Finance and operation Manager

VSO is the world’s leading international organisation working through volunteers to create a fair world for everyone. We focus on people who are marginalised or excluded, including those living in poverty, people with disabilities or illness, and those facing discrimination, violence, disasters, disease, and conflict.

VSO places these individuals at the centre of its work as primary actors and agents of change. We work with communities to identify their priorities, opportunities, and solutions, supporting locally led and sustainable change.

Our Approach

VSO’s Volunteering for Development (VfD) approach supports vulnerable and marginalised people to claim their rights and drive lasting change. It addresses the root causes of vulnerability and marginalisation through three core approaches: social inclusion and gender, social accountability, and resilience. These approaches underpin our work in inclusive education, health, resilient livelihoods and peace building.

About the Job

VSO is a lead implementer of the Internship Opportunities for Young Women program (iWork), financed by the Mastercard Foundation. The program will be implemented in Ethiopia across Amhara, Oromia, and Harari regional states, as well as the Addis Ababa and Dire Dawa city administrations. iWork aims to create internship opportunities for 24,000 financially disadvantaged young people, with a primary focus on young women. The program also promotes inclusion by reaching persons with disabilities, refugees, internally displaced people, and returnees. Through internships, iWork aims to help young women build the skills and experience they need to access dignified and fulfilling work, contributing to poverty reduction and an improved quality of life.

VSO Ethiopia is recruiting a Finance and operation Manager for iWork program.

Role Purpose:

Provide effective grant financial management services for the consortium including risk management, compliance, and donor reporting to supports high quality programming with a high level of accountability in compliance with VSO policies, quality assurance standards, consortium framework, donor requirements, local laws and legislations.

Tasks Responsibilities

• Manage the grant start-up and close-out procedures for finance to ensure they are done in line with consortium guidelines, VSO standards and donor rules or contractual requirements.
• Work with the consortium team to prepare financial project budget, updating and adjusting budget and forecasts in the changing environment throughout project lifecycle using SUN system.
• Consolidate and manage the master budget across all consortium partners to ensure optimal resource allocation.
• Apply grant financial rules to effectively manage, analyse and advise on budget and other financial aspects of grants for a project team to make sound decisions.
• Ensure effective project expenditure and income management including recording in SUN system, reviewing in country shared costs, and monitoring to ensure compliance.
• Conduct regular review of documentation and system to ensure necessary compliance checks on project suppliers and partners are consistently and diligently conducted.
• Ensure full grant reconciliation reports for the SUN grant data and balances to the donor reports.
• Manage a team to ensure accurate timely restricted grant management and donor reports adapting to the changing needs; reconcile with SUN to ensure finance and programme reports are aligned.
• Preparing timely, accurate financial statements and burn-rate analyses for Program Director and donor.
• Ensure internal control, risk management & compliance.
• Lead on donor audits and management response plan.
• Manage tax, statutory and internal audits working closely with the Finance Operations team to ensure audit findings are minimised.
• Sub-Grant Management: Overseeing disbursement schedules, financial tracking, and accountability protocols for all implementing partners.
• Ensure consistently carry out partner finance due diligence, partner field visits, monitoring and documentation, and escalation in line with consortium and VSO guidelines and donor requirements.
• Provide technical and capacity development support to the consortium team and partners on grant financial management, partner grant compliance and monthly reconciliation.
• Internship Stipends: Designing and managing secure, prompt payment channels (like mobile money) for intern monthly allowances.
• Entrepreneurship Grants: Overseeing the financial verification, milestone tracking, and disbursement of seed capital to youth startups.

Operations & Logistics Management

• Procurement Systems: Overseeing the purchase of training equipment, starter kits for entrepreneurs, and operational supplies.
• Asset Management: Maintaining a comprehensive registry of project equipment across all sites.
• Logistics & Travel: Coordinating transport, accommodation, and venue arrangements for large-scale training sessions and job fairs.

Work Location: Addis Ababa

Required Qualification

Education

• Master’s degree or equivalent knowledge and skills in finance, Accounting, Business Administration, Economics, Management, Project Management, or related fields.
• Professional certification in accounting or finance (ACCA, CPA, CIMA, or equivalent) is highly desirable.

Experience

• Substantive progressive professional experience in finance, operations, grants management, or administration within donor-funded development programs.
• Demonstrated experience managing large and complex project budgets, financial systems, and operational processes for consortium or multi-partner projects.
• Experience in managing grant finance for a large, restricted grant (at least GBP5M per annum) with good knowledge of donor requirements preferably familiarity with Mastercard Foundations rules and regulations.
• Proven track record of partner financial management risk management, and compliance and capacity development for a large consortium grant management.
• Advance skills in using financial software, accounting system and reporting packages especially Excel, SUN systems, Q&A XL.
• Good engagement and collaboration skills with ability to work in a multi-cultural project team in a global organisation.
• Experience working with consortium and coordination with multi-stakeholders.
• Demonstrated feminist leadership and good people management skills with ability to coach, mentor, and develop others.
• Understanding of  gender equality, safeguarding, and inclusion and youth-centred programming with knowledge of youth employment / internship / women and youth economic empowerment in Ethiopia.
• Verbal and written communications in English and local languages (Knowledge of Amharic language)
• Demonstrated VSO Behavioural Competencies.
• Commitment to VSO’s vision, mission, values, code of conduct, people-first principles, volunteering for development approach.

Travel Requirement:

• 5-10% of travel includes work away from the home base and field visits in remote areas within the country.

Equal Opportunities

VSO promotes equal opportunities and values a diverse workforce.

VSO reserves the right to close this job early if we receive enough applications.

VSO is committed to a fair, transparent and merit-based recruitment. VSO does not charge any application, processing, training, interviewing, testing or other fee in connection with the application or recruitment process.