Consultancy 12 Months: Technical Expert

**Job no**: 569246 **Contract type**: Consultant **Duty Station**: Geneva **Level**: Consultancy **Location**: Switzerland **Categories**: Innovation 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 start-up thinking, the technology, and the partners that turn this energy into scalable solutions. **About Giga** Launched in 2019 as a joint initiative between UNICEF and ITU, **Giga** has set the ambitious goal to connect every school in the world to the internet. Half of the world’s population has no regular access to the Internet. Millions of children leave school without any digital skills, making it much more difficult for them to thrive and contribute to local and global economies. This has created a digital divide between those who are connected and those who are not, a divide that has become even wider during the Covid-19 pandemic. UNICEF and ITU have therefore joined forces to create **Giga**, an initiative to connect every school in the world to the Internet and address this new form of inequality. **Giga** focuses on connecting schools so that children and young people have access to information, opportunity, and choice. It also uses schools as anchor points for their surrounding communities: if you connect the school, you can also connect local businesses and services. This creates opportunities for service providers to generate revenue from paying users, making connectivity more sustainable. A 2021 report by the Economist Intelligence Unit found that a 10% increase in school connectivity can increase effective years of schooling by 0.6% and increase GDP per capita by 1.1%. **How can you make a difference?** We seek a strong, self-motivated Technical Expert to help build one of Giga’s ambitious products; the Connectivity Credit Marketplace, a global system designed to incentivize companies to provide internet access to underserved communities. The Technical Expert will work under the guidance of the Connectivity Credits Lead. **In particular you will**: - Explore and draft different technical architectures and designs for a global "Connectivity Credit Marketplace", ensuring scalability, reliability and security. - Collaborate with product managers, software engineers, external partners and other stakeholders to understand and translate project requirements into technical solutions for a global "Connectivity Credit Marketplace" - Build proof of concepts (PoC) for some of the identified solutions to validate their feasibility. - Offer strategic guidance on technical decisions impacting the success of the Connectivity Credits initiative. - Provide technical assistance in reviewing submissions from external vendors and partners, assessing the technical aspects of proposals, including feasibility, quality, innovation and alignment with Giga's mission. - Conduct regular technical reviews of vendor and partner work to ensure it meets quality standards and projects stay on scope, on time and on budget. - Create and maintain technical documentation about the proposed designs for a global "Connectivity Credit Marketplace" Please access the full Term of Reference (ToRs) and read a more detailed description of the assignment in this file in order to prepare your financial proposal and know more about the role: Technical Expert, Connectivity Credits ToRs.pdf **To qualify as an advocate for every child you will have** - An advanced University degree (Master’s or higher) in a related field (e.g. Computer Science, Engineering, Information Technology) or equivalent work experience. *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 5 years of experience in designing, developing and implementing technology solutions - Experience with blockchain and/or cryptocurrency products - Knowledge of blockchain technologies - Understanding of smart contract development and implementation and corresponding languages such as solidity, Java - Strong analytical skills and ability to use data to make informed decisions. - Strong communication and interpersonal skills. - Fluency in English is required. Proficiency in an additional official UN language (Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian or Spanis