France: GIS Project Manager

This position is made for you:

• If you aspire to develop your management skills, are delivery-oriented and enjoy building lasting, in-depth and fruitful relationships with a close network of actors
• If you have a strong interest in understanding humanitarian and development organizations’ needs and constraints and delivering targeted quality solutions to field operations as well as headquarters.
• If you are passionate about bringing the best technical solutions adapted to any given situation to solve key humanitarian challenges.
• If you enjoy discovering and testing new technologies and have a creative and resourceful mind.

I. Organization

Founded in 2006, CartONG is a French "H2H" (Humanitarians to Humanitarians, i.e. an NGO working in support of other NGOs) non-governmental organization specialized in mapping and information management support for humanitarian and development organizations. Our core expertise is geographic information, but we have extended it other the years to other technologies (mobile data collection, information management, remote sensing, drones, participatory mapping, etc.).

We support international aid organizations, NGOs and public authorities by providing tools, services & trainings that allow them to better plan, implement and evaluate their programs, therefore improving the impact of humanitarian aid in favor of the most vulnerable. We focus on training local staff and collaborating with local communities, in order to provide projects that are sustainable and tailored to the needs and priorities of the people we are seeking to assist.

We work with local, national and international organizations, in particular NGOs specialized in disaster response and development as well as UN agencies (MSF, UNHCR, AFD, Terre des Hommes, etc.: complete list here). CartONG is a fast growing & dynamic organization, gathering around 20 international staffs and 50 active volunteers.

Our headquarters are based in Chambéry - a short train ride away from Geneva and Lyon and their international airports. Chambéry is a vibrant student and family city with many great bars and restaurants, located in the heart of the French Alps and surrounded by the Bauges and Chartreuse mountain ranges.

We are currently looking for a GIS Project Manager with experience in the humanitarian sector to join our team.

• Contract Type: starting with fixed-term contract (CDD) of 12 months with the objective of making it permanent if wished by both parties
• Start Date: ASAP
• Location: Chambéry (France)
• Salary: calculated with CartONG’s salary grid based on experience, 39 hours/week contract (35 hrs + 4 extra hours paid)
• Other benefits: additional health insurance & public transportation monthly pass covered at 50% by employer

II. Position

Based mainly at the headquarters of the NGO, you will be in charge of coordinating and leading our project with one of CartONG’s main partners, and supervise other smaller projects. Key responsibilities include coordination, project management and communication with the external partner organizations.

You will play a critical role in helping CartONG’s humanitarian and development partners express their needs, define their technical strategy, suggest and test solutions, lead product development & implementation and assess their relevance and impact. You will monitor the full project chain including managing costs, leading the technical team, scheduling objectives and producing project reporting. Both a good understanding of the humanitarian sector constraints and interest for GIS technologies’ development are therefore crucial. You will also work to ensure that the activities we have with partners are as consistent as possible with the mission of CartONG to support the overall sector.

In this context, your assignments are:

Project Management:

• Work on the partner and CartONG’s GIS strategies, ensure that they are in line and consistent
• Ensure coordination meetings are happening and prepare them
• Define technical development priorities together with the partner
• Oversee and follow the activities related to the projects
• Lead the activities and the partnership relation
• Participate to mid-year and end of the year reporting
• Lead the technical team on dedicated projects
• Cover other administrative tasks related to the projects

Technical: GIS, Applied Research depending on the skills

• Having a clear overview of the data architecture
• Having a clear overview of the server architecture
• Technology watch for future developments in BI and GIS
• Benchmarks and GIS tools tests to keep CartONG up to date, and advise the partners accordingly

Other activities:

• Participate to activities supporting CartONG's associative mission whenever possible and relevant: exchanges with the Board and other members including during get-togethers and green days, involvement in internal trainings, support to volunteer projects, support to projects concerning the whole organization
• Help disseminate learnings, good practices and tech watch findings among the CartONG team
• Contribute to events and workshops organized by CartONG such as the GeOnG forum
• Participate proactively to the association's external communication by writing news, blog posts and other products, as well as representing CartONG during tech-oriented and/or humanitarian events and conferences

You will go to Geneva or other locations rather frequently, and might travel periodically for short field missions. The position requires availability and flexibility, two characteristics inherent to the context of emergency humanitarian organizations (late work, rush situations).

III. Profile

Qualification: Engineer Master’s Degree or equivalent in GIS or computer science

Experience: 5 to 10 years with min. 3 years in project management

Knowledge of and previous project management experience in the humanitarian and/or development sector (NGO, UN, etc.) will be considered a strong asset for this position.

1- Professional Skills & Knowledge

• Ability to quickly understand partners’ needs in order to translate them into requirements and to enjoy finding the best technical solution, through tech watch, benchmarking & testing
• Strong relational capacities allowing you to interact with a wide range of actors and other units within the partners’ organization (technical, communication, management, etc.)
• Good knowledge of the wide range of GIS solutions: from mapping to servers through web mapping and database management
• Interest to maintain an understanding of the IT/GIS industry and business environment to understand risks and enable technical innovation and growth
• Good project management skills: setting and following deliverables, prioritization of tasks, ability to handle multiple projects and tasks simultaneously, budget overseeing, reporting

2- Technical Skills

• Project Management Tools and Processes
• GIS tools: ESRI Product suite and/or QGIS Suite, PostgreSQL/PostGIS
• Mobile Data collection tools: Collector for ArcGIS, GPS data collection apps, ODK, an asset
• Knowledge of Aerial Imagery technologies (Remote sensing, drone, machine learning), an asset

3- Soft Skills

• Languages requirements: Good level in French and English required (min. B2)
• Excellent organization skills and autonomy: capacity to understand problems and take decisions, proven track record of delivery on commitment
• Strong leadership skills with ability to impact individual project direction through influence and collaboration, capacity to overcome challenges and find ways around constraints, and supervise junior staffs
• Excellent capacity to take initiative and ability to balance short-term technical choices with a long-term vision of developments
• Quality-oriented personality with focus on permanent improvement of processes
• Ability to communicate on applications, technical modules and implementation details to different audiences: external users, technical or sector specialists, project managers and the general public
• Interest & understanding of the working context in the humanitarian and social sector: multicultural environment, sometimes working non-standard hours (evening or weekend activities), ever-changing environment with high constraints requiring a high level of adaptability.
• In accordance with CartONG's values (discover our to learn more)

Applications (CV and letter of intent) to be submitted via online form by October 20^th: (included):http://cartong.org/content/application-form

Instead of a traditional motivation letter, please answer the following questions in a document:

1/ What motivates you to work at CartONG according to our activities and associative project?

2/ What do you think you would bring to our team?

3/ What do you find most challenging, and most interesting, in managing a project/team?

4/ What is your main asset when working in a versatile environment, where people and technologies are moving fast?

5/ What is your process when new needs/requests come from your end users, in particular from the field?

6/ When would you be available to start?

7/ Please mention two references from previous work experiences

Please make sure to select the correct position title when submitting your application.

CartONG reserves itself the right to close the recruitment earlier if sufficient and satisfactory applications are received.