International Housing and Urban Development Sector Specialist

Location: Bolivia

The IDB Group is a community of diverse, versatile, and passionate people who come together on a journey to improve lives in Latin America and the Caribbean. Our people find purpose and do what they love in an inclusive, collaborative, and rewarding environment.

About this position

We are looking for an upbeat, collaborative, and highly motivated individual to join our team in Bolivia to manage a portfolio of projects that will help us change people’s lives in Latin America and the Caribbean.

The Housing and Urban Development Division (HUD), part of the Climate Change and Sustainable Development Sector (CSD), provides strategic guidance and analytical and operational support to the institution and its clients in city planning, sustainable and resilient urban development, and housing.

What you’ll do

You will bring extensive international knowledge in the areas of urban planning and development, social housing, informal settlements, and urban heritage preservation and renovation, and apply your experience to:

(i) Assess urban development and housing policies, strategies, and programs to adopt best practices and be adaptable to the client’s needs;

(ii) Support the formulation and supervision of lending/non-lending operations by applying a high degree of autonomy,

(iii) Advance the positioning of IDB as a knowledge bank in your sector of expertise, and

(iv) Provide advice to the country team’s strategic dialogue on specific topics related to the sector.

As a team leader/member, you will:

• Contribute to IDB’s policy dialogue with public and private institutions, development partners, and other collaborators involved in housing and urban development at the national and subnational level, including strategic dialogue initiatives in Bolivia, such as Amazonia Forever in Pando, trans-border dialogue Bolivia-Brazil and/or others; identify constraints and needs for development in the sector and design and implement possible policy and institutional reforms in the areas of social housing and territorial and urban planning.
• Contribute to developing country strategies and programs, identifying potential priority action lines in housing and urban development with a strong emphasis on innovation and thematic value addition as well as considering operational and institutional capacities of possible counterpart institutions, to be captured in sector assessments and country strategy documentation, in close coordination with the Representation and considering the respective selectivity and priority criteria among all IDB sectors in the country.
• Originate, prepare, process, implement, and evaluate lending operations, ensuring high-quality technical and operational structuring and oversight.
• Monitor and evaluate existing HUD operations and consultancies, perform quality control reviews of planning documents, and prepare contracting documents.
• Conduct the technical review of procurement activities, provide technical support to the counterparts and Project Implementing Units, conduct field visits, and continuously maintain the dialogue with Executing Agencies and other relevant partners.
• Conceptualize, prepare, process, implement, and evaluate technical assistance programs supporting operations to provide client support and promote research and dissemination.
• Contribute proactively to the Communication Strategies of HUD and/or CBO, considering different possible dissemination formats to be coordinated with the respective communication teams.
• Identify/assist new opportunities to apply innovation, co-develop pilots for testing hypotheses in partnership with IDB’s Cities Lab, IDB Lab, and other initiatives, and follow through findings, which might include scaling up and policy actions.
• Contribute to strategic networking with urban-related partners at the national and sub-national levels, as well as academia, civil society, and private sector-related entities; find opportunities to strengthen partnerships and, in coordination with IDB’s Cities Network, support the exchange of experiences and best practices.
• Develop or contribute to developing high-quality, relevant analytical, empirical studies and high-impact presentations that advance original thinking in emerging themes relating to housing and urban development in LAC, with a special focus on Bolivia and Andean countries.
• Promote alignments with partner divisions and units across the IDB Group to propose and develop sustainable and innovative solutions with a cross-sector perspective to respond to client needs.