Strategic Investment Fund (SIF) Team Lead at USAID Agriculture Growing Rural Opportunities in Ukraine (AGRO)

Background:

USAID Agriculture Growing Rural Opportunities in Ukraine (AGRO) Activity is a seven-year cooperative agreement between the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and Chemonics International, Inc. It began on November 15, 2019.

The AGRO Activity is to accelerate the economic development of rural Ukrainian communities with the greatest need through a better governed agricultural sector that encourages more productive, modern, and profitable micro, small, and medium agricultural enterprises (MSMEs) that are successfully integrated into competitive markets both in Ukraine and internationally.

The Activity objectives are aligned with the three elements of the market systems conceptual framework: the core value chain, supporting functions, and rules and regulations.

To effectively address the food crisis that emerges in Ukraine and internationally, AGRO works for the restoration of the agricultural sector, in particular its modernization, efficiency improvement, and diversification, which contributes to the long-term economic recovery of Ukraine and the improvement of global food security.

Within the USAID Agriculture Resilience Initiative (AGRI-Ukraine), AGRO will provide assistance enabling Ukraine to store roughly 1.5 million tons of grain as part of the USAID’s broader efforts to maintain the rate of production and export of grain from Ukraine to other countries of the world.

AGRO operates on the basis of the market system conceptual approach.

Position Description:

To contribute to achieving AGRO’s overall goals, the SIF Team Lead is to lead and manages the SIF subawards and contracts lifecycle to ensure they are compliant with Chemonics policies and procedures and adhere to USAID rules, regulations, and standards.

The SIF Team Lead will (1) confirm eligibility of potential subrecipients/contractors, (2) support the selection panel in the awarding of subawards/contracts in a timely manner,  (3) manage the effective and timely implementation of the SIF subawards/contracts program, including but not limited to solicitation, award, monitoring, and closeout subawards and contracts in close coordination with the SIF team, Chief of Party, Deputy Chief of Party, Finance and Administration Director, technical and CLA teams, and the home office project management unit, and troubleshoot problems as they arise and (4) ensure that all subaward/contract activities and their results are properly reported in accordance with the subawards and contracts, the AGRO cooperative agreement, annual implementation plan and MEL plan.

Principal Duties and Obligations (Essential Functions):

Subaward Workflows Redesign and Management

• Undertakes the review of current subaward and contract workflows to eliminate bottlenecks and achieve efficient coordination between technical and SIF teams at all stages of the subaward cycle.
• Leads design and launch of the revised subaward and contracts workflows.
• Supervises and directs a contractor to design the subaward development and implementation workflows in a chosen system.
• Facilitates the adoption of the new system by SIF and technical team members. Ensures updates of related process maps, templates, and procedures.
• Ensures adherence to the subaward and contract management workflows, including, coordination between AGRO technical teams and SIF team to carry out pre-application ‘getting to grants’ workshops for potential grantees, develop RFAs, APSs, and other solicitation mechanisms.
• Provides oversight of the subaward pipeline management, subaward recommendation, agreement execution, payments, amendments, and reporting and closeout.
• Participates in the development of subaward activity descriptions and scopes of work for procurement under subawards and contracts. Advises technical leads on appropriate subaward and contract mechanisms.
• Contributes to the quarterly reports and provides input to the annual work plan development, CLA efforts and COP/DCOP requests.

Team and Resources Management

• Identifies resources and capacity-building needs within the AGRO SIF team and formulates requests for additional support.
• Oversees initial recruitment for the AGRO SIF team in Ukraine, coordinates with the AGRO SIF Support Washington, DC to recruit and onboard additional support personnel.
• Builds capacity of the AGRO SIF team members, including through on-the-job training for subaward development, implementation, and compliant administration of subawards and contracts.
• Assigns responsibilities within the AGRO SIF team. Supervises senior grant managers and grant managers, who in turn supervise assistant-level staff.
• Leads and oversees recruitment for AGRO SIF.
• Provides mentorship and training for the AGRO SIF team members on best practices and established workflow management procedure.
• Promotes a work environment that emphasizes teamwork. Effectively coordinates and manages relationships between program, grants, procurement, and operations teams ensuring collaborative planning, effective delegation of duties, and constructive collaboration.
• Provides feedback on SIF personnel’s performance and manages performance improvement plans.

SIF Approvals and Compliance

• Prepares approval requests for subawards, contracts, justifications for Restricted Eligibility, requests for waivers for ineligible and restricted goods, etc. related to SIF implementation, ensuring that the required and appropriate approvals are in place in advance of activity initiation.
• Ensures the effective review of all background documentation for subawards and contracts including review of grants’ activity description and contracts’ SoW, Merit Review Committee memos, memorandum of negotiations, subaward agreements, contracts, modifications, and other SIF-related documents.
• Liaises with USAID Ukraine as requested by the Chief of Party or designee.
• Ensures compliance with all relevant USAID environmental regulations, approved AGRO Initial Environmental Examination recommendations, and local environmental laws and regulations to promote environmental compliance monitoring throughout implementation of SIF and all other AGRO activities.
• Ensure compliance with AGRO subaward workflow procedures and Chemonics records management policies.
• Requests required subaward and contract reviews, including solicitations, BPAs for seeds, fertilizers, restricted and other goods.
• As a member of the AGRO team, ensures implementation of program activities in accordance with Chemonics’ business code of ethics and USAID and Chemonics policies and regulations.
• Participates in the senior management team meetings, provides updates and offers solutions to implementation challenges related to AGRO SIF.

One-year fixed term employment agreement with possible extension each work year up to the end of the Project implementation (November 13, 2026), subject to availability of respective tasks in the successive Annual Work Plans of the Project.

Primary Work Location: Kyiv, Ukraine, or remote.

Periodic travel to other parts of Ukraine is possible.

Required Skills and Qualifications:

• Higher education in a relevant field at least to the bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience. Master’s preferred.
• Minimum five years of experience in design, administration, and management of USAID grants required; experience managing subawards and contracts under cooperative agreements is a plus.
• Knowledge of the USAID grant lifecycle, applicable rules and regulations required; knowledge of Chemonics policies and procedures related to grants management and graduation from Chemonics Grants Practicum is a plus.
• Strong leadership capabilities including organizational and problem-solving skills; supervisory experience.
• Ability to work quickly and creatively without sacrificing compliance or quality to operationalize SIF activities.
• Demonstrated excellent ability to effectively interact with local professionals, international donor organizations, civil society and private sector, host country government counterparts, and other implementing partners.
• Native speaker of Ukrainian.
• English sufficient for professional purposes and to understand written communications related to the work of the Activity such as emails.
• Experienced user of MS Office 365 applications. Demonstrated success working in a multinational, multilingual team under pressure and tight deadlines.

Application Instructions

Send electronic submissions by July 5, 2024. Please submit your CV and cover letter. No telephone inquiries, please. Only finalists will be contacted.

Chemonics is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate in its selection and employment practices on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, political affiliation, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, disability, genetic information, age, membership in an employee organization, or other non-merit factors.

2024-06-28T18:24:01.000 2024-06-30T23:59:59.000 Full time / Повна зайнятість TELECOMMUTE Україна Кімонікс Інтернешнл Інк. Програма USAID з аграрного і сільського розвитку (АГРО)