Senior Program Officer, Vaccine Delivery (One year LTE) at Bill And Melinda Gates Foundation

Your Role

• The Nigeria Country Immunization Program seeks a Senior Program Officer (SPO), Vaccine Delivery to manage the portfolio of grants, relationships, and analytics focused on identifying reaching, and monitoring programs to reach unvaccinated children in Nigeria. The SPO will be primarily focused on operationalizing the team strategy; designing, making, and managing grants; and working with national and states government and implementing partners.
• This is a limited-term position (LTE) for 12 months. The postholder will be based at the foundation’s Nigeria Country Office (NCO) in Abuja, and report to the Interim - Deputy Director, Immunization and Disease Control.

What You'll Do

The selected candidate will be responsible for the following tasks:

• Coordinate the Nigeria Country Immunization team and manage partners engagement platforms.
• Support Nigeria Country Immunization engagement with Gavi - The Vaccine Alliance, and regularly track and provide updates on the implementation of the Full Portfolio Planning.
• Manage an existing portfolio of grants and contracts focused on high impact focus areas (prioritized by the foundation), immunization systems strengthening, new vaccine introductions, new tools and technology, and health worker learning and performance management.
• Focal person for the Nigeria Country immunization work around the design and implementation of new vaccine introductions, zero dose, and vaccine financing.
• Collaborate with grantees and other partners to improve the impact of work.
• Develop and maintain strong relationships with collaborators, from governments, NGOs and global partner organizations, such as Gavi, WHO, and UNICEF.
• Support NCO achieve its Immunization, PHC and broader health and gender goals.

Your Experience

The ideal candidate enjoys working on complex projects and collaboratively craft solutions with transformational potential. We seek a self-motivator who can integrate diverse perspectives to build consensus, drive progress, and provide technical and operational capacity to the Nigeria Country Immunization team. Additionally, we are seeking the following:

• Bachelor’s or other advanced degree required, with 10+ years of experience, or an equivalent combination of education and experience.
• Strong expertise in global health at global and country level, with a preference for expertise in immunization/vaccine preventable diseases. Cognate experience in immunization at the national or international level, will be an asset.
• Experience designing and managing immunization coverage and equity and rapid learning research projects.
• Leadership abilities: proven ability to work across multiple partners (e.g., government, donors, grantees, and other partners) to build and sustain collaborative relationships. Ability to influence without direct authority, and move large institutions and bureaucracies over time.
• Experience of effectively develop strategic approaches to define priorities. Ability to create a clear vision and develop simple and effective but implementable solutions to complex problems.
• Ability to manage complex projects and programs, including multi-country research grants. Attention to detail, including ability to scrutinize budgets against workplans and deliverables.
• Demonstrated ability to work with flexibility, efficiency, and diplomacy in a complex, fast-paced matrixed environment.
• Comfortable with making decisions in the absence of perfect data and adapting approach when new information is known to achieve maximum impact. Ability to handle ambiguity and convert unclear situations into structured plans.
• Ability to communicate, both verbally and written in English, with a broad and diverse audience; able to effectively synthesize data and information to reach diverse audiences, build consensus and be the voice/represent the foundation, including in internal and external meetings.

Other Attributes

• Comfortable in a wide range of cultural, geographic and operational situations, demonstrating culturally sensitive behaviour with a diverse range of people and a deep commitment to development issues and high standards of personal integrity.
• Ability to travel up to 50% domestically and internationally.