Senior Digital Transformation & SME Growth Specialist

CGAP; Washington (District of Columbia); On-site; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

World Bank Group is seeking a specialist to accelerate SME digitalization and real-sector transformation across sectors. You will lead diagnostics, design programs for e-commerce, cloud tools, and digital finance, and build skills-to-jobs linkages with a focus on women and youth.

You will coordinate across country teams, develop scalable playbooks, and mobilize partnerships with technology firms, financial institutions, and development partners to deliver measurable employment outcomes.

Responsibilities

• Strategy and diagnostics: Lead country and sector diagnostics on SME digital readiness, adoption barriers, market opportunities, and jobs. Convert findings into prioritized roadmaps, investment plans, delivery models, budgets, and measurable results.
• SME digitalization: Design programs that help firms adopt e-commerce, cloud tools, payments, cybersecurity, data analytics, and AI. Develop shared services, accelerators, voucher models, supplier-development programs, and digital finance pathways.
• Jobs and skills: Build skills-to-jobs approaches linking employers, SMEs, platforms, training providers, and labor-market systems. Address entrepreneurship, platform work, workforce transitions, and AI-complementary jobs, with attention to women and youth.
• Real-sector transformation: Help sector teams identify high-value use cases and redesign firm processes, services, and value chains. Develop reusable approaches spanning agriculture, health, manufacturing, tourism, water, finance, and other sectors.
• Enabling environment and partnerships: Advise on competition, data governance, interoperability, digital trade, consumer protection, procurement, and public-private collaboration. Mobilize technology firms, financial institutions, investors, academia, and development partners.
• Operations and investment: Support concept notes, project design, TORs, technical specifications, supervision, and results frameworks. Identify pathways for private capital mobilization, market creation, and integrated WBG delivery.
• Knowledge and scale: Produce practical toolkits, playbooks, case studies, and a digital transformation for real sector training accelerator program. Test approaches through pilots, capture evidence, and scale effective models across regions.

Job description

World Bank Group is seeking a specialist to accelerate SME digitalization and real-sector transformation across sectors. You will lead diagnostics, design programs for e-commerce, cloud tools, and digital finance, and build skills-to-jobs linkages with a focus on women and youth.

You will coordinate across country teams, develop scalable playbooks, and mobilize partnerships with technology firms, financial institutions, and development partners to deliver measurable employment outcomes.