School Meals Digital Solutions Project Manager

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE OF THE ASSIGNMENT:

With over 60 years’ experience in School Meals, WFP has a trajectory of working with more than 100 countries to set up sustainable national school meals programmes. Today, millions of children living in poor and vulnerable communities don’t have regular access to the nutritious food they need to stay healthy and thrive. This affects their physical and mental development and can keep them from finishing school and building the strong future they deserve.

WFP advocates for the universal adoption of school meals programmes as a safety net that helps increase children’s access to education and learning opportunities and strengthens their health and nutrition status. WFP focuses increasingly on helping countries to establish and maintain high quality nationally owned programmes. In countries still requiring WFP’s operational support, it implements high-quality school meals programmes with clear handover strategies.

To enhance accountability for these programmes and related food and cash resources, WFP has developed a digital solution, School Connect. This database is designed to strengthen monitoring and reporting, while also providing decision-makers with critical oversight over school meal programmes to help ensure quality along the implementation process. The school-level data generated through School Connect can serve as a valuable resource for identifying key trends and producing analyses that further inform and improve programme delivery.

As School Meals Digital Solutions Project Manager in the School Meals and Social Protection Service, you will lead the global implementation of School Connect in close collaboration with country office and regional teams.

OBJECTIVES:

The Project Manager will:

• lead the implementation and scale-up of School Connect in targeted schools;

• ensure data quality, transparency, and accountability in school feeding operations;

• analyze data to support the improvement of programmes and prioritize the efficient allocation of resources;

• strengthen country level ownership and capacity to manage digital school feeding systems;

• facilitate coordination among stakeholders including government institutions at national and decentralized levels, schools, and community level actors; and

• ensure coordination and alignment with other digital processes in the School Meals and Social Protection Service.

ACCOUNTABILITIES/RESPONSIBILITIES:

You will work within the Programme Support workstream in the School Meals & Social Protection Service (PPGS) under the direct supervision of the Team Lead for Digital Solutions. Your accountabilities and responsibilities include:

• Coordinate the global deployment of School Connect, WFP’s digital monitoring and reporting platform for school meals, assuring WFP’s accountability to assisted populations, donors, and government partners through reliable, high-quality data.

• Establish and coordinate support capacity for School Connect in at least two regions. Conduct regional needs assessments and agree on regional priorities related to School Connect roll-out.

• Support coordination among country office staff, manage processes, and develop the Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) to establish best- practice operating models for School Connect across Country Offices and Regional Programme teams.

• Provide support and recommendations to high-level meetings within WFP, with government counterparts, and to steering committees on the use of School Connect.

• Design and produce data pipelines, dashboards, and visualizations to automate evidence for operational decision-making.

• Deliver technical guidance and training to WFP staff, partners, and external stakeholders on data analysis, modeling, and optimization using WFP’s data management systems.

• Plan, execute and oversee data projects with Country Offices to support strategic and programmatic decision-making, and oversight by national institutions.

• Organize Country Office teams and provide remote/ on-site project management to ensure project objectives for coverage are met.

• Coordinate with relevant teams in the Analysis, Planning and Performance Division, Supply Chain and Delivery Division, Office of Evaluation, Programme Policy and Guidance Division, Regional and Country Offices to analyse findings and provide recommendations for data-driven decision-making.

• Support evidence-based decisions by analysing trends and patterns in School Connect and other data in order to improve planning, resource allocation and performance monitoring.

• Collaborate with key internal and external stakeholders on data and evidence needs within key partnerships and multi-year projects.

• Any other business as required.

DELIVERABLES AT THE END OF THE CONTRACT:

• School Connect consolidated and expanded across 30 Country Offices.

• Regional Bureau teams and at least 30 Country Offices organized and capacitated in the use of School Connect, as well as relevant analytical tools and Tableau dashboards.

• Data architecture for School Connect designed, modelled and kept up-to-date in coordination with TEC.

School Connect SOPs established, roll-out plans including issue/risk analysis created, and implementation budgets approved by Country Office management.

• Support capacity established and knowledge sharing platform created for two Regional Offices on School Connect implementation.

• Analytical support to key programmatic areas delivered in support audit and evaluation recommendations.

• Dashboards produced and maintained to enable strategic focus on programmatic quality and integration, including through monitoring progress, tracking KPIs and adjusting implementation.

• Reporting and senior-level engagement in support of the data and digitization agenda as well as other requests for key messages prepared in a timely manner.

QUALIFICATIONS & EXPERIENCE REQUIRED:

Education:

Master’s degree in international affairs, economics, engineering, business administration, business analytics, computer sciences or other relevant fields.

Experience:

Minimum 5 years of relevant professional experience.

Knowledge & Skills:

Strong project management and collaboration skills, with the ability to work effectively with multi-disciplinary teams.

Proven capacity to lead and keep track of timelines deadlines for multiple projects in parallel.

Plans work for self and others to deliver within agreed scope, activities, and deadlines.

Prior experience with organizing, managing and/or supervising project teams in complex environments. Comfortable with presenting to and engaging with senior management.

Technical experience, knowledge and understanding of data architecture complexity.

Considerable experience working with a broad range of data collection, business analysis, process mapping, data mining, data discovery, ETL, and data cleansing.

Experience with self-service analytics and data visualization applications (Tableau, PowerBI, etc.), or business intelligence tools (SAP Business Objects, etc.) is required. Experience with Palantir Foundry is a plus.

Experience with WFP systems and data technologies (Tableau Prep, Palantir Foundry, COMET, SAP, others).

Excellent information technology skills (Microsoft Office package, proficiency with Excel, SharePoint, Teams).

Strong attention to details. Demonstrate the ability to anticipate future complications through problem-solving skills.

Strong communication skills and ability to effectively communicate with a range of technical experts and non-technical staff.

Good interpersonal skills and ability to work in multicultural settings.

Languages:

Fluency in English and one other UN language.

Working arrangements:

Rome-based