Project Manager – Product Owner for Digital LSFF

About the Role

The Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN) is seeking a Project Manager – Product Owner for Digital LSFF to manage and provide support on the Digital LSFF project. This role will be on a fixed-term contract basis up to 18 months, subject to availability of funding. This position is open to GAIN’s country offices in Abuja and London.

Reporting to the Deputy Director, PST, the Project Manager will provide functional, technical and managerial leadership to projects and teams in the thematic area.

You will lead a high performing cross-functional project team, and establish, manage and maintain relationships with relevant partners and stakeholders. The postholder will be responsible for the overall project management leadership and ensure the project team implement project activities within approved plans, budget, and quality standards.

The Project Manager, throughout the project life cycle, will ensure accurate planning, management and reporting of activities, budgets (resources), monitoring, external services and any other key areas required to deliver successful projects.

Key Responsibilities include:

• Revising and executing a digital product strategy according to organizational goals, market trends, customer demands and the requirements of diverse stakeholders
• Building and maintaining a deep understanding of all the digital product aspects, including the customer and user perspective, competitive products and our technical capabilities
• Implementing best practice User-Centered-Design methodologies and research to achieve high user value and satisfaction and integrating stakeholder feedback/suggestions through best practice demand management processes
• Leading the preparation for the inception workshop for the project. Facilitating the inception workshop with support from the other teams in GAIN
• Leading a high-performing project team consisting of people across the organization including a consortium of 8 organizations; bringing together the skills, experience and competencies required for successful digital project delivery
• Working with Business Architect to ensure product development enables go-to-market strategy, as well as developing positioning and messaging for customers
• Collaborating with a consortium including designers and developers to ensure the deployment of necessary features, including overseeing customer research, solution design, user story writing, feature development, user acceptance testing, and market research
• Building and maintaining strong partnerships with civil society, INGOs, government entities, private sector and other organisations
• Ensuring monthly project reporting (in line with GAINs Project Management Standards) to update management on program progress achieved, program plans, changes in direction and challenges encountered

About You

The ideal candidate will possess experience on digital product development/digital transformation in emerging or developing country markets and knowledge and experience of working according to agile methodologies and lean product development, such as CSPO, SCRUM.

You will have proven experience in project management in complex and diverse environments, cross-disciplinary teams and product design or development. The postholder will also possess experience working in an Agile environment (reviewing business needs, refine priorities, outline milestones and deliverables, and identify opportunities and risks) as well as experience in food and agriculture systems development, experience in managing programs and digital transformation.

In addition to this, you will have excellent communications skills and able to work with diverse groups/individuals and comfortable working in multicultural and multi-lingual environments. You will be fluent in both written and verbal English. The postholder should also be highly flexible and willing and able to travel.

A Bachelor’s degree in business, computer science, information systems or related field and/or recognized international accreditation in project management. You will be computer literate in Microsoft Office and with experience in SQL queries and with back-end and front-end programming languages such as Java, HTML, CSS.

About our Offer

The starting salary for each office is as follows, depending on experience:

• Nigeria: From NGN 14,956,632 (gross) – NGN 17,101,296 (gross) per annum
• United Kingdom: From GBP 51,396 (gross) – GBP 55,080 (gross) per annum

GAIN has a fair and competitive salary structure that allows for annual progression subject to good performance. In addition, GAIN offers a total of 37 days holiday per year (including annual leave, public holidays and additional office closure days), an attractive pension scheme and competitive insurance cover including health, travel and life assurance.

We are committed to the health of our staff, especially in these challenging times, and have developed a programme of wellbeing that includes flexible working, additional leave allowances, wellbeing days, mindfulness coaching and access to independent and confidential counselling.

GAIN also has a strong commitment to professional development. We will support you to grow in your career through both formal and informal training, and are committed to providing opportunities through internal recruitment, secondments and promotion. All of this is delivered in a supportive and collaborative environment.

About GAIN

The Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN) is a Swiss-based foundation launched at the United Nations in 2002 to tackle the human suffering caused by malnutrition. Due to COVID19, conflict in Ukraine and climate change, malnutrition and hunger have worsened significantly since 2019, reversing a decade of progress. There is growing recognition that our food systems need to change if we are to reverse these trends.

GAIN’s Strategy aims to transform food systems to make healthier diets from sustainable food systems accessible to all people and especially those whose are most vulnerable to shocks. By 2027, we aim to improve the access of 1.5 billion people to nutritionally enhanced staple foods, improve the access of 25 million people to healthier diets, and support positive food system change in 10 countries. This is bold and complex, and the only way to achieve this is to work together with partners including governments, businesses, and civil society at the country and global level. These goals, and the ways of achieving them, build on our twenty-year legacy of transforming people’s lives with improved nutrition through concerted action and effective policy change.

Our Working Culture and Environment

We provide a flexible working environment that includes a combination of home and office working opportunities through our global hybrid working policy. This encourages our staff to have a healthy work-life balance and increases staff motivation, enriches employee wellbeing, and improves performance and productivity.

All of our positions are based in one or more of GAIN’s designated offices as stated on our job advertisements. Successful candidates will be based in one of GAIN’s country offices and must have the existing right to live and work within a reasonably commutable distance of the relevant city / cities in which the role is advertised. Please note, that GAIN does not sponsor working visas and relocations.

GAIN reserves the right to withdraw an offer of employment for candidates who are considered to ineligible under the above conditions during or after the recruitment process.

This advert closes on 10th May 2024. Early applications are encouraged. GAIN reserves the right to close this advert early should we receive suitable candidates ahead of the closing date.

The Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition is committed to equality of opportunity and creating an inclusive environment where diversity is valued. We are keen to reflect the diversity of our society at every level within our organisation and therefore welcome applications from talented and committed people from all backgrounds, representing the diverse societies we operate in.