound practical judgment and ability to work independently without supervision.
• Ability to travel internationally, up to 10% of the time.
• Experience with call centers, chatbots, Artificial intelligence and/or OpenLMIS preferred.

Environment and Physical Demands

VillageReach has no private offices, employees work in a shared, open environment with task and conference rooms accessible to employees for privacy and meetings. The noise level in the work environment is usually quiet. Due to the time zone differences between our Seattle office and our Country Offices and location of other global staff, our Country office staff are expected to be available for late afternoon/evening meetings up to 6pm local time.

APPLICATION INFORMATION:

This is an immediate hire and therefore resumes will be reviewed until October 8. To apply, please submit your resume and a cover letter to our online portal: https://www.villagereach.org/join-us/

COMMITMENT TO DIVERSITY & INCLUSION:

VillageReach is an Equal Employment Opportunity Employer committed to workforce diversity. We believe that diverse, equitably weighted perspectives foster an organizational capacity to create novel solutions that improve health in the most underserved and hard-to-reach areas. To align our values, innovations and impact, VillageReach is committed to recruiting and retaining a diverse global workforce.

Compensation:

VillageReach has an established compensation structure that is based on the relevant market and internally transparent. We hire people into the established range based on one’s experience and education and considering internal equity. We do not inquire about salary history.

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2900 Eastlake Ave. E., Suite 230 Seattle, WA 98102 USA
TEL: 1.206.512.1530 & 1.866.203.3175 FAX: 1.206.860.6972
www.villagereach.org / info@villagereach.org