Policy Design Specialist (Open to internal and external applicants)

Description

Tiered Approach

In line with the commitment to safeguard capacity and support personnel already in the Organization, a majority of UNDP UNCDF/UNV vacancies are advertised using a tiered application process whereby:

• Tier 0: UNDP/UNCDF/UNV IP staff holding permanent (PA) and fixed-term (FTA) appointments, whose posts will be abolished, or contracts will be terminated or not renewed during 2026.
• Tier 1: Other UNDP/UNCDF/UNV staff holding permanent (PA) and fixed-term (FTA) appointments
• Tier 2: UNDP/UNCDF/UNV staff holding temporary appointments (TA), personnel on regular PSA contracts, and Expert and Specialist UN Volunteers
• Tier 3 or no tier indicated: All other contract types from UNDP/UNCDF/UNV and other agencies, and other external candidates

Please make note of the Tier(s) indicated in the vacancy title, if any, and ensure that you satisfy the eligibility to apply.

Background

UNDP is the UN’s global development network, an organization advocating for change and connecting countries to knowledge, experience, and resources to help people build a better life. UNDP works in about 170 countries and territories, working with national counterparts on solutions to global and national development challenges. In Bhutan, over the last 50 years, UNDP has been supporting the Royal Government to attain its national priorities. In 2024, UNDP started implementation of the Country Programme Document 2024-2028, aligning to the country’s 13th Five Year Plan (13th FYP). 

In 2023, Bhutan graduated from the UN list of Least Developed Countries (LDCs). Over the past decades, the country has made remarkable progress in reducing income and multidimensional poverty, aligned with its commitment to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Despite the impressive progress, the country is grappling with critical socio-economic challenges such as large-scale emigration of the productive and skilled labor force, youth unemployment, declining fertility rate, increasing trade deficit, and shrinking fiscal space. These challenges take place amidst a slow post-pandemic economic recovery and against the broader backdrop of structural challenges, such as limited economic diversification, a still-nascent private sector, absence of robust regulatory and institutional framework. 

Bhutan’s 13th FYP (2024-2029) sets out the ambitious target of doubling the size of the country’s economy within the next five years and then doubling it again over the subsequent five year, reaching USD 10 billion by 2034, a target year that Bhutan plans to reach the high-income status. 

Recognizing the challenges and potential opportunities in Bhutan’s 21st-century economy, the Royal Government of Bhutan aims to accelerate and foster a robust economic recovery and growth. It is in this context that the Royal Government of Bhutan requested UNDP’s policy advisory assistance to support the Prime Minister’s Office in a high-level consultation and the subsequent development of a development roadmap for the realization for the government’s development vision as outlined above. 

To support this national agenda, the Royal Government of Bhutan, in partnership with UNDP, established the Bhutan Innovation Lab (BIL) under the Prime Minister’s Office. The Lab serves as a strategic platform for policy innovation, systems transformation, experimentation, and evidence-based decision-making. Through human-centred design, behavioural insights, data analytics, systems thinking, and foresight approaches, the Lab supports government agencies in diagnosing complex challenges, designing innovative solutions, testing interventions, and developing scalable policy and programme innovations.

As part of the Government's broader implementation architecture for the Bhutan 21st Century Economic Roadmap, the Bhutan Innovation Lab works closely with the Delivery Unit under the Prime Minister’s Office. While the Delivery Unit focuses on execution, performance monitoring, and implementation support, the Bhutan Innovation Lab serves as the upstream innovation and strategy function, generating evidence, developing policy solutions, and supporting systems-level transformation across national priority areas.

As the Bhutan Innovation Lab continues to expand its portfolio as also a support arm to the 10X Delivery Unit and institutionalize innovation practices across government, UNDP seeks to recruit a Policy Design Specialist to serve as a key member of the Lab. The incumbent will lead the design and delivery of policy innovation initiatives, support strategic diagnostics and experimentation processes, facilitate stakeholder engagement and co-creation exercises, and contribute to the development of innovative solutions that advance Bhutan’s development priorities and long-term economic transformation agenda.

Duties and Responsibilities

Under the overall guidance of the Director General, Office of the Cabinet Affairs and Strategic Coordination and Director, Office of the Prime Minister, and supervision of the Programme Analyst, Governance and Advocacy at UNDP CO, the Policy Design Specialist will bring design thinking, user-centered approaches, and systems thinking to the policy development process. They will collaborate with cross-functional teams, including researchers, data scientists, technologists, and policymakers, to co-create and iterate innovative policy solutions. The focus will be on human-centered policy design that is responsive, inclusive, and adaptable. 

1. Provide advisory and technical support on policy innovation

• Provide advisory services and technical support to the Hon’ble Prime Minister on critical policies using innovative tools and methods.
• Provide support to agencies on logic and new directions/pivots for existing or new policies being developed through application of innovative human-centered approaches.

2. Lead design, prototyping and development of innovative policy solutions

• Lead the design of innovative policy solutions by applying design thinking, prototyping, and systems thinking methodologies.
• Develop, test, and iterate prototypes to identify viable, scalable policy solutions.
• Create journey maps, service blueprints, and other visual tools to inform policy development.

3. Facilitate stakeholder engagement, co-creation and user-centered research

• Facilitate co-creation workshops with stakeholders, including government agencies, civil society organizations, and communities.
• Work closely with policymakers, subject matter experts, and end-users to ensure policy designs are grounded in real-world needs and insights.
• Conduct user research and gather qualitative and quantitative data to inform policy design.
• Translate research findings into actionable design principles and strategic policy recommendations.
• Ensure the systematic integration of gender perspectives into policy analysis, recommendations, and programming, informed by sound gender analysis that incorporates sex-disaggregated data and addresses differentiated needs, priorities, and impacts across diverse groups.

4. Support collaboration, communication and capacity building

• Collaborate with multidisciplinary teams, including technologists, analysts, and evaluators, to ensure that design solutions are feasible and impactful.
• Communicate design insights, prototypes, and recommendations clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Support the lab in building internal capacity for design-led policy innovation through training, knowledge sharing, and mentoring.

5. Support strategic partnerships and resource mobilization

• Identify opportunities for resource mobilization and new partnerships and support proposal and partnership development efforts.
• Develop partnerships and network with local innovators, youth organizations, NGOs, the private sector, local media and academia to build and provide a space to nurture and test new and innovative ideas, and build local capacity.
• Undertake any other related actions as requested by the Prime Minister's Office.

6. Ensure gender-responsive analysis and programming and facilitate knowledge sharing

• Ensure the systematic integration of gender perspectives into policy analysis, recommendations, and programming, informed by sound gender analysis that incorporates sex-disaggregated data and addresses differentiated needs, priorities, and impacts across diverse groups.
• Identify capacity building needs and opportunities. Ensure appropriate training, project workshops and other relevant activities are organized and implemented in a consultative manner, involving technical experts and stakeholders that may include the government, private sector, NGOs, donors, and/or academia. 
• Identify, synthesize and document best practices and lessons learned that are generated from the project and implementing partners

The incumbent performs other duties within their functional profile as deemed necessary for the efficient functioning of the Office and the Organization.

Institutional Arrangement

The Policy Design Specialist will report to the Programme Analyst at UNDP and the Director General, Office of the Cabinet Affairs and Strategic Coordination, Office of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. 

Competencies

Core

Achieve Results:

LEVEL 3: Set and align challenging, achievable objectives for multiple projects, have lasting impact 

Think Innovatively:

LEVEL 3: Proactively mitigate potential risks, develop new ideas to solve complex problems 

Learn Continuously:

LEVEL 3: Create and act on opportunities to expand horizons, diversify experiences

Adapt with Agility:

LEVEL 3: Proactively initiate and champion change, manage multiple competing demands 

Act with Determination: 

LEVEL 3: Think beyond immediate task/barriers and take action to achieve greater results

Engage and Partner:

LEVEL 3: Political savvy, navigate complex landscape, champion inter-agency collaboration

Enable Diversity and Inclusion:

LEVEL 3: Appreciate benefits of diverse workforce and champion inclusivity

Cross-Functional & Technical competencies 

Thematic Area

Name

Definition

Digital

• Systems thinking & transformation

• Understand that complex problems need a non-reductionistic, holistic approach. 
• Ability to explore challenges from multiple perspectives by zooming in and out, with a focus on relationships and flows rather than individual elements; understand how certain dynamics and conditions are driving and influencing an issue. 
• Ability to develop a collective understanding by a mapping system and their dynamics (e.g. flows or resources, information; power relations); is able to handle ambiguity and can help others navigate it.
• Being able to identify intervention points to leverage change and system transformation by setting out a coherent collection of multiple interventions to probe the system for desirable effects. 
• Understand that change is non-linear and unpredictable; being comfortable and able to work with emergence

Digital

• Innovation Management

• Being able to create the strategies, conditions, structures and systems to enable innovation at an organisational level. 
• Ability to navigate uncertainty and ambiguity, is able to manage projects-based principles of adaptation and emergence. 
• Ability to shape demand for innovation services, navigate political constraints and make the case for allocation of resources to innovation, connect the appropriate innovation approaches based on business needs and make the case for innovation to be integrated at the planning level within their context. 
• Having in-depth theoretical and experiential knowledge of innovation processes, methods, capabilities.

 Digital

• Regulatory sandboxes

• Manage or advise on setting up a regulatory testbed that stay true to the core principles of an organisation while making it easier of certain players to test out new propositions, operational or business models. 
• Ability to determine and advocate the purpose of a sandbox, what is the experiment for, what potential learnings look like and build a business case to invest in it.
• Ability to extract learnings from previous experiences and posses firm understanding of what rules are essential and why, and which can stand flexibility. 
• Being able to anticipate, assess and manage risks, identify and resolve deficiencies in skills and expertise, set clear boundaries around the scope and duration of the experiment and have a clear exit strategy 

Partnershp Management

• Resource mobilization

•  Ability to identify funding sources, match funding needs (programmes/projects/initiatives) with funding opportunities, and establish a plan to meet funding requirements

 Business Management

• Communication

   Ability to communicate in a clear, concise and unambiguous manner both through written and verbal communication; to tailor messages and choose communication methods depending on the audience. Ability to manage communications internally and externally, through media, social media and other appropriate channels.

Business Development

•  Knowledge generation

•  Ability to research and turn information into useful knowledge, relevant for context, or responsive to a stated need.

Digital

• Innovation capacity building

• Ability to define and create the conditions for trying out new ways of working or introducing new problem-solving approaches to an organisation. 
• Ability to develop, manage and evaluate a learning curriculum that raises awareness, builds confidence, strengthens innovation capabilities around a certain method, tool or technique; or helps develop an innovation mindset. 
• Ability to create the authorising environment (mandate, incentives) to embed and spread new ways of working. 
• In-depth knowledge of one or more innovation methods, broad knowledge of innovation processes and innovation management. 
• Ability to align a learning and development strategy with broader innovation strategy

Required Skills and Experience

Min. Education requirements

• Advanced university degree (Master's degree or equivalent) in Social Science (Psychology, Anthropology, Sociology, Economics, International Development), Environmental Science, Transition or complexity Science, Engineering Design (Industrial or Service Design, Architecture, Urban Planning), Communications, Business, or a related area is required, or
• University degree (Bachelor’s degree) in one of the areas mentioned above in combination with 2 additional years of qualifying experience will be given due consideration in lieu of an advanced university degree.

Min. years of relevant work experience 

• Minimum 5 years (with master´s degree) or 7 years (with bachelor´s degree) of professional work experience in the field of innovation management, design research and international development either in public or private sector. 

Required skills 

• Proven experience of working effectively in a team with diverse cultural and academic backgrounds.
• Experience in the use of computers, office software packages (MS Word, Excel, etc.) and web-based management systems, and advanced knowledge of spreadsheet and database packages. 

Desired skills in addition to the competencies covered in the Competencies section

• Additional years of work experience in areas of either qualitative social research, human centered design, user experience, behavioral insights, or futures and foresights. 
• Demonstrated experience in conducting field or remote qualitative research.
• Demonstrated experience in crafting research tools and outputs for qualitative research.
• Experience designing policy experiments, validate hypotheses and test prototypes.
• Proven experience and knowledge about application of innovation in solving complex issues in private or public sector (assessed through generating ideas, prototyping, and developing solutions with real impact. 
• Prior experience in working in an innovation lab in public or private sector.

Required Language(s) 

Fluency inEnglish and Dzongkha is required.

Professional Certificates

Equal opportunity

As an equal opportunity employer, UNDP values diversity as an expression of the multiplicity of nations and cultures where we operate and, as such, we encourage qualified applicants from all backgrounds to apply for roles in the organization. Our employment decisions are based on merit and suitability for the role, without discrimination. 

UNDP is also committed to creating an inclusive workplace where all personnel are empowered to contribute to our mission, are valued, can thrive, and benefit from career opportunities that are open to all.

Sexual harassment, exploitation, and abuse of authority

UNDP does not tolerate harassment, sexual harassment, exploitation, discrimination and abuse of authority. All selected candidates, therefore, undergo relevant checks and are expected to adhere to the respective standards and principles. 

Right to select multiple candidates

UNDP reserves the right to select one or more candidates from this vacancy announcement.

We may also retain applications and consider candidates applying to this post for other similar positions with UNDP at the same grade level and with similar job description, experience and educational requirements.

Use of AI by candidates

Applicants are invited to read UNDP’s guidance for candidates on using AI responsibly in UNDP recruitment and selection

Scam alert

UNDP does not charge a fee at any stage of its recruitment process. For further information, please see www.undp.org/scam-alert.

#LI-DNI