Geospatial Analyst – Sustainable Sourcing – Careers at Unilever – Singapore.

Job Overview

Geospatial Analyst – Sustainable Sourcing

BACKGROUND AND MAIN JOB PURPOSE

This is an exciting role in Unilever’s Sustainable Sourcing team. Unilever has significantly stepped up its ambition to drive impact for people and nature in the transition from the Unilever Sustainable Living Plan (USLP) to the Unilever Compass strategy. The new multi-year commitments require embarking on an ambitious journey to change commodity supply chain traceability and transparency, to increase the accountability of upstream supply chain actors for environmental and social risk, and to deliver on our commitments to a deforestation-free supply chain.  This agenda requires the support of a Geospatial Analyst.

We need a highly curious and motivated individual to work at the intersection of data analysis, model-building and cartography. Your duties will include analyzing spatial data through mapping software and building and interpreting maps with geographic data and various other data sets. You will also use spatial and other intelligence to build predictive models to inform Unilever’s risk management, sourcing strategy and field programs.

This role will provide support to the Unilever Sustainable Sourcing Managers and Procurement Buyers to implement our sustainability and deforestation-free sourcing strategies with suppliers in palm oil, soy, cocoa, pulp and paper, and tea supply chains and impact projects and programs in forest protection and restoration, regeneration and carbon.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

Project Development and Management of the Unilever People and Nature Geospatial Dashboard and Digital Platform (including for Zero Deforestation):

• Develop, operationalize and project manage the Unilever People and Nature Geospatial Dashboard and Digital Platform (including for Zero Deforestation) of forest risk commodities that include palm oil, pulp and paper, soy, cocoa, and tea. This main task would be maintaining the dashboard and digital platform, bug fixing, building, curating and migrating consistent data schemes and a data repository, strengthening models and algorithms as they are tested and come online onto the platform.
• Manage service providers and consultants to deliver Zero Deforestation and traceability reporting from various datasets and geospatial information through an online dashboard for all forest risk commodities at Unilever.
• Manage the construction, development, and maintenance of data-driven decision-making geospatial tools and scorecards related to sustainability, traceability, and transparency for teams within Sustainable Sourcing and Procurement at Unilever.
• Support in the integration of datasets (especially geospatial information) for cross-cutting themes related to the Unilever People and Nature Policy that include data on social issues, natural ecosystems, biodiversity, restoration, and regenerative agriculture.
• Strengthen inferred sourcing area and traceability models with new data sets from key partners.

Data Curation, Models, Automation, Analysis, and Reporting:

• Integrate, manipulate, and maintain datasets from spatial datasets / data library from suppliers, service providers, and consultants, transitioning from ad hoc to systematic data collection and management process.
• Create spatially explicit data models relevant to Unilever’s supply chain of relevant biophysical and socioeconomic indicators of risk and impacts (e.g. deforestation, poverty. carbon, biodiversity, water, smallholder agriculture) using remote sensing and other datasets.
• Use geospatial data science to gain understanding of the likeliest links in the supply chain network (e.g. sourcing patterns of mills, trading relationships) based on prior knowledge of supply chain facilities and data on commodity flows.
• Analyze the data to give the Unilever Sustainable Sourcing and Procurement Buying teams information required to engage suppliers and source preferentially from origins that advance achievement of the Unilever People and Nature Policy and Compass Strategy commitments and to minimize risk.
• Lead the transition to consistent, automated, and low intervention digital processes by setting up workflows from currently manual processes.
• Take ownership of streamlining data collection and management for traceability workstreams that would unify datasets from Unilever factories to plantations and farms.
• Produce maps showing the spatial distribution of various kinds of data, including, but not limited to, mill and refinery sites, forest, deforestation, fires, smallholder distributions.
• Create “shapefiles” to merge topographical data with external data by layering external data over a topographical map.
• Produce reports on geographic data utilizing data visualizations.
• Apply mapping tools and integrate reports with procurement teams to act on deforestation & conversion alerts and external grievances.

Training, Capacity Building and Learning for Professional Growth:

• Provide training and onboarding material to empower the Sustainable Sourcing team and Procurement Buyers to be able to use data analytics and geospatial information unassisted through the Unilever People and Nature Geospatial Dashboard and Digital Platform.
• Lead the development and management of updates of Standard Operating Procedure (SOPs) of the People and Nature Dashboard and Platform.
• Build networks within the Sustainable Sourcing team and other teams working on sustainability, carbon, and climate goals across the business including the Unilever Safety and Environmental Assurance Center (SEAC).
• Build understanding of various workstreams in other parts of Procurement and Supply Chain at Unilever.

Support the Delivery and Implementation of the Unilever Compass:

• Develop an understanding of the supply chain for five deforestation-linked commodities globally from feedstock to final product.
• Support the Sustainable Sourcing and Procurement Managers in delivering the sustainability and Zero Deforestation strategy, particular the Unilever Compass goals for sustainable sourcing, regenerate nature, no-deforestation, climate and empower smallholders.
• Collaborate with cross functional teams to develop a road map for the implementation of geospatial analysis into Sustainable Sourcing and Procurement decision processes.
• Collaborate with team members to identify opportunities for geospatial analysis to support and inform decision making on social sustainability and human rights, biodiversity, restoration regeneration, climate change.

KEY REQUIREMENTS:

• University degree in Geospatial Information Systems, Environmental Studies, Supply Chain, Computer Science, Geography, Surveying or related field. Master’s Degree strongly preferred.
• Experience with mapping tools such as ArcGIS, QGIS, Google Earth Engine and proficiency with various mapping languages.
• Experience working with spatial data, both raster-based (grid cells with pixel data e.g. satellite image, carbon density map) and vector-based (geometries with data attributes e.g. census tract, palm oil plantation boundary)
• Experience working with JavaScript, Python, R, SQL and other computing languages.
• Excellent Excel & PowerPoint skills that support well-developed skills in presenting complex information, both visually and in writing
• Superior stakeholder management, both internal (across all hierarchies and functions) and external (with digital suppliers and consultants) and a willingness to collaborate and partner with different business functions at Unilever including Sustainable Sourcing, Procurement, UniOps (IT), Legal, Communications, external data providers.
• Agricultural supply chain knowledge and previous procurement experience is an advantage.
• Must be a self-starter with strong Bias for Action, Accountability & Responsibility and Growth Mindset.
• A willingness to work with uncertainty and information gaps; to set a direction where there is no precedent.
• Must be a strong executor, being able to work independently and virtually.
• Must lead both processes and people across a broad and diverse geographic and business environment.
• Able to work in fast paced environment and manage timelines
• Exceptional communication and influencing skills.
• Strong analytical mindset and curiosity.
• Outstanding quantitative skill set.
• Attention to detail and good problem-solving skills.
• Project and change management experience.

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