SPIR II Finance Specialist

Number of Position: One

Duty station:  SPIR II Consortium Office

Strengthen PSNP Institutions and Resilience II (SPIR II) is an anticipated 5-year USAID/BHA funded Resilience Food Security Activity (RFSA) led by World Vision and including consortium partners CARE, ORDA and IFPRI. World Vision and its partners will create a strong, shock responsive ecosystem of public, private, and community level actors to support PSNP households to graduate from poverty and sustain income and food security gains in 17 targeted woredas in Amhara and Oromia regions. Building from key formative and research studies during an initial refinement period, SPIR II will use continuous learning to drive program level reflection, analysis, and adaptation.

Purpose of the position:

The SPIR II Finance Specialist will directly support the SPIR II sub award partners in their financial management and accountability systems, processes and procedures. She/he will help orient and train new staff and will build capacity within the SPIR II consortium members’ finance teams to provide budget development support, spending analysis and budget revision to program managers at different levels. The SPIR II Financial Specialist will also perform regular monitoring visits, with close follow-up of any financial management recommendations to sub award partners. She/he will work closely with the SPIR II Finance Director to support overall SPIR II staff capacity building, structures and processes to ensure compliance with USAID rules, regulations, policies and reporting requirements.

Major Responsibilities:

SPIR II Sub award monitoring and support

• Coordinate orientation and training for new sub award partner finance staff on USAID rules and regulations and SPIR II Financial Management and accountability policies.
• Conduct sub award partner financial and internal control assessment on a quarterly basis
• Ensure that sub award partner’s financial reports are in compliance with donor regulations before consolidating into the main financial report.
• Develop and maintain strong professional relationships with the sub award partner’s grant finance managers and organize capacity building support when needed.
• Track and monitor sub award reimbursable VAT payments and ensure timely recovery from respective Government authorities.
• Support sub award cash flow and advance management processes, in coordination with the SPIR II Finance Director and the WVUS Senior Finance Officer.

Support SPIR II Financial budgeting, spending analysis and monitoring

• Working with the SPIR II Finance Director, support SPIR II annual budgeting processes with up-to-date analysis on actual activity-level costs, spending trends, and proposals for addressing gaps, improving efficiencies, and mitigating risks.
• Over the course of implementation, collaborate with SPIR II implementing partner’s program and finance teams to analyze spending patterns, update projections and support adaptive management processes to adjust to changes in the context or other unplanned developments or opportunities

Support SPIR II financial management systems

•  Support systems within all SPIR II implementing partners that empower program managers at all levels to have accurate, timely and useful spending information and analysis to improve accountability and enable adaptive management and effective implementation.
• Under the leadership of the SPIR II Finance Director, periodically assess the efficiency and effectiveness of finance procedures in support of timely implementation of program activities at optimum cost.

Audit support

• Support the SPIR II team with external or internal annual audit processes.
• Ensure timely resolution of any audit findings and implementation of recommendations

Qualifications:  Education/Knowledge/Technical Skills and Experience

 Required Professional Experience:

• Minimum of five years of experience in financial management of large-scale, complex, donor-funded programs.
• Knowledge of USAID award management, policies, procedures, regulations and reporting requirements strongly preferred.
• Experience applying a systems thinking to organizational improvement and adaptive management.
• Excellent analytical, oral and written communication skills.
• Experience building the capacity of staff in a broad range of areas related to financial management, including capacity building of sub awardee organizations and in financial audits.

Qualification required:

• BA Degree graduate in finance, management, business administration, or related field preferred

Preferred Knowledge and Qualifications:

• Demonstrated knowledge and skills in accounting, financial management, human resources, procurement, and other management support functions.
• Advanced knowledge and MS Excel skills, and other business accounting packages.

Working Environment / Conditions:

• Office based with travel to the field
• Travel: 15% Field