Based at the Expertise France coordination office in Paris, the Procurement & Contracts Officer reports directly to the Support Services Coordinator. The post-holder steers the full procurement cycle and the day-to-day management of implementation contracts for the Facility, ensuring strict compliance with Expertise France and donor rules.

While the role carries no direct line-management duties, the Officer works hand-in-hand with the Admin & Finance Officer to align contractual commitments with payment and budget follow-up, and collaborates closely with project teams, suppliers, and Member-State partners.

Responsibility 1 – Procurement Planning & Process Management

• Map upcoming procurement needs and keep a rolling procurement plan (“PPC”) up to date with the programme team, including anticipated expert requirements.
• Provide upstream support to expert sourcing by liaising with project teams to define expert profiles, identify priority pools or shortlists, and feed this information into tender documentation.
• Draft or refine administrative and technical specifications that form part of complete tender dossiers.
• Launch and steer procurement procedures (framework contracts, competitive tenders, direct awards) in strict accordance with Expertise France rules and validation workflows and in close coordination with EF dedicated units (DAJ, CCA, USP)
• Check the format and compliance of all quotes, coordinate evaluation committees, prepare award notices, and draft supplier contracts for signature.Keep a full, auditable record of every step—specifications, bids, evaluations, contracts—in both digital and hard-copy form.

Responsibility 2 – Contract Administration & Implementation Follow-up

• Keep a live register of contracts, tracking key dates, deliverables, and financial ceilings.
• Verify receipt of goods and services, collect delivery reports, and flag performance issues early.
• Monitor the payment schedule (advances and instalments) in close cooperation with the Administration & Finance Officer.
• Record, justify, and process any agreed price revisions or contract amendments.
• Maintain active supplier liaison until final delivery and contract close-out.
• File and archive all invoices and supporting documents—physical and digital—in line with EF policy.

Responsibility 3 – Compliance, Controls & Record-Keeping

• Enforce donor and EF procurement rules at every stage, correcting deviations on the spot.
• Ensure the format and content of both quotes and invoices remain fully compliant.
• Run periodic self-checks, contribute to internal audits, and supply evidence to external auditors.
• Keep all procurement files—specifications, tenders, evaluation minutes, contracts, invoices—organised and searchable.
• Update procedures and templates when EF regulations or the Facility standard operating procedures evolve.
• Safeguard confidential supplier data and ensure GDPR-compliant handling of all records.

Responsibility 4 – Coordination and Capacity Building

• Act as the procurement focal point for Member-State agencies and project teams, promoting harmonised approaches while taking into account the specific procedures and constraints of each agency.
• Coach EF programme staff on drafting clear specifications, structuring evaluation grids, and spotting compliance pitfalls.
• Share lessons learned and best practices, feeding them back into future tenders and contract templates.
• Continuously analyse the expertise-mobilisation workflow across the Facility -tracking lead times, bottlenecks, and partner constraints - and feed insights into process tweaks.
• Identify and roll out accelerated sourcing measures (priority pools, expert pre-validation, collaborative agreements with public institutions) to cut mobilisation delays.
• Contribute to capacity-building materials - checklists, quick-reference guides, mini-trainings - that keep procurement knowledge current across the team.

The outlined responsibilities necessitate establishing connections with the support units of MS agencies in Europe, along with EF personnel based at the Addis Ababa office in Ethiopia.