About Open Ownership 

Open Ownership (OO) is driving the global shift towards transparency over who owns and controls legal vehicles, known as beneficial ownership transparency (BOT). 

We are working to create a world where governments, businesses, and citizens can readily access and effectively use accurate, complete, and high-quality evidence and information on the true owners of companies and other legal vehicles. A key focus for 2025-2030 for Open Ownership is to integrate beneficial ownership transparency to help governments raise more, lose less, and spend better. 

To achieve this, our team of implementation, digital, policy, and research experts work on:

• Supporting governments to implement effective beneficial ownership transparency reforms and use beneficial ownership data

• Conducting research into and advocating for global best practices, effectiveness, and impact

• Building the global information architecture for data sharing

We are a remote organisation with a growing global team of professionals based in Argentina, Chile, France, Mexico, Namibia, Nigeria, the Philippines, South Africa, and Spain and the United Kingdom (UK).

We offer a fast-paced environment with an emphasis on agility and flexibility. People who enjoy learning and variety in their work will be particularly well-suited for our team. Although home-based, our fully remote team does meet in-person at least once a year (restrictions allowing).

Purpose of the post

OO has a well-developed offer regarding support to countries to advance beneficial ownership transparency reforms, including technical help to implement policy and legislative reforms. However, we have repeatedly seen that governments also need help navigating the difficulties they encounter when trying to implement the digital systems these reforms rely on. An increased focus on supporting the digital delivery of these reforms in recent years has shown that there is large demand for assistance in this area and models of support that we can offer. 

OO has already begun increasing focus on supporting countries to implement user-centred reforms and embed beneficial ownership data into decision-making processes (e.g. procurement, licensing, and tax oversight), and our experience from Chile, Mexico, Philippines and Zambia highlight the increasing need for expertise in digital and data systems and reform. Our data use research has also highlighted that inadequate information collection and exchange is hampering the effective use of beneficial ownership data. 

We have recently formed a Digital & Data team in order to continue developing and growing our offer of assistance for governments in developing beneficial ownership registers. This role will be the second member of this team.

We’re looking for someone with experience of working on digital reform in or directly with governments or other large, complex institutions, who knows the complexity of such projects and how to get them done effectively. You will want to apply this experience to: 

• coaching governments on the importance of putting users at the heart of reform efforts, 

• advising on the design of digital reform projects, including anything from agile development processes, user research, interaction with legislation and procurement of software development services

• assessing the quality of information produced by registers to improve its effective use.

You’ll have an eye for spotting common issues faced across the countries in which we work and an aptitude for producing approachable, high quality, publicly available guidance to help those we’re not working with directly. 

As well as this essential experience, we’re looking for people who can: communicate with both technical and policy audiences, and be comfortable sitting between these groups; simply and clearly communicate complex information; is keen to share knowledge on digital topics within the organisation; is keen to work in a complex and evolving policy and delivery environment; is sensitive to cultural differences in working styles and practices and can work across a diverse team and partners. 

Due to a combination of the current geographical spread of the organisation and countries we are currently working with, we are looking for candidates based in UTC+2 - UTC+9 for this position. While you won’t solely be working with governments in these timezones, at least initially, we think this will enable the organisation to meet growing demand for digital & data assistance internationally. 

Key tasks and responsibilities

• Support Open Ownership’s digital delivery to governments implementing BOT

• In collaboration with our Country Implementation Team, provide high-quality technical support to implementers to deliver usable beneficial ownership data. Provide help on data and system implementation topics related to BOT, including advice on designing and developing user-centred reforms and improving data quality and access 

• Support the development of colleagues leading our country implementation work to better understand and be confident in their knowledge of the importance of quality data and information in the advancement of BOT reforms

• Hire and manage local and international contractors and consultants necessary to deliver the above work.

• Develop guidance products for support to governments implementing BOT

• Use experience from country-level work to develop published, guidance that other implementers can use to improve the quality, availability, and use of beneficial ownership data 

• Test and iterate this guidance based on user feedback

• In collaboration with our Policy & Research Team, conduct user research projects to better understand Digital & Data issues arising from new and emerging policy areas.

• Support in developing OO’s digital and data offer to governments

• Support the development of  the strategy for this emerging area of work in the organisation, including developing new types or models of support to governments

• Ensure that this offer is clearly articulated and communicated internally and externally 

• Represent Open Ownership in meetings, conferences, and workshops to promote insights, best practices, and advancements in digital reform for beneficial ownership transparency.

• Helps with donor reporting on the above activities for monitoring, evaluation and learning (MEL) activities 

Candidate profile

We're eager to meet people that bring demonstrable experience of working in or with governments on digital delivery and reform. Besides this experience, we’re open to meeting people with a range of skills and backgrounds. At this point, we hope you're excited about the job description you’re reading. Even if you don't think that you meet every single other requirement, we still encourage you to apply.

Our ideal candidate would demonstrate a number of the following experience, skills and attributes:

• 3-5 years of experience working in or with governments (or other large, complex institutions) on digital and data reforms. This could be either through direct work in governments, or in consultancy / technical assistance to governments/institutions. We are looking for individuals who knows what it takes to get digital reforms done in governments in order to deliver on policy goals. This may involve experience working as a service designer, product manager, user researcher or equivalent positions in digital transformation projects, but we understand different contexts name these roles very differently - it’s the experience that counts, not your job title [Essential]

• Experience and knowledge of the digital service/product lifecycle and how this is implemented in practice, including relevant practices (agile development processes, user research and user-centred design, digital governance practices). 

• Experience of the policymaking process, particularly where that requires the development of new digital services

• An understanding of how to tailor advice and messaging to partners who are at very different points in their digital transformation journey 

• An understanding of relevant data and technical concepts (databases, database query languages, use of APIs, systems/data architecture, data standards). We’re not necessarily looking for people with the ability to code or do complex data analysis or modelling, but someone with enough familiarity with technical concepts to be able to explain them to non-technical audiences, and also to hold their own in a conversation with more technical people

• The ability to self-organise and work autonomously and collaboratively in a remote organisation across multiple time zones

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills (English), particularly the ability to clearly explain complex technical topics to unfamiliar audiences

• Willing and able to travel internationally;

• A self-starter and can manage competing priorities without much supervision; 

• A quick learner, able to swiftly understand information about complex issues; 

Application process 

We want to hear from all voices, and particularly encourage individuals of diverse and marginalised communities to apply. If there is a requirement in the job description which you think you don’t quite meet but are still keen to apply then please do. 

Please note that Open Ownership is a fiscally sponsored organisation and the contract will be executed in the name of our fiscal sponsor Global Impact, a non-profit, on behalf of Open Ownership. 

Open Ownership uses the Applied platform for our recruitment which is designed to promote diversity and inclusion through anonymised applications and scenario-based questions. Our initial process will be solely based on your anonymised answers within the Applied platform. We will also ask you to submit your CV, but your CV will not be reviewed unless we decide to invite you to interview. 

OO recognises the growing role of generative artificial intelligence in the job application process. Over the last year, we have seen a significant increase in the number of applications we receive for our vacancies and we have noticed that many of the applications are becoming similar and generic. Large language models (LLMs) can be a valuable tool to enhance your application, but it is important to use it ethically and responsibly, while remembering that AI has an environmental impact.  

We urge candidates to maintain integrity and professionalism when integrating AI into their job application. Copying AI-generated content verbatim can lead to plagiarism concerns and will make your application appear generic and impersonal. If you think you must use LLMs in order to best represent yourself, we encourage you to shape the answer initially yourself and use LLMs to polish the language, rather than having the LLM frame the initial answer. We will not mark candidates down for spelling or grammatical errors. 

Please note that we will mark down answers that appear generic or very similar to a large number of other answers to the question. We want to hear about the real you, and appreciate candidates who bring originality and a human touch to their applications.

Depending on the volume of applications we receive, we may use the Applied platforms AI screening assistant. We will make this decision upon reviewing the number of applicants to this position. You can see more information about this tool here:

https://appliedhelp.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/24912865414173-What-is-the-Applied-AI-Screening-Assistant

If you reach the final stage of interviews, we will retain your details for future posts at Open Ownership, unless you tell us otherwise.