Senior Project Officer (Sciences)

The Senior Project Officer will lead the Project Management Unit (PMU) for the Kilimanjaro Transboundary Aquifer System Project, ensuring coherent, timely, and high-quality project execution across Kenya and Tanzania. The role involves strategic direction, technical authority, team supervision, partnership building, and compliance oversight for a complex transboundary water resource management initiative.

Responsibilities

• Translate the approved project document and inception decisions into a sequenced implementation strategy, multi-year plan, annual work plans and budgets, procurement priorities and performance objectives.
• Direct implementation across all components, resolve interdependencies and bottlenecks, and ensure that scientific work, field investments, governance processes, capacity development, safeguards and communication advance as one coherent programme.
• Exercise delegated management authority over PMU work, resources and schedules, establishing clear assignments, controls, escalation routes and follow-up mechanisms.
• Maintain a strategic risk register and lead adaptive management, recommending material changes to UNESCO, FAO and the PSC through the applicable approval processes.
• Serve as UNESCO's principal project-level interface with FAO, the co-chairing ministries, national coordinators, basin institutions, the Jumuiya Water Fund and other strategic partners.
• Lead substantive and secretariat support to the PSC by shaping agendas, presenting decision papers, ensuring accurate records and tracking implementation of decisions.
• Guide the Technical Committee and draw on the Knowledge and Scientific Advisory Board for independent advice, while preserving their advisory and country-led roles.
• Steer the political and institutional processes for the permanent transboundary consultation and information-exchange body, the SAP, and related policy and regulatory dialogue.
• Represent the project at authorized national, regional and international forums, including GEF International Waters knowledge platforms, and communicate agreed project positions.
• Set the project-wide technical assurance framework, including review gates, acceptance criteria and agreed standards for hydrogeology, geophysics, hydrochemistry and isotopes, modelling, drilling, monitoring, managed aquifer recharge, ecosystem restoration and data management.
• Approve, within delegated authority, scopes of work and technical specifications, and provide final substantive clearance of key outputs before formal submission by UNESCO.
• Ensure that the TDA, conceptual model, harmonized maps, monitoring framework, information system, Hydro-Environmental Observatory, pilots and SAP are scientifically credible, mutually consistent and suitable for national and transboundary decision-making.
• Convene multidisciplinary review where evidence is uncertain or contested and document the basis for significant technical decisions.
• Ensure cross-cutting integration of gender equality, Indigenous and local knowledge, youth participation, climate resilience, environmental and social safeguards, and conflict sensitivity.
• Lead, supervise, coach and assess PMU personnel, including the Project Technical Officer, and promote an accountable, collaborative and inclusive working environment.
• Provide technical supervision of consultants, contractors and service providers; chair key inception and review meetings; assess deliverables against contractual requirements; and recommend acceptance or corrective action through UNESCO procedures.
• Coordinate the performance of co-executing and implementing partners against agreed work packages, milestones, budgets and reporting obligations without displacing their institutional mandates.
• Ensure that terms of reference, technical evaluation criteria and deliverable-review arrangements are fit for purpose and maintain appropriate separation of technical and administrative controls.
• Lead results-based management against the project results framework and GEF core indicators, using disaggregated and verifiable evidence and ensuring early correction of performance gaps.
• Oversee the timely preparation and substantive quality of progress and financial narratives, annual implementation-review inputs, PSC documentation, co-financing reports and other reports required by UNESCO, FAO and GEF.
• Ensure compliance with the UN-to-UN Agreement and applicable UNESCO, FAO and GEF requirements on fiduciary management, procurement, safeguards, gender, ethics, visibility and records management, in coordination with responsible specialists.
• Lead management responses and follow-up for audits, supervision missions, the Mid-Term Review and Terminal Evaluation.
• Maintain strategic partnerships with government, regional organizations, academia, communities, civil society, the private sector and development partners, and ensure complementarity with related programmes.
• Track the realization and alignment of confirmed co-financing, identify gaps, and mobilize additional or parallel financing consistent with the approved project and country priorities.
• Guide the partnership conference and investment dialogue around SAP, including preparation of credible priority investment propositions.
• Embed sustainability and institutional ownership of governance mechanisms, monitoring networks, information systems, the Hydro-Environmental Observatory, capacity and knowledge products beyond project closure.

Requirements

• Advanced university degree (Ph.D) in hydrogeology, geology, water resources management or a closely related field.
• A minimum of seven years of progressively responsible relevant professional experience, preferably including at least three (3) years acquired at international level.
• Demonstrated experience leading a complex, multidisciplinary water, environment or natural-resource programme involving multiple institutions and countries or jurisdictions.
• Substantive experience in groundwater assessment or management and the ability to direct and quality-assure multidisciplinary technical work.
• Experience supervising personnel and consultants, managing work plans and budgets, and delivering results and donor reporting under formal accountability frameworks.
• Demonstrated experience facilitating government-led processes and building partnerships across public institutions, technical organizations, civil society and development partners.
• Strong strategic judgement and ability to translate complex scientific and institutional issues into clear decisions and implementation priorities.
• Excellent leadership, negotiation, facilitation and diplomatic skills in a multicultural and politically sensitive transboundary setting.
• Strong command of results-based management, risk management, quality assurance and clear technical and executive writing.
• Ability to manage competing priorities, make timely decisions and maintain accountability.
• Digital proficiency, including standard office and project-management tools, and sufficient familiarity with hydrogeological data, GIS and information systems to oversee quality and use.
• Excellent knowledge of English (written and spoken).
• Excellent knowledge of Swahili (written and spoken).
• Experience with GEF International Waters projects, project design, TDA/SAP processes, or projects implemented or executed by a United Nations organization.
• Professional experience in Eastern Africa and knowledge of the water-governance systems of Kenya and Tanzania.
• Experience with transboundary aquifers, volcanic hydrogeology, groundwater information systems, managed aquifer recharge, ecosystem-based approaches or climate-resilient investment planning.
• Demonstrated resource mobilization or co-financing stewardship experience.
• Knowledge of another official language of UNESCO (Arabic, Chinese, French, Russia and/or Spanish).

Skills

• Hydrology
• Groundwater Quality Assessment
• Water Resources Management
• Multidisciplinary Program Leadership
• Project Management
• Budget Management
• Donor Reporting
• Government Facilitation
• Partnership Building
• Strategic Decision Making
• Negotiation Skills
• Facilitation Skills
• Diplomacy Skills
• Result-Based Management
• Risk Management
• Quality Assurance
• Technical Writing
• Executive Writing
• GIS
• Hydrological Data Analysis
• Digital Proficiency
• GEF Project Development
• Transboundary Water Management
• Resource Mobilization
• Co-Financing Stewardship
• Climate-Resilient Investment Planning
• Ecosystem-based Approaches
• Managed Aquifer Recharge

Languages

English, Swahili