Deputy representative (programme coordinator), p-5, kingston, jamaica, multicountry office for the caribbean (mco)

UNICEF works in over 190 countries and territories to save children’s lives, defend their rights, and help them fulfill their potential, from early childhood through adolescence.

At UNICEF, we are committed, passionate, and proud of what we do for as long as we are needed. Promoting the rights of every child is not just a job – it is a calling.

UNICEF is a place where careers are built: we offer our staff diverse opportunities for professional and personal development that will help them reinforce a sense of purpose while serving children and communities across the world. We welcome everyone who wants to belong and grow in a diverse and passionate culture, coupled with an attractive compensation and benefits package.

Visit our website https://www.unicef.org/ to learn more about what we do at UNICEF.

For every child, the right to peace

Under the guidance of the Representative, the Deputy Representative provides strategic leadership for the coherence, integration, performance, governance and oversight of UNICEF's Multi-Country Programme (MCP) across twelve programme countries. As a member of the Senior Management Team, the incumbent supports the Representative in ensuring that UNICEF's MultiCountry Programme operates as a unified strategic platform, delivering collective results for children, advancing systems transformation and maximizing organizational impact across diverse country contexts. The Deputy Representative serves as the principal steward of programme coherence across the Multi-Country Programme, ensuring alignment of strategies, policy influence, partnerships, advocacy, knowledge assets, resources and implementation approaches across countries in support of shared programme outcomes and priorities. The role drives integration across the programme architecture, ensuring that country-level implementation contributes to collective results while maintaining strategic consistency and operational flexibility. The incumbent leads portfolio performance management across the Multi-Country Programme, strengthening accountability, evidence-based decision-making and organizational learning while ensuring that resources, capacities and partnerships are deployed strategically to maximize impact, efficiency and scale. The Deputy Representative fosters collaboration across sectors, functions, countries and partners, strengthening the MCP as a unified platform for innovation, learning, policy influence and results acceleration. The position champions the systematic generation, exchange and application of knowledge across the programme portfolio, promoting the adaptation, replication and scaling of successful approaches to advance outcomes for children. The role plays a central leadership function in shaping, strengthening and institutionalizing UNICEF's Multi-Country Office model, ensuring coherence between programme implementation, organizational performance, regional priorities and corporate commitments. The Deputy Representative represents UNICEF as a trusted strategic partner to governments, regional institutions, development partners and other stakeholders, advancing policies, systems and investments that improve outcomes for children and contribute to sustainable and resilient development across the Caribbean.

How can you make a difference?

As part of UNICEF’s Future Focus Initiative (FFI), a corporate-wide transformation launched in 2025 to ensure UNICEF remains fit for purpose in an era of declining Official Development Assistance and increasing complexity, the offices in Belize, Jamaica, Guyana & Suriname, and the Eastern Caribbean Area (ECA) are consolidating into a new Caribbean Multi-Country Office — a regional platform combining policy influence, technical depth, and strategic partnerships across 12 countries, designed for systems-level impact and results at scale. The Caribbean MCO operates as one integrated office across all 12 countries: one MultiCountry Programme Document, one shared basket of resources, and one management structure. This means every post in the MCO — regardless of duty station — holds a 12- country mandate and contributes to shared regional results rather than to a single-country portfolio. The Multi-Country Programme of Cooperation (2027–2031), aligned with the UN Multi-Country Sustainable Development Framework (UNMSDCF) 2027–2031, establishes three shared programmatic outcomes for the twelve English- and Dutch-speaking Caribbean countries: equitable access to primary health care, learning and skills; protection of children from all forms of violence; and child poverty reduction and resilience strengthening. The Caribbean MCO’s management strategy is governed by four principles that together translate the new business model into concrete ways of working:

• Impact-driven: technical expertise is organized in shared multi-country working groups rather than replicated in each country, with enabling functions aligned around UNICEF’s strongest comparative advantages.
• Effective and agile: parallel country ecosystems are replaced by harmonized systems and flexible cross-country staffing, keeping management lean and decisions close to implementation.
• Grounded: regional scale is balanced with national depth through country-specific workplans, Heads of Office in each duty station, and matrix management that anchors authority and accountability at country level.
• People-centred: structural and managerial choices are guided by staff wellbeing, transparency and inclusion, with clear role definitions, meaningful consultation, and continuous investment in learning and development.

The operational expression of this model is the working group model. Rather than replicating similar roles across four separate country offices, technical and operational expertise is organized into 16 thematic and functional working groups, each distributed across different duty stations and each serving the full 12-country MCO — not just its host location. Roles are designed around three organizing principles: shared regional service, meaning every specialist contributes to the wider MCO; complementary expertise, meaning team capabilities reinforce each other rather than repeating the same profile in multiple places; and agile presence, meaning the workforce can be rapidly deployed across countries through travel, surge support or remote modalities in line with evolving needs and priorities. This working group model is the foundation of a fundamentally new way of working for UNICEF in the Caribbean: depth replaces duplication, and shared capacity replaces fragmented country-by-country coverage.

Key Functions and Accountabilities:

1. Multi-Country Programme Integration and Strategic Coherence
2. Portfolio Performance Leadership and Accountability
3. Strategic Programme Oversight and Quality Assurance
4. Multi-Country Governance, Planning and Organizational Effectiveness
5. Policy Influence, Systems Transformation and Strategic Positioning
6. Strategic Partnerships, Convening and Resource Mobilization
7. Knowledge Leadership, Innovation and Cross-Country Learning
8. Representation and Senior Management Leadership

If you would like to know more about this position, please review the complete Job Description here: Download File

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

Minimum requirements:

• Education: An advanced university degree in one of the following fields is required: social sciences, international relations, government and public relations, public or social policy, sociology, social or community development, or another relevant technical field.
• Work Experience: A minimum of ten years of progressively responsible professional experience in development cooperation, programme management, public policy, or organizational leadership at the international level. Demonstrated experience leading complex multi-country, regional, or large-scale development programmes and partnerships. Proven experience in strategic planning, programme integration, performance management, and results oversight. Demonstrated experience engaging senior government officials, development partners, and regional institutions to influence policy and systems strengthening. Experience managing multidisciplinary teams in multicountry, matrixed, or geographically dispersed environments.
• Skills: Strategic leadership and systems thinking. Programme integration and performance management. Policy influence and strategic communication. Partnership development, negotiation, and resource mobilization. Governance, decision-making, and organizational effectiveness. Leadership of diverse and geographically dispersed teams.
• Language Requirements: Fluency in English is required.

Desirables:

• Knowledge of another official UN language (Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian or Spanish) or a local language is an asset.
• Relevant experience at country level, particularly in development, fragile settings and humanitarian contexts.

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

The UNICEF competencies required for this post are…

1. Nurtures, Leads and Manages People
2. Demonstrates Self Awareness and Ethical Awareness
3. Works Collaboratively with others
4. Builds and Maintains Partnerships
5. Innovates and Embraces Change
6. Thinks and Acts Strategically
7. Drive to achieve impactful results
8. Manages ambiguity and complexity

Familiarize yourself with our competency framework UNICEF's Competency Framework and its different levels.

This position has been assessed as an elevated risk role for Child Safeguarding purposes as it is either a role with direct contact with children, a role that works directly with identifiable children’s data, a safeguarding response role, or an assessed risk role. Additional vetting and assessment for elevated risk roles in child safeguarding (potentially including additional criminal background checks) apply.

UNICEF promotes and advocates for the protection of the rights of every child, everywhere, in everything it does and is mandated to support the realization of the rights of every child, including those most disadvantaged, and our global workforce must reflect the diversity of those children. The UNICEF family is committed to include everyone, irrespective of their race/ethnicity, disability, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, nationality, socio-economic background, minority, or any other status.

UNICEF encourages applications from all qualified candidates, regardless of gender, nationality, religious or ethnic backgrounds, and from people with disabilities, including neurodivergence. We offer a wide range of benefits to our staff, including paid parental leave, breastfeeding breaks and reasonable accommodation for persons with disabilities. UNICEF provides reasonable accommodation throughout the recruitment process. If you require any accommodation, please submit your request through the accessibility email button on the UNICEF Careers webpage Accessibility | UNICEF. Should you be shortlisted, please get in touch with the recruiter directly to share further details, enabling us to make the necessary arrangements in advance.

UNICEF does not hire candidates who are married to children (persons under 18). 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 based on gender, nationality, age, race, sexual orientation, religious or ethnic background or disabilities. 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, and selected candidates with disabilities may be requested to submit supporting documentation in relation to their disability confidentially.

UNICEF appointments are subject to medical clearance. Issuance of a visa by the host country of the duty station is required for IP positions and will be facilitated by UNICEF. Appointments are conditional on the selected candidates’ willingness to comply with current or future vaccination requirements, should UNICEF mandate it for personnel. Failure to comply with such requirements, where applicable and without a duly approved medical exemption from the relevant UN authority, will result in the cancellation of the selection or may lead to other administrative measures, including separation from service.

Remarks:

As per Article 101, paragraph 3, of the Charter of the United Nations, the paramount consideration in the employment of the staff is the necessity of securing the highest standards of efficiency, competence, and integrity.

Government employees who are considered for employment with UNICEF are normally required to resign from their government positions 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.

UNICEF does not charge a processing fee at any stage of its recruitment, selection, and hiring processes (i.e., application stage, interview stage, validation stage, or appointment and training). UNICEF will not ask for applicants’ bank account information.

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

Humanitarian action is a cross-cutting priority within UNICEF’s Strategic Plan. UNICEF is committed to stay and deliver in humanitarian contexts. Therefore, all staff, at all levels across all functional areas, can be called upon to be deployed to support humanitarian response, contributing to both strengthening resilience of communities and capacity of national authorities.

All UNICEF positions are advertised, and only shortlisted candidates will be contacted and advance to the next stage of the selection process. An internal candidate performing at the level of the post in the relevant functional area, or an internal/external candidate in the corresponding Talent Group, may be selected, if suitable for the post, without assessment of other candidates.

Additional information about working for UNICEF can be found here https://www.unicef.org/careers/unicef-job-categories.