Technical Advisor II, Private Sector Engagement

NOTE: This is a remote position; CRS will only consider candidates who are based in countries where we have existing offices. CRS does not sponsor visas for telecommuting employees. 

About CRS:  Catholic Relief Services (CRS) is the official international humanitarian agency of the Catholic community in the United States. CRS works to save, protect, and transform lives in need in more than 100 countries, without regard to race, religion, or nationality. CRS' relief and development work is accomplished primarily through programs of emergency response, HIV, health, nutrition, WASH, agriculture, education, microfinance, and peacebuilding.

Job Summary:  You will provide advice, guidance, and support to headquarters, regional, and country teams to integrate the most contextually appropriate and sustainable private sector engagement (PSE) approaches into the design of innovative programs, while also supporting the implementation of related awards. Your knowledge, advice, and guidance will contribute to effective, adaptive, and innovative PSE within CRS programing across the globe with an emphasis on PSE in essential services, such as health and nutrition, education and early childhood development, and peacebuilding. You will contribute to internal learning processes that help shape and influence CRS’ strategies to better achieve sustainability and expand its ability to reach scale through private sector partnerships and strategic alliances to serve the poor and vulnerable.

Roles and Key Responsibilities

• Lead the development of the technical design in PSE and systems strengthening for proposals. Support the process of preparation, design, submission and approval of project concepts and full-fledged proposals across sectors, especially health and nutrition, education and early childhood development, and peacebuilding.
• Track external trends and innovations related to PSE in these different sectors, and integrate these into design considerations as well as influence them based on CRS’ work.
• Establish dynamic relationships with private sector enterprises to integrate innovative and effective interventions into processes and approaches.
• Advise project and technical teams on integrating donor strategies, priorities, and technical requirements related to PSE and market systems development (MSD) into CRS' approaches.
• Support capacity building initiatives for staff and partners by co-developing learning and training strategies and agendas/curriculums, conducting trainings and workshops, and mentoring and coaching staff.
• Advise teams on integrating the PSE and MSD approaches into prepositioning and design for new projects. Propose technical solutions to teams, remotely and on-site, for strategic planning and how to best apply standards, best practices, partnership principles, tools, and M&E, to help ensure high-quality implementation.
• Support the development and implementation of agency-wide strategies, standards, tools and best practices in PSE and MSD.
• Develop content to support knowledge management and learning (KML) efforts, such as presenting for the expected PSE Community of Practice, collaborating with colleagues across departments and country programs to integrate and/or update policies and guidance to enable effective PSE.
• Support the PSE KML Advisor to collect and analyze program data, manage contractors conducting data collection and analysis, capture and share lessons learned across CRS sectors and external audiences and best practices for specific projects to contribute to the PSE Learning Agenda.
• Participate in forums in the areas of PSE and MSD to collect and share best practices and promote CRS' work.
• Support teams to conduct appropriate levels of due diligence according to the type(s) of proposed private sector engagement or partnership(s).
• Participate in short-term assignments to support all phases of the project life cycle, as prioritized by the team. 

Required Languages – Fluency in English required. Professional proficiency in French, Spanish, or Arabic preferred.

Travel -- Must be willing and able to travel up to approximately 40%.

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities

• Strong relationship management skills with ability to influence and get buy-in from people not under direct supervision and to collaborate with individuals in diverse geographical and cultural settings.
• Good strategic, analytical, problem-solving and systems thinking skills with capacity to see the big picture and ability to make sound judgment.
• Initiative-taking, resourceful and results-oriented; self-starter with ability to prioritize and identify tangible steps to implement new approaches.
• Excel