Senior Market Engagement Manager - Humanitarian

Department: GSMA Mobile for Development Foundation

Team: Mobile for Humanitarian Innovation (M4H)

Location: London (hybrid working)

Position type: FTC until 31 March 2027

What the hiring manager says

“Today, more than 400 million people globally need humanitarian assistance and protection. Mobile technology is being effectively leveraged in disaster preparedness, response and recovery and this role is a unique opportunity to work with the humanitarian sector and the mobile industry to scale mobile solutions for these life-saving purposes. As Senior Market Engagement Manager, you will build partnerships, provide technical support and champion the power of digital services to improve the lives of disaster affected communities”

Dulip Tillekeratne, Director of Strategic Partnerships, M4H

About the GSMA

The GSMA represents the interests of mobile operators worldwide, uniting more than 750 operators with almost 400 companies in the broader mobile ecosystem, including handset and device makers, software companies, equipment providers and internet companies, as well as organisations in adjacent industry sectors. The GSMA produces industry-leading events such as MWC Barcelona, Doha, Shanghai, Kigali and the M360 Series.

Every day we work to harness the power of mobile to achieve our industry purpose – Connecting Everyone and Everything to a Better Future – through four main activities:

• We provide strategic direction and thought leadership to our members
• We drive collaborative industry programmes aimed at maintaining operator relevance in the digital world
• We advocate for the industry to regulators, policy makers and society as a whole
• We convene the broad mobile communications ecosystem at our industry leading events

About the Team

The Mobile for Development (M4D) team drives innovation in digital technology to reduce inequalities in our world. Singularly positioned at the intersection of the mobile ecosystem and the development sector, we stimulate digital innovation to deliver both sustainable business and large-scale socio-economic impact for the underserved.

The Mobile for Humanitarian Innovation (M4H) programme is funded by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) with a mission to accelerate the delivery and impact of digital humanitarian assistance. We have reached over 18 million people with improved access to and use of life-enhancing mobile-enabled services during humanitarian preparedness, response and recovery. We have achieved this by catalysing partnerships and innovation for new digital humanitarian services, building a learning and research agenda to inform the future of digital humanitarian response, advocating for enabling policy environments, monitoring and evaluating performance, disseminating insights and profiling achievements. 

About the Role

The Senior Market Engagement Manager role will lead M4H’s work in disaster preparedness response and recovery. This includes being a lead focal point with global stakeholders such as the Emergency Telecoms Cluster and the Early Warnings for All Initiative. The Senior Market Engagement Manager will also be responsible in planning, steering and managing regional multistakeholder forums such as Humanitarian Connectivity Charter convenings and technical national events such as Cell Broadcast readiness workshops.
 

Key Responsibilities

• Develop the strategic direction for several humanitarian contexts, catalysing partnerships between humanitarian organisations and MNOs to deliver digital humanitarian solutions

• Build and manage relationships with mobile network operators to identify and catalyse strategic opportunities to develop and support initiatives that align with the programme’s core objectives such as Early Warnings for All, Connectivity for Refugees and the GSMA’s Humanitarian Connectivity Charter.
   
• Organise and facilitate multi-stakeholder workshops, conduct desk-based landscaping, lead technical assistance design, support on capacity building, and manage relationships across a range of stakeholders (e.g. mobile operators, humanitarian partners, start-ups and third-party solution providers).

• Contribute to the M4D learning agenda by supporting the production of high-quality and professional assets such as blogs and web content which capture lessons and insights regarding business models, learnings, trends, relevant in-market convening and developments from in-market engagement

• Manage a M4H Market Engagement Manager and other roles as required

• Proactively communicate relevant topical developments from across the region to the M4H programme, M4D team and broader GSMA

• Contribute towards the strategic development of the M4H programme. All team members are expected to contribute towards shaping the overall strategic direction and pipeline of the programme to ensure that we deliver value and achieve programmatic goals
   

About You

Experience and capabilities for this role are: 

• Demonstrated experience working on disaster preparedness and response coordination with cross-sector stakeholders

• Technical knowledge of mobile solutions for humanitarian action and translation of these solutions across sectors. Experience in implementing digital tech solutions (ex: Cell Broadcast or location-based SMS technology) in humanitarian markets, humanitarian action and/or social impact initiatives

• Experience line managing team members and ability to work in a matrixed team structure
   

• Energetic team player, with creative mindset, and hands-on and can-do mentality. Ability to work independently, self-motivated, entrepreneurial and organised to deliver high impact outputs

• Strong understanding of the humanitarian sector, the UN, NGOs systems and/or the mobile industry

• Strong experience in public-private partnerships, shared-value models and sustainable development

• Proven track-record of working across diverse stakeholders and facilitating results-based partnerships that deliver commercial and social impact and experience in working with / leading teams to solve complex challenges

• Strong understanding of, and interest in the technology industry and the role of mobile technology and mobile network operators within the humanitarian sector

• Strong analytic skills and commercial expertise including the ability to support the development of business cases, new business models and operational requirements for in-country projects

• Ability to develop and manage a diverse pipeline of live projects to ensure impactful delivery of programmatic KPIs

• Excellent communication and inter-personal skills including the ability to build consensus and alignment across diverse actors with different incentives and operational realities

• Experience in business development, project management and product development

• Experience working with donors, international development community or multi-lateral organisations will be an assets

• Able to quickly grasp new concepts and ideas and proactively communicate and work as part of a global team

• Willingness and ability to travel regularly

About your Skills

Stakeholder Management: Work effectively across a diverse network of internal and external stakeholders to advance the programme’s objectives.

Problem Solving: Understand complex humanitarian and disaster management ecosystems, and the ability to develop and implement creative sustainable solutions with the participation of local stakeholders.

Communication: Communicate complex technical or strategic concepts clearly and accessibly to a range of audiences.

Teamwork: Value and contribute to collective working, actively collaborating with colleagues across your team and the wider GSMA.

Contract type

Worker type

What We Offer

Working at the GSMA offers you unparalleled access to the mobile industry. We offer a chance to truly shape the direction of mobile, whatever your role. By joining the GSMA, you will be exposed to a fast-paced rapidly evolving environment, working on global solutions, genuinely fascinating and industry-changing projects and a stimulating and dynamic environment designed to enable you to flourish.

In addition to architect-designed offices and competitive compensation, our benefits include fantastic learning & development opportunities, generous holiday allowances, four additional days off for professional development and many others.

To learn more about the GSMA, visit our career site, our LinkedIn

Being You at the GSMA

We care deeply about diversity, equity and inclusivity and aspire to be the best at it. Your well-being and work/life balance is important, so flexi-time and remote working is available to all staff. We're keen to ensure everyone is equal, represented and connected so we particularly encourage applications from all demographics. The sucess of the GSMA year on year will continue to be contributed by people from all walks of life.

GSMA Values

Our values not only drive our culture – they shape how we work and interact inside and outside our global organisation.

Passionately driven

We approach everything we do with unparalleled capability, tenacity and commitment, knowing that the challenging scale, pace and complexity of our work is what leads to its world-changing impact.

Insightful leaders

We continually develop and engage our expertise, insight and creativity so that we’re always ready to respond to the changing landscape with authority, agility and nuance.

Stronger together

We lean on each other so the industry can lean on us, embracing our diversity by actively seeking out perspectives and skill sets beyond our own, fuelling each other’s successes and constantly asking how we can help.

Underpinning our values is our collective mindset to show up purposefully as good human beings every day, in every situation. When we’re at our best – we are collaborative, considerate and compassionate to others, and we create a safe space for one another to thrive, assuming positive intent in our colleagues. And if we aren’t at our best and the pressure is on – we feel free to be ourselves but still remain curious, lean into the tough stuff and we are always respectful to others and accountable for the part we play.