Position title: Manager, Vaccine Forecasting
Contract type / duration: Temporary - as soon as possible until 15 March 2027
Location: Geneva
Department: Vaccine Programmes & Markets (VPM)
Team: Vaccine Forecasting and Supply Management (VFSM)
Reports To: Head, Vaccine Forecasting
N° of positions supervised (if applicable): 0
Career Step: 3
1. About the Role
The Manager, Vaccine Forecasting sits within the Vaccine Forecasting and Supply Management team in the Vaccine Programmes & Markets department. The role works closely with Market Shaping, Vaccine Programmes, Finance, and country delivery colleagues, and engages externally with UNICEF Supply Division and other partners involved in Gavi-supported vaccine programmes. Its core purpose is to lead forecasting for an assigned portfolio of vaccine programmes so that demand, supply, price, and cost projections support clear, timely, and well-informed operational and strategic decision-making.
2. Key Responsibilities
- Manage forecasting for a designated portfolio of vaccine programmes, producing demand, supply, price, and cost projections that inform operational planning and strategic decisions.
- Develop, maintain, and continuously improve vaccine forecasting models and supporting documentation to ensure forecasts are transparent, robust, and fit for decision-making.
- Coordinate the collection, validation, and integration of programme inputs into forecast updates, ensuring alignment across vaccine-specific forecasts and overall Gavi forecasting deliverables.
- Generate and interpret forecast scenarios, communicate implications clearly, and respond to analysis requests from internal and external stakeholders to support timely decisions.
- Monitor actuals against forecasts for selected vaccines, highlighting forecast accuracy, key risks, and issues that may affect programme performance, supply continuity, or financial planning.
- Provide forecasting expertise to vaccine working groups and country planning processes, advising on dose quantification and helping resolve issues such as supply-demand imbalances and manufacturer disruptions.
- Contribute to portfolio-wide forecasting activities and core team enablement, including regular cross-vaccine updates, development of standard operating procedures, KPI updates, and continuity of support across the sub-team.
Note: The essential functions listed in this section are not exhaustive of the job responsibilities; other duties may be assigned consistently with the department needs.
3. Your Experience and Skills
Experience
- Typically 5–7 years of experience in forecasting, supply planning, or demand planning roles, ideally within vaccines, pharmaceuticals, global health, public health, social impact, or FMCG environments.
- Experience working with programme, operational, and financial data from multiple sources, including data collection, reconciliation, quality control, analysis, and use in decision-making.
- Experience designing, building, and maintaining forecasting models and tools, with exposure to both operational and longer-term forecasting needs.
- Experience supporting strategic and operational planning, gained in settings such as management consulting, product management, or comparable applied analytical roles.
- Experience working across multiple stakeholders and functions, including collaboration with programme, market, finance, and external partner counterparts in complex planning environments.
Education and qualifications:
Essential:
- University degree in economics, finance, engineering, statistics, or another relevant quantitative discipline.
Technical and functional skills
Must have:
- Technical skill — Advanced: Forecasting methods, including quantitative statistical approaches and qualitative expert-driven modelling, applied to vaccine, supply, demand, price, and cost projections.
- Technical skill — Advanced: Forecast model design and management, including building, maintaining, documenting, and improving models used for operational and strategic decision-making.
- Technical skill — Expert: Excel-based modelling, including advanced formulas, pivot tables, sensitivity and scenario analysis, structured model design, and macros.
- Functional skill — Advanced: Data integration and quality control across multiple programme, operational, and financial data sources, including reconciliation and validation of forecasting inputs.
- Functional skill — Advanced: Translating complex forecast outputs and historical data into clear recommendations, updates, and decision support for cross-functional stakeholders.
- Functional skill — Advanced: Stakeholder engagement in forecasting processes, including coordinating inputs, responding to analysis requests, and supporting working groups across internal teams and external partners.
Good to have:
- Technical skill — Working knowledge: Forecasting systems or platform technologies beyond Excel.
- Technical skill — Working knowledge: SQL for querying and managing databases used in forecasting and related reporting.
- Technical skill — Working knowledge: Scripting or programming tools such as VBA, R, or Python to support forecasting analysis and model development.
Languages Needed:
Required:
Preferred:
4. How You Work (Behaviours and Mindsets)
- Works effectively across teams and organisations, building collaborative relationships and maintaining a strong service orientation in environments where influence is required without direct authority.
- Exercises sound judgment in complex or fast-moving situations, using structured thinking and appropriate approximation when decisions must be made with incomplete information.
- Takes ownership of priorities and delivers to deadlines, staying organised and focused when managing multiple demands and time-sensitive work.
- Approaches challenges proactively and constructively, identifying issues early, proposing practical solutions, and escalating risks when needed.
- Operates independently while adapting quickly to changing priorities, evolving programme needs, and multicultural working environments.
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