(Associate) Investment Officer

Build a career with impact. Working at the World Bank Group (WBG) provides a unique opportunity to help countries solve their greatest development challenges. As one of the largest sources of funding and knowledge for developing countries, the WBG is a unique partnership of five global institutions dedicated to ending poverty, increasing shared prosperity, and promoting sustainable development. With 189 member countries and more than 120 offices worldwide, the WBG works with public and private sector partners, investing in groundbreaking projects and using data, research, and technology to develop solutions to the most urgent global challenges.

Under its 2030 strategy, IFC is mobilizing private capital at scale to create more and better jobs, with a particular focus on low-income countries and fragile and conflict-affected states. The strategy centers on four pillars: enhancing origination and mobilization of investments, adopting a new approach to equity, expanding support for micro, small, and medium enterprises, and transforming ways of working and skills across the institution. By concentrating on sectors with the greatest potential for job creation—such as infrastructure, agribusiness, healthcare, manufacturing, and tourism—and fostering innovation, inclusion, and climate action, IFC aims to deliver sustainable impact and drive development in the world’s most challenging markets.

IFC’s 2030 strategy aims to stimulate more investment activity across emerging markets. This strategy aims to create new opportunities for private investments in challenging markets and sectors by proactively working “upstream” to create, deepen, and expand markets and design and develop potential investment projects.  The Upstream and Advisory Global Secretariat (CSLUA) is tasked with driving the effectiveness of upstream and advisory operations in support of the IFC strategy and related commitments focused on enabling investment opportunities, enhancing investment impact, and empowering innovation across our full solutions suite for our clients.

In FY25, Upstream-enabled commitments reached approximately $14 billion, representing 36% of IFC’s own-account (OA) investments and 24% of total long-term financing. Core mobilization hit $7.3 billion—more than triple last year’s number and outpacing Upstream-enabled OA investments for the first time. Upstream 5-year pipeline exceeded $49 billion overall and over $14 billion for the first time in IDA-FCS countries, while also strategically built to incorporate Climate and Gender lens. Our Advisory continued to lead the way in setting the stage for private financing in some of the most challenging markets, with 26% delivery in FCS and 47% in IDA.

The CSLUA unit is seeking a GF level team member as either (Associate) Investment Officer – final determination of split grade will be based on level of experience. This role will support a subset of upstream/advisory business units across the EUR region and drive a new level of assistance across regions for Upstream’s pilot investments in the form of CnCs and wider Upstream projects – drawing lessons from Europe’s innovations in both areas.  This staff position will be based in Vienna, Austria and will be expected to liaise with teams across all regions and Headquarters.

Duties and Accountabilities : 

• Apply critical thinking to provide tailored advice to upstream and advisory project teams (in assigned industries/business areas) on project structuring, design and course correction; governance/ADM application and compliance and portfolio and pipeline monitoring including fit with strategy – with a special emphasis on CnCs, Upstream and pilot investment projects.
• Support large portions of the cross-functional product development of IFC’s early-stage co-investment product (CnCs). Duties include support to refining the product features in IFC systems and ensuring appropriate coordination with cross-functional stakeholders, working with the Global Upstream Focal Point in CSLUA.
• Support analytics for regional Upstream projects across a range of project areas generating analysis, reports and capturing lessons learned from Upstream projects within Europe and beyond to support upgrading and innovation as Upstream continues to evolve as an instrument for IFC’s medium to long term pipeline development.
• Help strengthen project quality at entry and promote effective portfolio supervision and course correction throughout project lifecycle, including conducting quality reviews of project documents (CNs/IPs/PSRs/PCRs/etc) across advisory and upstream projects, including CnCs. This will be achieved through project monitoring, support to Managers and TTLs on portfolio issues, and flagging issues for attention of the results measurement team among other approaches.
• Contribute to management reporting efforts to facilitate regional and operational management oversight of portfolio performance and pipeline progress, especially in relation to committed KPIs and strategic directions.  Additionally, provide feedback into reporting enhancements to address management needs or highlight areas where attention needed.
• Play a pro-active role in identifying productivity and performance flags from the Upstream/Advisory portfolio, make recommendations for improvements and escalate issues as needed to the CSLUA Regional Focal Point, Regional Management or Results Measurement and Finance.
• Provide analytical/implementation support for regional and corporate cross cutting activities e.g., portfolio/pipeline review meetings, inputs for IORs and briefing books preparation of regional reports, Client Survey, Country Driven Budgeting implementation, etc.
• Deliver training on governance, procedures, systems and best practices, as well as, support onboarding of new managers/directors and onboarding/mentoring of junior staff/STCs in the team.
• Build relationships with operational/country managers in supporting overall quality improvement initiatives and adherence to governance.
• Identify and suggest recommendations on any cross-cutting concerns raised by project teams that need adjustment (e.g., iPortal, shadow systems and practices, governance issues, reporting gaps etc.).  Share across Regional and global team with goal to improve current/new projects development and processing.
• Collaborate with Partnerships, Finance, Results Measurement, Legal and other corporate support functions as needed.
• Support the Upstream team in CSLUA with a range of ad hoc tasks related to program management as needed.