Technical Field Manager – Standards & Training, Ukraine (Subject to Funding)

The starting salary for this position is £71,830.20 GBP / approx. $89,970 USD per annum including all allowances.

About MAG

MAG (Mines Advisory Group) is an international humanitarian organisation based in Manchester, UK, and working in 32 countries. We remove landmines and unexploded ordnance to release safe and productive land for communities, and work to reduce the threat of armed violence by supporting governments to safely manage weapons and ammunition. In 1997, MAG was a co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize for our work campaigning for the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention.

About the Ukraine programme

Since the Russian invasion of 24th February 2022, Ukraine has been subjected to heavy artillery bombardment, missile, and air strikes, as well as the use of landmines and cluster munitions. The scale of the conflict and the use of high impact and indiscriminate weapons requires an urgent and extensive response. MAG responded to the crisis in 2022 and now employs nearly 200 staff in our Ukraine programme, in a range of operational and support/administrative activities with further scale-up planned during 2024. The programme has a representation office in Kyiv, and operational offices in Mykolaiv (also covering accessible areas of Kherson) and now in Kharkiv. MAG has received accreditation for EORE, NTS, TS, Manual Demining and BAC and is currently working on its first minefields of the year in Mykolaiv. With the arrival of 2 Minewolves in mid-April, the programme will move towards mechanical accreditation during late spring; this will be followed by seeking EOD accreditation.

About the role

This is an exciting opportunity to join our growing Ukraine programme to lead on technical instruction and quality assurance for our operations teams. Our Technical Field Managers are the core of our work and actively manage, lead, and capacity build our teams of locally recruited staff to safely implement our life saving mine clearance and EOD projects. You will join our standards and training team to develop and deliver quality Training Management Packages in all areas of land release, operational management, and technical EOD competencies in compliance with our Global Technical Standards, Standard Operating Procedures, mission and mandate. You will work in challenging contexts away from home comforts, but the lifesaving impacts the work has on local communities is very real, and rewarding.

About you

You must have a recognised and relevant EOD/demining qualification and have extensive experience of managing efficient minefield clearance/EOD/SALW operations, ideally in an integrated clearance (manual and mechanical) setting. You will have excellent people management skills and proven experience in managing training and QA operations, designing training material, and conducting formal and informal training for diverse groups of people. You must be able to demonstrate strong communication skills and examples of where you have used mentoring and coaching skills to conduct training programmes.

You will need to have excellent diplomacy and liaison skills to effectively build relationships with our national partners and authorities with the ability to contribute technical knowledge and clearance targets in proposals and reports. It is also crucial that you are self-reliant and hold a high level of initiative as you will need to work independently and travel within the country. Fluent written and spoken English language skills are essential. Finally, you must be willing to take on the challenges of working in a complex context like Ukraine, and working as part of a flexible and committed team, to save lives in communities that need it most.