Accountant At DAI Global

USAID’s four-year (2021-2025) Resilience through Agriculture in South Sudan (RASS) Activity will improve food security and community household recovery and resilience in 13 target counties, reducing long term reliance on humanitarian assistance. To achieve this ambitious aim, RASS will employ a resilience pathways approach to improve the effectiveness of local systems and strengthen the capacities of community groups to achieve gender responsive and diversified market-sensitive production; facilitate increased production of diverse nutritious foods by strengthening productivity, reducing food loss, and improving nutrition behaviours; and strengthen and expand household and community opportunities for sustainable, locally driven livelihoods. RASS targets graduating communities from high integrated food security phase classifications to low IPC acute food insecurity and support a change from a focus on humanitarian assistance to inclusive development assistance and economic growth.

CONTEXT AND GENERAL TECHNICAL REQUIREMENTS

RASS will work with a sub-partner consortium and through local partnerships to ensure the sustainability of RASS interventions in various field sites for achieving its objectives. RASS will work through field offices either directly or through co-location within existing consortium partners, prioritizing collaboration, learning and coordination with other USAID and/or donor partners. It is on this backdrop that a strong operational platform/model is envisioned to deliver timely, agile, and adaptive activity implementation in South Sudan.

POSITION DESCRIPTION AND RESPONSIBILITIES

The Accountant is primarily responsible for compliance with all DAI/RASS finance policies and procedures. The Accountant is responsible for finance vouchers, bank and petty cash accounts, reimbursements, staff payroll, invoice payments, advance disbursements and tracking, project regional and technical burn rates, monitoring expenditures and budgets, completing the vFER or FAS process, bank reconciliations, and other financial reporting. The Accountant is responsible for consolidating regional financial reports and will serve as a critical support role to the Finance and Operations Manager (FOM). The Accountant will also work with the DAI home office accounting or project management staff to resolve project accounting issues. The Accountant will provide timely budget management support to activity managers/objective leads, as required.

The following comprise main responsibilities of the Accountant:

Financial Compliance:

• Support the FOM to ensure that DAI finance and operations policies and procedures are fully operationalized, developing where needed, standard operating procedures (SOPs), guidelines, checklists, and workflows to ensure compliance with established policies and procedures.
• Support in ensuring implementation of strong financial systems to guide RASS operations, and ensure they are adapted and maintained throughout the project period of performance.
• Support in highlighting and providing the need for any adjustments to the RASS Field Operations Manual, TAMIS workflows, and other policy and procedural documents.

Accounting and Finance:

• Provide support to activity managers to ensure accurate activity cash forecasting and projections including updating financial reporting and tracking tools as necessary.
• Ensure timely payment processing and disbursements in accordance with complete documentation.
• Manage travel and project advances and ensure timely advance liquidation.
• Ensure field accounting reports are completed in accordance with established deadlines.
• Ensure timely local payroll management and statutory tax disbursements.
• Ensure timely bank reconciliations.
• Ensure monthly accounting schedules are prepared on time and communicated to staff.
• Ensure appropriate filling and management of financial records.
• Support FOM and Director of Finance and Operations in coordinating project financial reviews.

Relations Management:

• Develop and maintain strong working relationships among both internal and external stakeholders, including but not limited to RASS staff, bank officials, NRA, among others.
• Support the FOM to undertake capacity building efforts and knowledge sharing to staff for enhanced functioning of financial performance and compliance.
• Provide support to the sub-grants team as needed.

QUALIFICATIONS

• Education and Work Experience: Bachelor’s degree in Finance or Accounting and three years of relevant work experience or Masters degree in finance or Accounting and one year of relevant work experience.
• Demonstrated Professional Knowledge: proven experience in systems development, generally accepted accounting principles, and office administration. USAID donor accounting experience is an advantage.
• Demonstrated Professional Ability: experience working with the Microsoft Office suite, including but not limited to Word, Excel, and Outlook as well as any finance/accounting software used to track transactions.
• Demonstrated Communication Skills: Ability to communicate/collaborate effectively across teams, cultures, including with team members based in other countries and time zones. Professional fluency in English and Juba Arabic a must, local languages a plus.

REQUIRED ATTRITBUTES OF ALL RASS TEAM MEMBERS

• Be Flexible and Adaptive – given the pace and frequency at which conditions may change in South Sudan, team members are expected to be agile with position requirements, adapting to changing circumstances to successfully meet the objectives of the contract with USAID.
• Be Collaborative and Inclusive –individual team members are expected to model openness to new and competing ideas, seek feedback from colleagues, demonstrate and internalize respect for diverse opinions, and proactively create safe spaces for participation in decision-making processes to ensure the views of different groups, gender, and levels of understanding and experience within systems where RASS operates are considered and incorporated into activity programming, security, and development of RASS policies and procedures.