• Full time role
• East Burwood, Victoria Location
• Salary range - $92,727.27 - $96,363.64
• Opening Date – Tuesday 29th March 2022

This unique opportunity as the Senior Market Systems Development (MSD) Advisor will provide the successful candidate with the opportunity to be a part of the Economic Empowerment team.

The EE team (formally the Social Entrepreneurship and Economic Development, SEED, Unit) are core contributors to the program development objectives of Field Impact, World Vision Australia’s field-facing division. This role helps World Vision Australia achieve scale and sustainable impact by growing its significant portfolio of economic development programs around the world.

The Senior Market Systems Development Advisor is a senior member of this team with substantive field experience, leading the iMSD portfolio. This is done through:

• Continuous development and improvement of inclusive market systems development (iMSD) technical resources and identification of good practice
• Providing quality technical support to priority economic empowerment projects, building, and maintaining close relationships with field office colleagues.
• Actively supporting business development, including the high-quality and innovative concepts, program designs, proposals, and tender responses
• Leading inputs into WVA policy, external engagement and thought leadership on iMSD.

iMSD is one of the three pillars of World Vision Australia’s economic empowerment strategy, which also includes financial inclusion and women’s economic empowerment (WEE). The project portfolio covers other programming areas including: markets in crisis, green economy, and nutrition sensitive agriculture. Our economic empowerment work and the iMSD approach is summarised on our website.

In response to increased donor demand, the iMSD portfolio at World Vision continues to grow with a significant program footprint in the Asia-Pacific, Africa, and the Middle East. The successful candidate will have an opportunity to build on this momentum and contribute a future where World Vision is recognised a leading implementer of iMSD and a partner of choice to donors and practitioners alike.

A typical day requires close collaboration across World Vision Australia technical sector specialist teams and program management, grants acquisition, the global World Vision International team, particularly country office colleagues, and external partners, stakeholders, and donors.

Who we’re looking for

As the successful applicant, you will have a breadth of capabilities, including agile ways of working to ensure greater enterprise engagement and collaboration. 

In addition to this:

• Core technical skills and experience in market systems development (MSD), value chain development, and other economic development programs
• Hands on experience (at least 5 years) working in MSD and value chain programs across the program cycle, including design, monitoring and evaluation
• Experience with markets in crisis programming is preferred.
• Exposure to other types of MSD programs is an advantage (e.g., agri-food systems, markets in crisis, financial systems, gender and social inclusion/WEE, green growth, green economy and circular economy)

Strong written and verbal communications skills, including experience communicating for different audiences, such as donor engagement, sector fora, etc. Thought leadership track record is highly preferred.

• Strong planning, stakeholder engagement skills, including ability to conduct self-managed work  
• Experience in business development, including concept/proposal development  
• Postgraduate qualifications, or equivalent experience, in a relevant discipline, e.g., International Development, Economics, Business etc.
• Experience working in developing country contexts, as well as working cross-culturally in remote and in-country settings
• Understanding of key challenges in international development, and appreciation of community-led development approaches within the broader aid landscape

Working for World Vision means you are making the world better 

It’s not every day that a job comes along that lets you change the world. Working for World Vision means looking forward to turning up at work because you know you’re about to do something meaningful. It means working with 35,000 staff and 3.3 million supporters in 100 countries who will stop at nothing to help children live better lives. Join a team that is bold and courageous, and where job satisfaction goes beyond financial reward. 

The selection process 

For your information, the interviews will start immediately, and the role may be filled before the closing date.

We embrace diversity, employing people from a variety of cultural and religious backgrounds. We take our Safeguarding responsibilities seriously and we are committed to providing an environment that is safe for children. Our stringent recruitment procedures make sure the safest and most suitable people work with the children in our programs. All successful candidates will undergo a criminal record and Working with Children check prior to employment. We provide our staff and volunteers with ongoing supervision, support, and training in their work with vulnerable children and their families.

Who we are

World Vision is a Christian organisation that empowers everyday Australians to create meaningful change for children through relief, development, and advocacy work. 

We offer great benefits such as salary packaging, flexible working arrangements, free on-site parking, and an onsite café for our employees.

For more information on World Vision and the work we do, please visit our website: www.worldvision.com.au/about-us