Health Financing Specialist – Ethiopia

Locations: Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Deadline: 26 November 2026 (Early Application are encouraged as the position may close once a suitable candidate is found).

Job Description

About Palladium

Operating in over 50 countries, Palladium is a global consulting and implementation company working in partnership with governments, businesses, investors, and communities to design and deliver solutions that create lasting positive impact. We address some of the world’s most complex challenges across infrastructure, economic growth and natural capital, health, energy, climate and environment, and digital transformation strengthening systems, institutions, and markets to support inclusive and sustainable development. Our more than 2,100 staff worldwide work as trusted advisors across diverse contexts, combining deep technical expertise, implementation techniques, and innovative technology to deliver locally informed, client-focused solutions that help organizations achieve measurable, sustainable impact.

Palladium is part of GISI’s global family of companies, which aims to create solutions for the world’s most complex challenges. With annual revenues of $14 billion, GISI’s approximately 15,000 employees are engaged in projects across 100 countries worldwide providing construction, program/project management, and engineering consulting services.

Project Overview

The GHSD America First Palladium Sole Source Award supports country-led efforts to strengthen health systems, advance global health security, and sustain essential health services in alignment with the America First Global Health Strategy. Leveraging Palladium’s expertise in health systems strengthening, digital transformation, and data use, the project will strengthen governance, service delivery, and decision-making through integrated and interoperable systems across priority health programs. The award also supports stronger health financing, public financial management, and accountability mechanisms to promote resilient, efficient, and country-owned health systems.

Position Summary

The Health Financing Specialist provides technical, analytical, and implementation support to strengthen health financing and health insurance systems and to deliver the project’s Health Care Financing (HCF) milestones. Reporting to the Health Care Financing Lead, the Specialist will support the design, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation of health financing reforms, including health insurance strengthening, strategic purchasing, provider payment reforms, resource tracking, and public financial management initiatives. The Specialist will conduct surveys and assessments, support costing exercises and financial analyses, analyze health financing data, and contribute to benefit package redesign and health insurance reforms, generating practical evidence to improve resource allocation, strengthen financial sustainability, and expand equitable access to essential health services.

The Health Financing Specialist will also serve as the HCF Team’s functional focal point for health financing digital activities and the primary liaison with the Project Digitization Team. Working closely with the Ministry of Health (MoH), Ethiopian Health Insurance Service (EHIS), and other government counterparts, the Specialist will ensure that health financing and health insurance business needs are effectively translated into functional digital solutions and high-quality data products. This includes supporting the design, enhancement, implementation, and routine use of digital health financing and health insurance solutions, including the Health Resource Tracking System (HRTS), health financing dashboards, tertiary hospital reimbursement tracking dashboards, tools for monitoring co-financing and co-investment commitments, and the national digital health insurance platform. The Specialist will ensure that digital solutions respond to agreed MoH and EHIS requirements and that technical development is informed by sound health financing business processes, indicators, data standards, interoperability requirements, and user feedback.

Primary Duties and Responsibilities:

Costing, Financial Modeling, and Health Financing Data Analysis

Conduct costing studies and build and maintain financial and actuarial models for health services, health insurance schemes, and program budgets, with scenario and sensitivity analysis.
Compile, clean, validate, reconcile, and analyze health financing and health insurance datasets, including claims, reimbursements, provider payments, budgets, disbursements, expenditures, contributions, and financing commitments.
Strengthen health resource tracking and expenditure tracking and analysis, and support the design of domestic resource mobilization options and sustainability planning.

Benefit Package Redesign, Health Insurance, and Provider Payment Reform Support

Support benefit package redesign and costing, including the costing of service packages, analysis of utilization and cost data, and the development of options for review by MoH and EHIS.
Support the design, costing, piloting, and monitoring of alternate provider payment mechanisms (PPM) for health insurance reimbursement, including development of the relevant indicators and reporting tools.
Support the review of community-based health insurance (CBHI) contribution levels and the ability-to-pay analysis by organizing and analyzing household, utilization, contribution, subsidy, and affordability data for urban, rural, and pastoral populations.
Support EHIS work to define and operationalize household and community income-classification criteria and tools, and strengthen indigent identification, verification, enrollment, financing, monitoring, and periodic reassessment.
Analyze existing health insurance pooling arrangements, fragmentation, and reform options, and contribute to the evidence base for the pooling roadmap and financial framework.
Work with EHIS to assess and strengthen claims auditing for private-sector referrals, and support the development and use of claims-audit tools and health insurance quality-assurance standards, indicators, and verification procedures.

Surveys, Assessments, and Analytical Studies

Design, plan, and conduct health financing surveys and assessments, including tool development, sampling, data collection supervision, analysis, and reporting. Topics include household ability-to-pay and affordability, out-of-pocket spending, health insurance contribution levels, and facility and provider assessments.
Conduct or support the health financing fiscal space assessment, the institutional capacity assessment, and the assessment of public-private partnership (PPP) models in tertiary facilities, including service performance, costs, affordability, and contract-monitoring requirements.
Conduct health financing analyses, financial sustainability assessments, and expenditure reviews, and document data sources, assumptions, findings, and follow-up actions.

Digital Health Financing Support

Serve as the HCF team’s day-to-day functional focal point for health financing and health insurance digital work, and collaborate regularly with the Project Digitization Team’s architects and developers.
Work with MoH, EHIS, and other users to identify and document business requirements, workflows, functional specifications, reporting requirements, indicators, and data definitions for the health resource tracking system (HRTS), health financing dashboards, the tertiary hospital reimbursement tracking dashboard, and the national digital health insurance platform.
Translate health financing and health insurance processes, including reimbursement, claims, provider payment, contribution collection, budgeting, disbursement, and expenditure tracking, into clear system requirements, process maps, user stories, and use cases.
Participate in system demonstrations, testing, user acceptance testing (UAT), issue logging and resolution, and release validation, verifying that digital products meet MoH and EHIS business and reporting requirements.
Support data mapping, data exchange, and interoperability between health financing and insurance systems and other national digital platforms.
Support user onboarding, training, documentation, and change management for deployed systems, dashboards, and reporting tools, and work with the Digitization team to address data quality, access control, confidentiality, security, and sustainability requirements.
Serve as the HCF Product Owner/Business Focal Point for digital health financing solutions and ensure prioritization of business requirements and enhancement requests.

Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning

Support the development and routine use of health financing and health insurance dashboards and monitoring tools, including tools to track co-financing and co-investment commitments, reporting responsibilities, and follow-up actions.
Define and document indicators, calculation methods, data sources, reporting frequency, and data ownership with MoH and EHIS counterparts, and conduct routine data quality checks and review of completeness, accuracy, and timeliness.
Contribute to project monitoring, evaluation, and learning activities, including tracking of HCF milestones, periodic progress and performance reporting, evaluation of reform pilots, and documentation of lessons learned.
Maintain health financing and insurance knowledge management, including policies, manuals, analyses, tools, implementation lessons, and digital repository content.

Required Qualifications:

Education

Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Health Economics, Economics, Health Financing, Public Health, Development Economics, Public Policy, Statistics, Health Informatics, Information Systems, or a related field. A Master’s degree in the relevant field is an advantage.

Experience

Minimum of 5 years of progressively responsible experience in health financing, health insurance, health economics, public financial management, health systems strengthening, or related fields.
Demonstrated experience conducting surveys, assessments, costing studies, financial modeling, expenditure analyses, or financing assessments.
Experience supporting health financing reforms, health insurance initiatives (for example, claims management, reimbursement, CBHI), benefit package design and costing, strategic purchasing, provider payment reforms, or domestic resource mobilization efforts.
Experience in data extraction, cleaning, validation, analysis, visualization, and reporting, including management of routine operational datasets.
Practical experience supporting the design, implementation, testing, or use of digital information systems, dashboards, or data-management platforms, and translating user and business needs into system requirements, process maps, or user stories.
Experience with monitoring and evaluation, including indicator development and performance reporting.
Experience working with government institutions, preferably MoH, EHIS, regional health bureaus, or public finance institutions, and with donor-funded or international development programs.
Experience with U.S. Government-funded programs, including DOS, CDC, or other federal agencies, is highly desirable.
Experience working with multilateral organizations, including the World Bank, Global Fund, United Nations agencies, and other development partners, is an advantage.
Experience supporting health financing or health systems strengthening programs in Ethiopia is preferred; experience with a national digital health insurance platform is an advantage.

Technical Competencies and Skills

Strong knowledge of health financing, health insurance operations, health economics, public financial management, and health systems strengthening, preferably including provider payment, claims processing and auditing, CBHI, pooling, and strategic purchasing.
Skills in survey design and data collection, costing, and financial modeling, and the ability to conduct economic and financial analyses.
Understanding of health resource tracking, program-based budgeting, budget execution, disbursement, and expenditure monitoring.
Proficiency in advanced Microsoft Excel and at least one data visualization or business intelligence platform, such as Power BI or Tableau; working knowledge of SQL and of statistical or programming tools such as Stata, R, or Python is desirable.
Understanding of system integration and interoperability concepts, APIs, data exchange, data standards, and user acceptance testing; ability to work effectively with software developers and technical specialists.
Ability to develop clear business requirements, functional specifications, process maps, data dictionaries, indicator reference sheets, user guides, and training materials.
Understanding of monitoring and evaluation concepts, and knowledge of data protection, confidentiality, and responsible handling of sensitive health and financial information.
Strong analytical, communication, facilitation, stakeholder engagement, and capacity-strengthening skills, including the ability to work with both technical IT teams and health financing professionals.
Strong organizational, project management, and technical writing skills.

Applications will be accepted on a rolling basis. We encourage you to apply early as the position may close once a suitable candidate is found. Please note that only shortlisted candidates will be contacted.

All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, age, or status as a protected veteran.

Should you require any adjustments or accommodations to be made due to a disability or you are a neurodivergent individual, or for any other circumstance, please email our team at: accessibility@thepalladiumgroup.com and we will be in touch to discuss.

Safeguarding – we define Safeguarding as “the preventative action taken by Palladium to protect our people, clients and the communities we work with from harm.” We are committed to ensuring that all children and adults who come into contact with Palladium are treated with respect and are free from abuse. All successful candidates will be subject to an enhanced selection process including safeguarding-focused interviews and a rigorous due diligence process.