View Vacancy - Regional Finance and Procurement Officer (GEO22.341 )

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Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Policy & Political roles)
Finance, Procurement

The Regional Finance and Procurement Officer position will provide support to the Regional Finance and Procurement Manager to ensure high quality financial and procurement services are provided to deliver the UK’s Conflict, Stability and Security Fund (CSSF) Eastern Neighbourhood (EN) Programme. 

The Programme operates on a hub-and-spoke model, with a “hub” working from the British Embassy Tbilisi supporting project officers and project delivery in Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Moldova. This position will be part of the regional “hub” in Tbilisi. The “hub” provides project management expertise to the region, reduces administrative burdens of country teams including the delivery of finance and procurement services and manages regional programming to deliver against country and programme strategic objectives.

Overall, the Finance and Procurement Officer will provide support to the regional team to:

·       Deliver an efficient and effective financial and procurement service that complies with FCDO rules and drives a reduction in, and robust management of, financial risk and an increase in the delivery of outcomes as a result of a stronger focus on value-for-money. 

The role offers the jobholder an opportunity to be part of a regional team during a period of change that provides new opportunities and challenges to shape how the UK delivers programming in the region.  The role offers an opportunity to develop financial and procurement skills and how that supports project delivery in support of UK objectives on a range of important issues from peace building to capacity building of civil society and leveraging UK technical assistance for government reform programmes, including on the Women, Peace and Security agenda, where gender is at the heart of our approach.

Finance Support – 55%

-        Lead on the registering of project details on the FCDO’s financial system including ensuring the allocation of project codes, creating requisitions and purchase orders, and dealing with pre-payment requests.

-        Lead on the processing of payments, including checking of the invoices and payment requests for compliance, comparing actual figures against forecasts and ensuring that spend is within the budget, escalating issues as necessary.

-        Lead on data management of all financial documents and evidence.

-        Support the Regional Finance and Procurement Manager to manage budgets, ensure accurate profiling and reconcile spend.  This involves data entry on the FCDO’s financial system, reviewing and assessing spend and ensuring accurate forecasts, working with suppliers and the regional team to ensure the compliance of expenditures against FCDO rules and guidance.  Providing management data to the team on finances.

-        Support the Regional Finance and Procurement Manager at different stages of project cycle to identify risks and implement mitigation actions that may include supporting implementers and colleagues to improve the quality of their returns, conducting due diligence assessments on new partners and keeping these under review, and conducting assessments and evaluations on financial returns.

-        Support the team to implement a stronger focus on Value-For-Money and how this can be monitored and evaluated at all stages of the project cycle.

-        Contribute to financial quarterly reporting.

Procurement and Contractual Support – 25%

-        Support the Regional Finance and Procurement Manager to deliver quality procurements for new projects including supporting the tendering process, facilitating evaluation panels and record-keeping of decisions.  Lead on smaller procurements including calls for bids.  This will involve ensuring compliance with FCDO procurement rules and working with colleagues and implementers to ensure the quality of our approach.

-        Prepare grant agreements and MoUs in consultation with the relevant stakeholders.

-        Support the Regional Finance and Procurement Manager to check the suppliers’/implementing partners’ activity-based budgets for compliance starting from the design phase throughout the project lifetime.

-        To maintain and regularly update the programme’s “contracts tracker” ensuring milestones and targets are met, supporting the regional team to review contract delivery and ensure compliance with contract terms, throughout the life-time of a contract.

-        To provide cover for the role of the Regional Finance and Procurement Manager during periods of absence and to support the Manager on one-off projects or change processes.

Administrative Support for the Regional Hub – 15%

-        To provide administrative support for the wider Regional Hub team, including arranging events and learning and development opportunities (managing the training budget and plan for the regional team), supporting travel.

-        Data and document manager.  To be the lead data officer, ensuring compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and wider FCDO rules on data management, managing financial and contractual files and record-keeping, ensuring an accurate audit trail of decision-making is retained, and to manage documents on the electronic register. 

Wider support to the team – 5%

Wider support to the team’s administrative needs as required.

Essential on arrival:

-        At least 3 years of experience in financial, procurement or administrative work.

-        Previous experience of working with, and supporting, project management. 

-        Experience of working in an international organisation, civil society.

-        Good analytical skills and service delivery skills.

-        Strong administrative skills and experience of working in a team. 

-        Knowledge of excel would be considered as advantage.

Desirable:

-        Previous experience working on peace and reconciliation, stability and security issues relevant to the thematic areas of CSSF delivery.

-        An interest in developing financial and procurement skills / experience, linked to project management.

Managing a Quality Service, Delivering at Pace, Communicating and Influencing, Working Together
21 August 2022
Administrative Officer (AO)
Fixed Term
40
7 months
Europe, Eastern Europe & Central Asia
Georgia
Tbilisi
British Embassy
1
GEL
4,106 per month
3 October 2022
17 April 2023

This is a full-time, maternity cover shot time contract (6,5 months) for 5 working days, with working patterns: Monday to Friday (9.00 am - 5.00pm)

Learning and development opportunities: 

The FCDO Georgia Network offers a wide range of learning and development opportunities. Staff members are encouraged to take up such offers and to benefit from an in-house staff wellbeing programme.

All staff recruited locally by the British Embassy in Georgia are subject to local Georgian Employment Law as well as internal regulations in force at any given time.

The successful candidate will be subject to a professional background and security clearance and must have pre-existing work authorisation for Portugal in order to apply.

All applicants should have the right to live and work in Georgia. The British Embassy does not sponsor work permits.

The Embassy will not consider applications from existing staff who have not successfully completed their probation period or, in the case of staff on temporary contract who have not yet completed two thirds of their contract.

Visa / Passport requirements: Candidates must currently hold the independent right to live and work in Georgia and be prepared to ensure that right remains throughout the scope of the contract. Please note that it is your responsibility to ensure you meet the legal requirements to live and work in this country.

Please note that the deadline for applications is 23:55 on the day mentioned in the above field “Application deadline”.

We advise you to allow enough time to complete and submit your full application, since only applications completed and submitted before the deadline will be considered.

Please be aware that the deadline for submitting applications is considered to be the time zone for the country where the vacancy has arisen.

Please be advised that the British Embassy will not be able to meet the travel costs incurred when travelling to the interview, nor the costs connected with relocation if offered a position. 

*Please note for more information on the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, Teaching, Assessment levels please click on the following link CEFR. Please bear in mind in case you are invited for an interview your language skill is going to be assessed.

Please be aware that you will only be able to apply to vacancies for Country Based Staff roles with the British Government through this official tal.net site (operated by Oleeo). Jobs may be advertised on third party websites, however our adverts will always link back to the official tal.net site. If you complete and send an application through any other site, we will not receive it.

This opportunity is closed to applications.