Note: The job is a remote job and is open to candidates in USA. Catholic Relief Services is the official international humanitarian agency of the Catholic community in the United States. The Technical Advisor II, Finance will provide technical advice and hands-on support to ensure strong financial management and compliance for emergency response efforts in Venezuela, working closely with partner teams to strengthen finance systems and processes.
Responsibilities
- Contribute to the development and implementation of agency-wide strategies, standards, tools, and best practices in Finance that effectively engage partners, donors and governments. Help ensure a cross-sectoral approach integrating gender, protection mainstreaming, and disaster risk reduction
- Provide technical solutions to HRD and EMPOWER partners, remotely and on-site, for strategic planning and how to best apply program design and implementation standards, best practices, partnership principles, tools, and M&E, ensuring high-quality implementation
- Contribute to HRD and EMPOWER efforts to pre-position CRS for growth opportunities in Finance. Lead or contribute to the development of the technical design for large and/or complex proposals, including defining appropriate monitoring systems and indicators. Advise project teams on integrating donor strategies, priorities and technical requirements into CRS’ approach
- Contribute to capacity strengthening initiatives in Finance programming for staff and partners through helping develop learning and training strategies and agendas/curriculums, conducting trainings and workshops, and mentoring and coaching to partner staff
- Contribute to knowledge management and learning through collecting and analyzing program data, evaluating strategic projects, assisting with measuring program impact, capturing and sharing lessons learned and best practices, and research and internal reports
- Establish and maintain relationships with donors, peer organizations, research and other institutions. Participate in forums in Finance to collect and share best practices and promote CRS’ work
- Provide technical solutions to EMPOWER partners and support partner staff remotely and on-site for budget management, and financial reporting and forecasting, compliance, USG audit preparation, and capacity strengthening in finance and lower-tier subrecipient management while applying best practices and partnership principles, helping to ensure high-quality implementation
- Support Caritas Venezuela to develop, implement and track internal control procedures and finance-related processes for the USG project, as well as Caritas Venezuela’s broader financial procedures
- Contribute to EMPOWER and HRD to pre-position CRS for growth opportunities. Contribute to business development efforts through budget development and review. Advise project teams on integrating donor strategies, priorities, and technical requirements into CRS’ approach
- Coach CRS and partner in finance and operations staff. Develop and deliver trainings, tools and job aids and help reduce recurring reporting errors to improve report quality
- Oversee technical quality of finance procedures and practices of Caritas Venezuela and other EMPOWER partners as needed and support these partners in finance reporting
- Support CRS colleagues with donor reporting, particularly around inputs in finance
- Conduct financial assessments and financial monitoring visits (virtual or in-person) for ongoing and closing projects
- Ensure a quality partnership between CRS and Caritas Venezuela in line with CRS and Caritas Internationalis (CI) partnership principles and Modus Operandi. Ensure coordinated, consistent partner strengthening efforts and support the timely resolution of finance challenges via dialogue and support from others
- Manage the relationship and oversee the outputs of a Finance consultant
Skills
- Required bachelor's degree in business administration, Accounting, Auditing, International Development, International Relations, or in the field of Humanitarian Operations, or similar
- Minimum of eight years of relevant international work experience in an advisory or management role, with progressive responsibilities, ideally with an international NGO, including at least three years supporting programming in finance, emergency response, and partner capacity strengthening
- Previous experience providing technical assistance and developing successful proposals for external donor funding is required
- Demonstrated experience in supporting local humanitarian actors who are USG primes in areas such as financial compliance, audit preparation, and sub-recipient management
- Proficient in MS Office packages (Excel, Word, PowerPoint), Web Conferencing Applications, information and budget management systems, and knowledge-sharing networks
- Experience in mentoring, coaching, facilitation, and training applying adult learning principles and practices, especially in the areas of annual planning, budgeting, and cost allocation/ICR methodologies
- Experience and skills in networking and relations with donors, peer organizations, and faith-based civil society partners. Understanding of partnership principles
- Strong strategic, analytical, problem-solving, and systems thinking skills with the capacity to see the big picture and the ability to make sound judgment
- Strong written and oral communication skills
- Strong presentation, facilitation, training, mentoring, and coaching skills
- Proactive, resourceful, and results-oriented
- Full English and Spanish level proficiency is required
- Must be willing and able to travel up to 50% in-country and internationally
- Master's degree in business administration, International Development or related field
- Experience working with local partners and supporting institutional capacity strengthening
- Previous experience with USG audits and compliance is highly valued
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