Senior Data Support Manager

The submission deadline is September 1, 2026

Summary

The Open Contracting Partnership is hiring a Senior Data Support Manager for the Asia region (especially East, South and Southeast Asia) to help change the world with public procurement data. Governments around the world spend 13 trillion USD every year on goods, works, and services with the private sector. Unfortunately, public procurement is the government’s #1 risk of corruption, mismanagement and inefficiency. You will be providing hands-on support to reformers around the world to improve their public procurement systems to become measurably more efficient, equitable, and sustainable.

We are looking for people with an excellent understanding of how to model, analyse, and translate data into decision-making while encouraging participation and transparency. We want someone who knows how to design systems, is a passionate problem-solver, and loves to build the capacity of others. You must love working with data (and lots of it), and you should have an open, collaborative, and learning mindset to work across a global team and with government, private and CSO partners, with a focus on Asia. We are also keen on programming skills to support OCP’s growing suite of tools.

About us

The Open Contracting Partnership is a silo-busting global charity working to open up and transform public procurement and contracting worldwide.

Public procurement is the world’s largest marketplace, accounting for one in every three dollars spent by the government. It’s vital for public services, economic inclusion and innovation, yet it is also a government’s number one corruption risk and, too often, a slow-moving, paper-based chore. Too many governments don’t know what they are buying from whom for how much and why.

We are changing all that, working with reformers inside and outside of government to ‘think differently’ about procurement and make it a smart, digital public service, saving money and time, delivering better goods and services to citizens and unlocking innovation. We want to deliver better outcomes for people and the planet from all that spending. To that end, OCP is leading in loads of transformational projects, from helping the reconstruction in Ukraine, to reducing the prices of essential medicines in Chile, to tackling corruption in the Dominican Republic, to citizen monitoring of public contracts in Uganda, to supporting the UK’s once-in-a-generation procurement reforms.

Asia stands out for its diversity of countries and cultures and its size. With half of the world’s top 12 spenders on public contracts and over half the world’s population in the region, public procurement has the potential to change billions of lives for the better.

This is why we are doing big things to open up public contracting in the region, including working on improving public investment in flood and heat mitigation in India; using data and technology to improve procurement audit and complaints in Indonesia; and digital transformation of public procurement for improved integrity in the Philippines.

About the role

We are looking for a highly motivated and skilled professional to join us in a full-time position as a Senior Data Support Manager. This specialist will help our partners to take a data-driven approach to improve public procurement outcomes (and by extension, improve the lives of millions of people).

OCP works with governments around the world to publish public contracting data, mainly following the Open Contracting Data Standard (OCDS). Presently, there are around 60 OCDS publishers. But our overarching goal is to deliver data support as a means to achieving broader economic, social and climate/environmental goals (rather than to publish data in a particular format). Our work in Asia is already delivering results, from building climate resilience (such as for floods and heat in India) to fighting corruption in Indonesia, to restoring trust and integrity in the Philippines.

Many of our partners want to use technology to improve procurement outcomes, but also struggle with the digitization process. They are looking for guidance on how to collect, structure, and use data to make better decisions and to create a better user experience for the procurement systems.

The OCDS is still our most relevant tool to assist these partners, but we need innovative skills, experience, and ideas to advise partners on a variety of technical issues that will help them to achieve their goals of fairer, more efficient, and corruption-free public procurement systems. By joining the team, you will be helping us to rethink how we deliver the best data and digitization support ever to our partners.

We work closely with local partners and consultants, meaning that experience overseeing and handholding technical work done by others and advising on best practices is also desirable. Many governments are not ready for advanced solutions or tools. They often do not even have basic digital infrastructure, and the existing data is scattered and low quality. Experience working in this type of environment and solving things on the go is a big plus. Finally, experience with managing relationships with government stakeholders in the region is also appreciated.

The successful candidates will work remotely from an agreed location where they have employment authorization but should be prepared to travel frequently to support local partners in Asia.

For this position, you must be based where your working hours can cover the Asia region (UTC+5:00 to +9:00). Based on our current projects, our preferred locations are Indonesia, India, Philippines and Thailand but we are open to elsewhere for strong candidates who are able to travel regularly.

Responsibilities

The Senior Data Support Manager will regularly perform the following tasks:

Supporting Improved Data Collection and Publication (likely 40% of your time), involving the following tasks:

• Work alongside OCP program managers to understand the goals, current systems & processes, capacities, and resources of our current partners
• Design support programs for partners according to their goals, capacity, context, and needs, and show leadership to implement the model with the partner
• Supervise and advise on the technical work done by local consultants
• Review data and systems, and make recommendations on how they can be improved to help the partners meet their goals
• Designing templates and tools to help support data publication
• Advising on data modeling
• Advisory support on open data publication with a focus on data use, including documenting publication policies, licenses, disclosing key fields, and quality data

Supporting Data Use to Achieve Goals (c. 30% of your time), involving the following tasks:

• Collect and perform analysis with data to demonstrate its usefulness or to help partners to measure progress towards their goals against performance indicators
• Designing templates and tools to help support data use
• Data visualization to explain complex data to a non-technical audience
• Advisory support to partners on methodologies and procurement indicators
• Advisory support to partners building data visualizations, portals, and business intelligence tools

Advising on digitization and data architecture (c. 20% of your time), involving the following tasks:

• Advisory support to partners adopting electronic procurement systems or making improvements to their existing databases and electronic systems
• Supporting the preparation of and reviewing technical requirements for software

Capacity and Community Building (c. 10% of your time) involving the following tasks:

• Develop training materials and deliver training on matters related to open data, the OCDS, systems architecture, data analytics, and other topics as relevant to the delivery of our data support
• Contributing to the ongoing development of the OCDS
• Document learning and guidance to share with the open contracting global community
• Delivering presentations and facilitating sessions in virtual and in-person conferences and workshops

Depending on the skills and experience of the selected individuals, the following tasks may also be part of the work:

• Software development
• Application of machine learning and/or artificial intelligence techniques

We know that long lists of criteria can be daunting and that some candidates will not apply for a role unless they feel they are 100% qualified. If you feel you meet at least most of the essential criteria, we still encourage you to apply.

Required expertise and experience

• Data analysis and visualization skills - including:
  • Experience working with machine-readable formats, including CSV and JSON
  • Data cleaning, analysis, and visualization skills with open-source tools and common data analysis tools (particularly Python and SQL; BI is desirable)
  • Ability to work with sizeable datasets (presently, our entire database stores tens of GBs of OCDS data)
  • Expertise in data interpretation, analysis of results using statistical techniques, data collection from primary or secondary data sources, and database maintenance
  • Experience working with low-quality and scattered data collection and analysis
• Data architecture - to support the design and implementation of technical architecture to achieve data collection, validation, processing, and outputs
• Ability to write engaging content on complex subjects for non-technical audiences
• Good communication and interpersonal skills to promote strong collaborative relationships with partners and tough leadership to lead technical work
• Experience managing consultants and overseeing technical work
• Design and user research skills
• Excellent written and spoken English
• Ability to travel internationally regularly

Desired expertise and skills

As mentioned, we don’t expect you to have all of these but we value:

• Training and facilitation skills, including experience in adult learning, teaching, education, or training
• Knowledge of public financial management systems, public procurement, and open data and electronic procurement systems (e-GPs)
• Knowledge of climate mitigation (floods, heat) and disaster risk score models
• Monitoring and Evaluation metrics implementation
• Experience with Business Intelligence tools
• Experience working with GIS (Geographic Information System) data
• Participation in user research and technical requirements writing is appreciated
• Programming skills - preferably with SQL and Python (used primarily by our team)
• Ability to work with online collaboration tools, including version control tools like git
• Project management experience
• Business-level language proficiency in Thai, Bahasa, Filipino, Tagalog, Chinese, Japanese or Korean is desired

Personal attributes

We are a diverse group of high-performing individuals who together make up an unstoppable team. We are looking for some key characteristics for this essential role:

• Is committed to our mission and strategy
• Is committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion in the workplace
• Is dedicated and focused on delivery and getting things done
• Is comfortable with remote working and co-working tools like Slack, Google Suite
• Has the patience to work with government agencies
• Works well independently and as part of a global team
• Prioritizes well in the face of a complex workload, effectively handling regular deadlines and (occasional) last-minute requests
• Solves problems creatively, finding simple solutions and being open to adapting
• Is open to new ideas, to new alliances, to diversity, to sharing, to taking chances
• Has impeccable integrity
• Has close attention to detail, while being able to see the big picture
• Has humility and grace, giving credit to others and taking responsibility when things go wrong
• Has a sense of fun and joy for the work, and can encourage that in others

Reporting

Senior Data Support Manager will report to OCP’s Head of Data Services, Yohanna Lisnichuk

Compensation and benefits

We offer opportunities for professional development and travel, an excellent benefits package, and compensation in accordance with our predetermined salary bands. We also offer a generous matched pension contribution of up to 10%.

The Senior Manager salary band is US$84,341 to US$112,455.

The Senior Manager will work remotely and must have the right to work in the country/region they intend to be based in. OCP is unable to facilitate working visas for any country.

About the team

OCP is a small, multidisciplinary, and global team with expertise in public procurement, program management, advocacy, data standards, software development, and data analysis.

We have projects in dozens of countries that are managed by our program staff. The goal of our program managers is to support local partners in implementing open contracting reforms that achieve measurable impact.

You will be working under OCP’s Head of Data Services, Yohanna Lisnichuk, as part of the Data and Technology team led by Lindsey Marchessault (Director of Impact and Innovation). You will work alongside Umrbek Allakulov and Felix Penna. You will collaborate with OCP’s technology team (Head of Technology, James McKinney, and Andrii Hazin) and with OCP’s Head of Data Analytics and Learning, Camila Salazar.

You will collaborate closely with our regional program staff, Bernadine Fernz, Head of Asia, and Nishant Bhatnagar, Senior Program Manager for Asia, who lead open contracting implementation in the region. You will contribute to programme and project design, and provide technical support to our local partners.

Application

We are dedicated to equal employment opportunities and aim to cultivate and sustain a diverse, equitable, and inclusive team. We really value and prioritize diversity because a range of experiences and perspectives enriches our work and strengthens our ability to address complex challenges.

The last date to apply is September 1, 2026. The start date is expected to be October/November 2026, depending on the successful candidates' availability.

Please submit a CV, cover letter, and 2 examples of your work. Only successful candidates will be contacted.

Many thanks and good luck!