ICT Specialist (SAP Programmer Analyst, HR Applications), P-3, Fixed-term, Post no. 18676, ICTD Digital Core, Valencia, Spain

UNICEF works in some of the world’s toughest places, to reach the world’s most disadvantaged children. To save their lives. To defend their rights. To help them fulfill their potential.

Across 190 countries and territories, we work for every child, everywhere, every day, to build a better world for everyone.

And we never give up.

For every child, a connected world.

The overarching strategic goal of UNICEF’s Information and Communication Technology Division (ICTD) is to transform and build partnerships with our stakeholders to successfully implement UNICEF programmes globally through innovative technology-enabled solutions.

This position will report to the ICT Manager, Enterprise Business Systems in ICTD. One of the Enterprise Business Systems’ goals is to provide adequate, user-friendly, and modern business solutions to UNICEF’s different departments and stakeholders as well as to provide guidance, governance, and procedures to several enterprise processes such as data collection, program monitoring, digital tools and platforms, and business process optimization throughout the organization. These goals are aligned with the organizational strategy, enterprise architecture, and information management requirements of UNICEF’s different stakeholders.

This position may oversee the work of consultants.

How can you make a difference?

Under the general guidance of the ICT Manager and in close coordination with consultants and staff, the ICT Specialist will identify change requirements for SAP and support existing functionality in business areas including Human Capital Management and Payroll. This role will support changes and existing functionality resulting from modified business processes, corporate data or interface needs. The HR Specialist will prepare program specifications, implement the required program enhancements and fixes, and supervise the implementation of enhancements and fixes related to the assigned functional areas.

Key Responsibilities:

Technical Lifecycle Implementation
• Plan the engineering of all phases of the software development lifecycle, including gathering and analyzing user/business system requirements, responding to outages, and creating application system models.
• Design, develop, document, test and debug new and existing software solutions for internal use. Perform defect corrections (analysis, design, code). Create and maintain development artifacts and contribute support to the processes required to address new business requirements, enhancements, and perform application maintenance including defect fixes and performance tuning for the Human Capital Management areas of SAP.
• Create system requirements, perform design and analysis, code and unit test complex to highly complex system functionality and defect correction across inter-related platforms.
• Identify ideas to improve system performance and impact availability.
• Resolve complex technical design issues.
• Provide functional and technical guidance in evaluating applications systems and evaluating requests for proposals.
• Coordinate changes. Influence and prioritize tasks with business or technical departments.
• Analyze and influence technical, system, and user requirements.
• Facilitate root cause analysis of system issues to minimize impact and future occurrences.

Lead Technical Team
• Produce technical documentation including work estimation, technical change impact analysis, test cases, object dependencies, code version control, performance testing, and risk analysis. Manage the development related to the application and integration and assigned resources.
• Develop and oversee recommendations on technical solutions to improve the overall quality of the application and address issues that would affect system performance, the usability of the applications, and integration with SAP and non-SAP systems. Ensure that integration issues with SAP are aligned to mitigate impact execution of business processes related to Human Capital Management.
• Create system documentation and play books. Serve as a lead technical reviewer and contributor in requirements, design and code reviews.
• Serve as a resource to the business.
• Analyze and design specifications for less experienced internal and third-party team members to execute.
• Act as a technical resource throughout the development life cycle.
• Coordinate system application transition from development teams to maintenance and production teams. Construct and implement necessary controls to assure system/application traceability.
• Provide support to the user community and product owners through established support mechanisms. Participate and contribute to discussions on issue resolutions and solutions.
• Act as the primary liaison with SAP for technical issues, upgrades and the related tools and solutions.
• Ensure that software standards and quality targets are met.
• Facilitates user input from headquarters and field offices. Reviews changes in policy and procedures, corporate data content, corporate data structure and business processes.

To qualify as an advocate for every child you will have…

Academic Degrees:
• An advanced university degree (Master’s Degree or equivalent) in Business Administration, Engineering, Computer Science is required.
• A first University Degree (Bachelor’s Degree or equivalent) in a relevant field combined with 2 additional years of relevant professional experience may be accepted in lieu of an advanced university degree.

Experience:
A minimum of 5 years of progressively responsible work experience in information technology-related systems development and support roles is required, including:
• Proven leadership experience within a solution oriented technical environment, preferably with a software development or architecture background.
• Experience leading cross-functional complex teams of technical and non-technical professionals: Highly developed technology business solutions acumen.
• A minimum of 4 years of experience with SAP and SAP Fiori.
• A minimum of 4 years of experience working with integration suites and integration third party applications.

Required Skills and Knowledge:
• Ability to understand and mitigate all risks involved in deploying evolving technologies is required.
• Good understanding of Systems Lifecycle Management and knowledge of process analysis and design is required.
• Familiarity with system development, and operational process methodologies is required.
• Strategic ability to translate business needs into technical requirements is required.
• Ability to lead and implement technology transformation and organization change management for continuous improvement is required.
• Experience developing mission critical applications in agile environment is required.

Desirable:
• Knowledge in following areas is desirable:
     o Business Technology Platform (BTP)
     o SAP Analytical Cloud (SAC)
     o Hana Enterprise Edition (Hana EE)
     o Cloud Application Programming model (CAP)
• Knowledge of the organization’s technologies and architecture is an asset.
• Knowledge and experience of UNICEF’ s procedures and business processes is an asset.

Language Requirements:
• Fluency in English is required.
• Knowledge of another official UN language (Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian or Spanish) or a local language is an asset.

For every Child, you demonstrate…

UNICEF’s Core Values of Care, Respect, Integrity, Trust and Accountability and Sustainability (CRITAS) underpin everything we do and how we do it. Get acquainted with Our Values Charter: UNICEF Values

UNICEF competencies required for this post are…

(1) Builds and maintains partnerships (2) Demonstrates self-awareness and ethical awareness (3) Drive to achieve results for impact (4) Innovates and embraces change (5) Manages ambiguity and complexity (6) Thinks and acts strategically (7) Works collaboratively with others (8) Nurtures, leads and manages people.

During the recruitment process, we test candidates following the competency framework. Familiarize yourself with our competency framework and its different levels: competency framework here.

As an advocate for every child you will receive:

UNICEF offers a competitive salary that is tax-exempted for most nationalities.  You can access here a salary calculator for simulation. (Medical insurance and pension premiums will be deducted from net salary). 

We offer a wide range of benefits to our staff, including paid parental leave, breastfeeding breaks and reasonable accommodation for persons with disabilities.  UNICEF strongly encourages the use of flexible working arrangements.

Additional benefits for eligible international professional staff members include:
• Paid holidays and leave, including 2.5 days of annual leave accrual per month and 10 official holidays per year
• Paid parental leave (maternity, paternity and adoption)
• Dependency allowance
• Rental subsidy
• Relocation support and lump sum
• Home leave travel (air tickets or lump sum)
• Education grant for children in school
• United Nations-sponsored medical and dental insurance plan, pension plan, and optional life insurance plan
• Access to professional development and learning programs, online learning, and learning path
• Access to staff well-being and career development support

UNICEF is here to serve the world’s most disadvantaged children and our global workforce must reflect the diversity of those children. The UNICEF family is committed to include everyone, irrespective of their race/ethnicity, age, disability, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, nationality, socio-economic background, or any other personal characteristic.

UNICEF has a zero-tolerance policy on conduct that is incompatible with the aims and objectives of the United Nations and UNICEF, including sexual exploitation and abuse, sexual harassment, abuse of authority and discrimination. UNICEF is committed to promote the protection and safeguarding of all children. All selected candidates will, therefore, undergo rigorous reference and background checks, and will be expected to adhere to these standards and principles. Background checks will include the verification of academic credential(s) and employment history. Selected candidates may be required to provide additional information to conduct a background check.

Remarks:

UNICEF’s active commitment towards diversity and inclusion is critical to deliver the best results for children. Eligible females are strongly encouraged to apply.

International mobility is a condition of international professional employment with UNICEF and an underlying premise of the international civil service.

UNICEF appointments are subject to medical clearance.  Issuance of a visa by the host country of the duty station, which will be facilitated by UNICEF, is required for International Professional positions. Appointments are also subject to inoculation (vaccination) requirements, including against SARS-CoV-2 (Covid). Government employees that are considered for employment with UNICEF are normally required to resign from their government before taking up an assignment with UNICEF. UNICEF reserves the right to withdraw an offer of appointment, without compensation, if a visa or medical clearance is not obtained, or necessary inoculation requirements are not met, within a reasonable period for any reason.