ICT Specialist (SAP Programmer Analyst, Programmes and Budget), P3, #21668, Fixed-Term, ICTD Digital Core, Valencia, Spain

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, a connected world

The overarching strategic goal of UNICEF’s Information and Communication Technology Division (ICTD) is to transform and build partnerships with our stakeholders to successfully implement UNICEF programmes globally through innovative technology-enabled solutions. 

UNICEF is going through an exciting digital transformation that will influence the work across the organization. We are looking for dynamic, innovative professionals to drive the transformation and play a key role in shaping the way forward. 

How can you make a difference?

The position is in the Solutions Center and Support Section of ICTD, in the Enterprise Business Systems team. This team’s goals are to provide adequate, user-friendly, and modern business solutions to UNICEF’s different departments and stakeholders as well as to provide guidance, governance, and procedures to several enterprise processes such as data collection, program monitoring, digital tools and platforms, and business process optimization throughout the organization. These goals are aligned with the organizational strategy, enterprise architecture, and information management requirements of UNICEF’s different stakeholders.

The advertised position may oversee the work of consultants.

Under the guidance of the ICT Manager (Business Applications – Programmes and Grants/Funds Management) and in close coordination with other staff members and consultants, the ICT Specialist will identify change requirements for SAP and support existing functionality in business areas including Programmes, Funds and Grants Management. Support of changes and existing functionality may be the result of modified business processes, corporate data or interface needs. The ICT Specialist will prepare program specifications, implement the required program enhancements/fixes, and supervise the implementation of enhancements/fixes related to the assigned functional areas. 

Key responsibilities

1. Technical Lifecycle Implementation 

• Plan the engineering of all phases of the software development lifecycle, including gathering and analyzing user and business system requirements, responding to outages, and creating application system models. 

• Design, develop, document, test and debug new and existing software solutions for internal use. Perform defect corrections (analysis, design, code). Create and maintain development artifacts and contribute support to the processes required to address new business requirements and enhancements. Perform application maintenance including defect fixes and performance tuning for the Programme, Funds and Grants Management areas of SAP. 

• Utilize technical expertise: Create system requirements, perform design, analysis, coding and unit testing of complex to highly complex system functionality and defect correction across inter-related platforms. 

• Identify ideas to improve system performance and impact availability. 

• Resolve complex technical design issues. 

• Provide functional and technical guidance in evaluating applications systems or evaluating requests for proposals. 

• Coordinate changes and influence and prioritize tasks with business or technical departments. 

• Analyze and influence technical, system and user requirements. 

• Facilitate root cause analysis of system issues to minimize impact and future occurrences. 

2. Provide Technical Guidance to Team 

• Produce technical documentation, including work estimation, technical change impact analysis, test cases, object dependencies, code version control, performance testing, and risk analysis. Manage the development related to the application, integration and assigned resources. 

• Develop and oversee recommendations for technical solutions to improve application quality and address issues that would affect system performance, the usability of the applications, or integration with SAP and non-SAP systems. Ensure that integration issues with SAP are aligned to mitigate impact execution of business processes related to Programme, Funds and Grants Management. 

• Create system documentation and play books. Serve as a lead technical reviewer and contributor in requirements, design and code reviews. 

• Provide technical guidance to business owners. 

• Analyze and design specifications for team members and third parties to execute. 

• Act as a technical resource throughout the development life cycle. 

• Coordinate system application transition from development teams to maintenance and production teams. Construct and implement necessary controls to assure system and application traceability. 

• Provide support to the user community and product owners via established support mechanisms. Participate in and contribute to discussions on issue resolutions and solutions. 

• Ensure that software standards and quality targets are met. 

• Work closely with the ICT Manager and provide regular updates. Inform and escalate risks in time to ensure deliverables are achieved as planned. 

• Research and explore emerging technological innovations applicable to UNICEF programme delivery. Present the results and suggestions to the team. 

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

 Academic Degrees:

• An advanced university degree (Master’s or higher) in Business Administration, Engineering, Computer Science, Information Systems or relevant technical or business-related 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.

Required Experience:

• A minimum of 5 years of progressively responsible and relevant work experience in information technology-related systems development and support roles is required, including: 

• Proven leadership experience within a solution oriented technical environment, preferably with a software development or architecture background. 
• Experience leading cross-functional complex teams of technical and non-technical professionals: highly developed technology business solutions acumen.

• A minimum of 4 years of experience with SAP and SAP Fiori. 
• A minimum of 4 years of experience with integrations third party applications. 
• Experience developing mission critical applications in an agile environment.

• Ability to understand and mitigate all risks involved in deploying evolving technologies is required. 
• Good understanding of Systems Lifecycle Management and knowledge of process analysis and design is required. 
• Familiarity with system development and operational process methodologies is required. 
• Strategic ability to translate business needs into technical requirements is required. 
• Ability to lead and implement technology transformation and organization change management for continuous improvement is required. 

Desirable Experience and skills

• Knowledge in following areas is desirable: 

• Business Technology Platform (BTP) 
• SAP Analytical Cloud (SAC) 
• Hana Enterprise Edition (Hana EE) 
• Cloud Application Programming model (CAP) 

•  Knowledge of the organization’s technologies and architecture is an asset. 
• Knowledge and experience of UNICEF’ s procedures and business processes is an asset. 

Language Requirements: 
• 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 (8) Nurtures, leads and manages people

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.

As an advocate for every child you will receive: 

UNICEF offers a competitive salary that is tax-exempted for most nationalities.  You can access here a salary calculator for simulation. (Medical insurance and pension premiums will be deducted from net salary).

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.

Additional benefits for eligible international professional staff members include: 

• Paid holidays and leave, including 2.5 days of annual leave accrual per month and 10 official holidays per year 
• Paid parental leave (maternity, paternity and adoption) 
• Dependency allowance  
• Rental subsidy  
• Relocation support and lump sum 
• Home leave travel (air tickets or lump sum) 
• Education grant for children in school 
• United Nations-sponsored medical and dental insurance plan, pension plan, and optional life insurance plan  
• Access to professional development and learning programs, online learning, and learning path  
• Access to staff well-being and career development support  

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. All selected candidates will, therefore, 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.

Remarks:

UNICEF’s active commitment towards diversity and inclusion is critical to deliver the best results for children. For this position, eligible and suitable female candidates are encouraged to apply.

Mobility is a condition of international professional employment with UNICEF and an underlying premise of the international civil service.

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). 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.