Deputy Project Director

Introducing Zinc Network

About us

Zinc Network is dedicated to meaningful, measurable change. Zinc conceptualizes and creates programs, interventions, and strategic communications campaigns around some of the world’s most complex problems – from disinformation to extremism, media capture to authoritarianism.

We are headquartered in London with offices in Washington, D.C., Tbilisi, and Warsaw with 80+ team members from diverse professional and cultural backgrounds. Zinc works with a broad range of governmental, NGO, and private sector clients, including the UK Home Office (HO); the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO); the United States Agency for International Development (USAID); the U.S. Department of State (DOS); UN agencies and missions; and foundations.

Outline of the job

We are looking for a Deputy Project Director (DPD) who has the ambition, skill and experience to help successfully deliver our flagship project in Ukraine. We are looking for someone with expertise in media information literacy and cognitive resilience and passion for increasing Ukraine's resilience towards malign information through policy and campaign work.

The Deputy Project Director is responsible for leading the policy work of the project. Deep knowledge of the political landscape around informational security and media information literacy is essential. You will be responsible for supporting key ministries in their MIL related policy making, working with monitoring and research teams to develop the operational framework and providing targeted support to key stakeholders. You will report to the Project Director (PD) and also support the production teams in developing targeted MIL campaigns.

The Deputy Project Director will be based in Kyiv.

What you’ll be doing

- Act as Zinc’s Deputy Project Director for the Media Literacy and Cognitive Resilience Project, being implemented by Zinc Network on behalf of the FCDO;

- Manage stakeholders including GoU ministries and institutions, as well as local implementation partners;

- Deploy and coordinate the work of various experts to support the GoU;

- Assist the PD in activity design to align with the programme’s ToC;

- Support the management of programme execution and risk mitigations

- Help draft quarterly and annual reporting

- With support from the wider team, provide support to the execution of the MIL National Strategy for the Ministry of Culture and Information Policy (MCIP)

- Oversee the Research and MREL managers, working alongside the project’s Strategist.

Requirements

- Previous experience in policy work in Ukraine.

- Deep understanding of political landscape around informational security and media information literacy in Ukraine is essential

- Experience in leading complex international development projects

- Experience in leading MIL, disinformation, informational security or other related projects in Ukraine

- Experience working in a leading role on donor-funded projects, and a track record in successful donor coordination

- At least 2 years of experience managing and supervising staff

- Excellent presentation and writing skills, including narrative reports and long-form content

- Fluent English and Ukrainian (project working language is English)

- Right to live and work in Kyiv, Ukraine

Conditions of Employment

Candidates who receive a job offer will be required to:

- Disclose any previous disciplinary action against them resulting from a substantiated safeguarding (including any breaches involving trafficking- related activities) or workplace investigation.

- Undergo background checks including employment verification, sexual offender registry (as available), identity confirmation, and anti-terrorism vetting.

How to apply

Please include a cover letter stating how you meet each of the requirements.

If you require an accommodation to be made at any point throughout the recruitment process, please advise us when contacted.

Area of Selection

We’re committed to hiring a diverse workforce from different professional and cultural backgrounds, and to that end we encourage a variety of people to apply to join our company to represent the diverse range of subjects associated with our projects.