Evaluation Capacity Development and Quality Assurance Consultant - NYHQ, Evaluation office, (Remote/Work from home)

Contract Duration: 6 months

UNICEF works in over 190 countries and territories to save children’s lives, defend their rights, and help them fulfill their potential, from early childhood through adolescence.

At UNICEF, we are committed, passionate, and proud of what we do for as long as we are needed. Promoting the rights of every child is not just a job – it is a calling.

UNICEF is a place where careers are built. We offer our staff diverse opportunities for professional and personal development that will help them reinforce a sense of purpose while serving children and communities across the world. We welcome everyone who wants to belong and grow in a diverse and passionate culture, coupled with an attractive compensation and benefits package.

Visit our website to learn more about what we do at UNICEF.

For every child, education

Purpose of Activity/Assignment:

The UNICEF Evaluation Office (EO), located in New York HQ, provides global leadership and oversight of the evaluation function in the organization. As such, it manages independent, corporate evaluations and evaluation syntheses, provides technical assistance and quality assurance for evaluations commissioned at the decentralized level (country and regional offices, as well as other divisions in HQ offices), develops evaluation methods, and reports to the UNICEF Executive Board.

The Director of Evaluation provides strategic leadership to the global evaluation function at all three levels of the organization (global, regional and national). The mission of the UNICEF evaluation function is to help drive results for children by fostering evidence-informed decision-making. Evaluation in UNICEF supports both learning and decision-making, which in turn support better results for children. Evaluation also helps to hold UNICEF accountable for contributing to results for children, or for failing to do so.

The evaluation function conducts a diverse set of independent, credible, and impartial corporate thematic, institutional effectiveness, humanitarian, country-led, impact and joint evaluations to ensure UNICEF uses evaluation evidence to improve outcomes for children.

Since 2022, the Evaluation Office has embarked on an ambitious Global Blended Evaluation Learning Programme, which is made up of three components:

• InSPIRE – Independent Self-Paced Introduction to Responsive Evaluation: a certified self-paced UNICEF Agora Course introducing standards, norms and concepts of evaluation to UNICEF staff and partners who are interested in evaluation and/or may want to pursue a career in evaluation;

• IMPrESS – Intermediate Moderated Programme for Evaluation Systems’ Strengthening: an online, moderated course delivered by Key Aid Consulting responding to UNICEF staff and partners’ needs, to improve their evaluative decision-making and management and prioritize utilization-focused, quality evaluation that is context-specific, fit for purpose and addresses equity and human rights;

• ExCEL – Executive Course for Evaluation Leaders, a two-week face-to-face training delivered by the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy (LKY School) of the National University of Singapore (NUS), specifically tailored for senior government partners and UNICEF staff, selected based on their responsibility for evaluation, and who have an ongoing and/or upcoming evaluation. ExCEL aims to increase their ability to not only have a good understanding of evaluation but also help build a culture of evidence-based decision-making, strengthen capacity for evaluation, and manage key stakeholders in evaluation. As a result, senior government officials should be inspired to become Champions of Evaluation within their country.

The Evaluation Office has stated in the new Plan for global evaluations, 2026–2029, presented at the UNICEF First regular session of 2026, its intention to “renew and bolster the UNICEF commitment to national evaluation capacity development”.

There is indeed a significant and sustained demand from national governments and Country Offices, particularly for ExCEL and IMPrESS. However, severe financial constraints at the Evaluation Office, resulting from the FFI restructuring exercise, brought about significant limitations in its capability to deliver results in National Evaluation Capacity Development, a key priority for the evaluation function as a whole. To overcome these bottlenecks, the Evaluation Office requires specialised technical inputs by a senior-level consul