Director, Finance & Operations - HIV/AIDS Nigeria at Management Sciences For Health - MSH

Job ID: 13-9181
Location: Abuja
Grade: L
Reports To: Deputy Chief of Party/Technical Director

Overview

• MSH seeks a Director, Finance and Operations to provide high-level contract and grant management support and financial expertise for the anticipated five-year USAID/Nigeria-funded contract designed to build local capacity for the delivery of sustainable, high-quality, and comprehensive HIV/AIDS prevention, treatment, care, and support services.
• S/he manages the country finance team, ensuring the team provides a full range of financial support with a particular focus on accurate, timely and sophisticated budgeting and forecasting, financial analysis, financial monitoring and reporting.
• S/he ensures that financial functions support the timely and effective implementation of the projects’ technical scope of work.
• The Director, Finance and Operations provides counsel to help project and country leadership ensure that resources are allocated and used in compliance with contractual requirements, applicable regulations, and appropriate standards and procedures.
• S/he works cooperatively with the project, country office accounting team, HQ-based Financial Planning & Analysis (FP&A) team, and the other players in the Country Operations Management Unit (COMU).
• This position is subject to award and funding.

Specific Responsibilities
Country Operations:

• Oversee and provide direction to the team of finance staff in the country. Supervise and develop the capacity of staff such that they can provide consistent financial management support to the project teams in support of successful implementation of the programs in country.
• Ensure the team provides a full range of financial support with a particular focus on accurate, timely and sophisticated budgeting and forecasting, financial analysis, financial monitoring and reporting.
• Provide mentoring, oversight and quality reviews to the finance team.
• Ensure team is using standard approaches and best practices; this includes collaboration with the FP&A team to ensure specific issues are addressed in a manner consistent across the organization and using the tools, templates and trainings provided by FP&A.
• Ensure project or donor specific financial issues (such as ACF management, indirect cost recovery, salary caps, LOE restrictions, etc.) are properly managed following MSH standards and best practices.
• Participate as a member of the Country Leadership Team. Alert team to areas of potential risk and possible solutions, etc.

Financial and Administrative Management:

• Provide strategic support and guidance to the project team in all areas related to project financial management.
• Ensure that appropriate reviews, controls, and strategies are in place and managed to provide alerts of potential problems and allow for corrective action, in regard to issues such as errors in data entry, expenditures or commitments; expenditures that are trending over or under planned expectations; expenditures for unplanned activities; and the like. Use standard tools such as the finance scorecard to support this process.

Project Planning and Budgeting:

• Lead the annual work plan budgeting processes working with project and office leadership.
• Oversee the development of budgets and financial projections for all funding sources (project, COMU, and overhead).
• Work with project team to ensure budgets are reflective of planned activities, are feasible to implement, planned costs in compliance with donor regulations, and value for money.

Project Financial Analysis and Reporting

• Oversee and/or perform the preparation of routine financial analysis and reporting, both for internal use and external reporting.
• Oversee and/or perform the analysis of financial data with the goal of identifying trends or issues critical to inform Project Director and leadership’s management of projects and portfolios.
• Provide support to address any issues found and provide strategic guidance to prevent future issues.
• Working with project teams, lead any reporting exercises that apply to multiple projects, e.g., annual PEPFAR Analysis.

Other Duties:

• Implement standard procedures and forms that promote and/or ensure program compliance with the project contract terms and conditions in coordination with COMU and FP&A.
• Review and approve cost share valuation.
• Provide overall financial support to COMU Director as needed.
• Support proposal development by overseeing or doing cost research, math checks or other activities as requested by the MSH Cost Proposal Unit (CPU).

Qualifications and Experience

• A post-graduate degree in Accounting, Finance, Business Administration or other related field relevant to the position requirements.
• At least ten (10) years’ experience in administrative and financial management of large, complex projects of which at least eight (8) years were in the field of international development. Familiarity with compliance to Federal Acquisition Regulations required.
• Experience in the management of USG funded projects and a track record in developing and managing large budgets, analyzing spending against budget, and internal and external reporting is required
• Excellent Excel skills required (including data extraction, manipulation, pivoting, etc.)
• Excellent analytical skills, high attention to detail required.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills required with the ability to operate in a culturally diverse organization, and communicate to all levels within the organization
• High level of oral and written fluency in English required.