General Background
UNOPS is an operational arm of the United Nations, supporting the successful implementation of its partners’ peacebuilding, humanitarian and development projects around the world. Our mission is to help people build better lives and countries achieve sustainable development.
UNOPS areas of expertise cover infrastructure, procurement, project management, financial management and human resources.
Working with us
UNOPS offers short- and long-term work opportunities in diverse and challenging environments across the globe. We are looking for creative, results-focused professionals with skills in a range of disciplines.
Diversity
With over 5,000 UNOPS personnel and approximately 7,400 personnel recruited on behalf of UNOPS partners spread across 80 countries, our workforce represents a wide range of nationalities and cultures. We promote a balanced, diverse workforce — a strength that helps us better understand and address our partners’ needs, and continually strive to improve our gender balance through initiatives and policies that encourage recruitment of qualified female candidates.
Work life harmonization
UNOPS values its people and recognizes the importance of balancing professional and personal demands.
Background information - IPS
IPS is responsible for the UNOPS delivery practices delivery through leadership, standards and oversight as support to the successful delivery of programmes and projects within UNOPS service lines of infrastructure, procurement, project management, and human resources and financial management services. IPS is comprised of the Infrastructure and Project Management Group and the Procurement Group which aims to reduce organizational risks, improve project performance, and promote excellence across UNOPS projects through the Standards Management Framework; and provides organizational oversight on the application of standards. These Groups also support the positioning of UNOPS in the UN system and development sector in Infrastructure, Project Management and Procurement
The Portfolio Support Unit is responsible for building up and managing aspects of the organizational readiness of UNOPS, in particular a pool of retainers (experts) that can be deployed to any UNOPS country office or project, on an ad-hoc basis (the Corporate Retainer Pool). This unit within IPS also provides operational support to IPS while working in close relationship with other Headquarter (HQ) units, notably the Shared Services Center (SSC). The unit is headed by the Portfolio Support Manager, supervising a team of personnel in different fields.
Background information - Job specific
UNOPS Personnel Development - Learning and Training: UNOPS provides learning opportunities to its personnel, addressing both technical and soft skills. This includes a plethora of learning activities accessible to all personnel (with relevant eligibility criteria) in the UNOPS Learning Zone, the Learning Management System where all learning opportunities are centralized. Since the pandemic, UNOPS has been largely focusing on online courses (including self-paced, and with virtual attendance) and maximising the use of digital tools for the delivery of learning and training activities. Now, UNOPS has reverted to a more blended approach. The Learning Zone provides the possibility to create learning paths per sector, service line, position type, etc.
As part of UNOPS learning opportunities, HQ business units develop and execute learning activities that are deployed globally as per the agreed annual workplan, including e-courses, in-presence training programme and workshops, access to external professional certifications, individual/group coaching and mentoring, etc., for which participants can be nominated on the basis of eligibility and the priority of the UNOPS country office. In addition, HQ business units contribute technically to relevant learning activities developed locally by the UNOPS country offices to address their specific needs
UNOPS personnel can also apply to other individual learning opportunities outside of the Learning Zone platform, when relevant to their roles and aligned to the Business Unit/Section’s goals.
IPS Learning and Training: As part of its mandate, UNOPS delivers services in procurement, infrastructure, project management, financial management (including grant support management) and HR management. UNOPS ensures that its personnel expertise in these 5 service lines is continuously developed and maintained, and that they are kept abreast of best practices, standards and how to operationalise them in the UNOPS context. IPS develops and coordinates the internal learning and training resources related to the 5 service lines of UNOPS, including self-paced, face to face (inc. virtual attendance) UNOPS courses, and mentoring and coordinates access to external courses and professional certifications offered to eligible UNOPS personnel in these areas (currently: Prince2, MSP and CIPS).