ICT Expert

About Palladium

Palladium is a global company working to design, develop and deliver positive impact on the lives and livelihoods of people around the globe; broaden access to health, water, power, and infrastructure; build enduring, sustainable, and transformative institutions and market systems to address global challenges; and conserve the natural world. We operate in over 90 countries and have a workforce of 3,000 talented, motivated, and diverse staff of all religions, races, languages, and gender identities.

Project Overview and Role

Palladium seeks an ICT Sector Lead/Expert for the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC)-funded Increasing Market Employability (IME), a five-year program in North Macedonia ending in June 2024, with possibility for extension. The project follows a facilitative market systems approach to support private sector development and growth in competitive economic sectors in Macedonia (active tourism, agri-business and digitalization of these two sectors). The overall goal of the project is that more working-age women and men, in particular youth, are engaged in sustainable, decent employment or self-employment. The program will achieve this goal through three inter-related outcomes to strengthen local market systems: (1) companies in the selected sectors grow by improving their products and services and expanding their markets; (2) improved services (support functions, financial services) and improved policy and regulatory framework are conducive to companies’ growth in the selected sectors; and (3) the private sector is incentivized to engage more youth and women and equipped with tools for identifying, attracting, and retaining them.

Location

This position will be located in Skopje, North Macedonia.

Reporting and Supervision

The ICT sector Lead / Expert will report to the IME Team Leader.

Primary Duties and Responsibilities

The ICT Expert coordinates and oversees the development and implementation of strategic approaches and activities in the ICT sector. ICT Expert will:

• Identify potential intervention opportunities on digitalization and digital transformation of tourism and agribusiness sector.
• Provide technical and strategic support utilizing private sector engagement (PSE) modalities to build and manage interventions that support the digitalization and development of the tourism and agribusiness sectors in North Macedonia.
• Work with private and public sector stakeholders to identify how interventions can be sustainable.
• Collaborate with the BSO Lead to work with business service organizations to develop their capacities to address sector-wide challenges focused on digitalization and digital transformation.
• Work with stakeholders to identify policy challenges, facilitate discussions to develop policy papers to advocate for reform in the sector.
• Monitor and evaluate interventions in accordance with DCED guidelines to develop intervention plans and promptly report on challenges and results.
• Collaborate with IME Gender and Youth inclusion lead to determine how to integrate more women and youth in the sector.
• Coordinate with IME Communication expert on use of C4D across interventions in digitalization.
• Identify areas of collaboration with other donor projects, and other opportunities to co-finance IME tourism-related interventions.
• Implement the market system approach, ensuring that each intervention can be scaled up and will have an impact on the system.
• Ensure effective use of resources, on-time delivery of project activity reports and partner deliverables, and overall compliance with SDC regulations and Palladium policies and procedures.

Key Competencies Required

• Relevant higher education and professional training in economics, ICT technologies, digitalization or other relevant degree.
• At least 4 years of previous relevant experience managing and/or implementing ICT related programs.
• Strong understanding of the structure of North Macedonia’s economy and its supporting systems, including ICT sector development in North Macedonia.
• Experience in the inclusion of groups at risk of social exclusion in the private sector, in particular youth and women.
• Strong reporting skills and project management skills.
• Excellent communication, teamwork and networking skills.

Equity, Diversity & Inclusion – Palladium is committed to embedding equity, diversity, and inclusion into everything we do. We welcome applications from all sections of society and actively encourage diversity to drive innovation, creativity, success and good practice. We positively welcome and seek to ensure we achieve diversity in our workforce; and that all job applicants and employees receive equal and fair treatment regardless of their background or personal characteristics. These include: (but are not limited to) socio-economic background, age, race, gender identity and expression, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability, nationality, veteran, marital or Indigenous status.

Should you require any adjustments or accommodations to be made due to a disability or you are a neurodivergent individual or for any other circumstance, please email our team at accessibility@thepalladiumgroup.com and we will be in touch to discuss.

Safeguarding – We define Safeguarding as “the preventative action taken by Palladium to protect our people, clients and the communities we work with from harm”. We are committed to ensuring that all children and adults who come into contact with Palladium are treated with respect and are free from abuse. All successful candidates will be subject to an enhanced selection process including safeguarding-focused interviews and a rigorous due diligence process.