Market Engagement Manager, Digital Inclusion

FTC until March 2027

What the hiring manager says

“This role is a unique opportunity to support the mobile industry and its partners in delivering mobile connectivity to underserved members of society in a way that is both commercially attractive and socially impactful. Based in London, this position is ideal for someone with a strong commercial background who is also passionate about international development and digital inclusion for women and underserved communities. The GSMA’s role in the mobile industry allows us to have a significant impact by working with industry partners on the ground who are delivering high-impact initiatives at scale, particularly across Africa and Asia. Our dynamic and passionate team has already delivered tangible results and is ambitious to achieve even more especially on advancing digital skills and improving handset affordability. This role offers varied and broad opportunities to drive meaningful and sustainable inclusion for the underserved.”

Kim Viljoen – Market Engagement Director, Digital Inclusion

About the Team

GSMA Mobile for Development (M4D) is a dedicated global team within the GSMA, which brings together our mobile operator members, tech innovators, the development community and governments, to prove the power of mobile in emerging markets.

The GSMA’s Connected Society Programme works with the mobile industry and key stakeholders to increase access to and adoption of the mobile internet, focusing on underserved population groups in developing markets. For more information, please visit the GSMA Connected Society website at: www.gsma.com/connectedsociety

GSMA Connected Women works with mobile operators and their partners to address the barriers to women accessing and using mobile internet and mobile money services. For more information, please visit the GSMA Connected Women website at: www.gsma.com/connectedwomen.

About the Role

You will work as part of the Connected Society and Connected Women Market Engagement teams to help cultivate and support a portfolio of mobile operators and partners interested in accelerating digital inclusion for the underserved. A core focus of this role will be to support actions by operators to address key digital inclusion barriers, including digital skills and affordability among others. You will leverage GSMA assets, including our relevant insights and toolkits, such as the GSMA Mobile Internet Skills Training Toolkit.

You will be confident and informed in making recommendations for the team’s strategy and increasing the impact of our work, as well as providing strategic advisory support to the mobile industry and their partners. You will use your close relationships and clear understanding of the evolving business needs of mobile operators to inform the strategic direction of the team. You will stay up to speed with key advancements and opportunities for mobile industry stakeholders to drive digital inclusion for underserved communities, specifically understanding the impact of current initiatives to improve digital skills.

You will provide thought leadership by analysing market opportunities and contributing to the design of digital skills propositions alongside other interventions like handset affordability initiatives. You will create and deliver strategy workshops for operators, implement train-the-trainer sessions, and collaborate to guide the launch and scale of initiatives. Additionally, you will refine and develop helpful tools and resources, including technical support resources and digital skills training content, to support these efforts. You will also track and report on both the commercial and social outcomes of interventions.

We actively support cross-sector partnerships as a means to reach women and underserved population groups at scale. You will be responsible for stakeholder engagement, facilitating collaboration, and helping to drive our digital skills agenda. You will engage cross-functionally within mobile operator teams, helping to drive action.

You will have strong written, communication, and presentation skills in the English language, and preferably in French as well. You will apply your informed understanding of the initiatives underway to drive digital inclusion. You will collect and analyse trend data, document insights and learnings, and share your findings with the industry ecosystem through blog posts, case studies, and presentations.

About You

We welcome applications from professionals with the following demonstrated qualifications:

• Strong commercial experience is a must have. This may be gained through working as a management consultant or within corporate strategy, business planning or marketing functions, ideally within the telecoms industry.
• Strategic and analytical capabilities in understanding and assessing new business models, including experience identifying commercial opportunities and their potential impact when successfully scaled.
• Interest and experience in operator strategies for driving inclusion of the underserved, specifically through digital skills or customer education campaigns. Ideally, you have experience in delivering or engaging with digital skills interventions aimed at underserved populations. Experience on initiatives to improve handset affordability is a plus.
• Familiarity with reaching undeserved populations, such as women, rural, low-income or persons with disabilities, in low- and middle-income countries is a must have. Ideally this would be through experience in the mobile for development sector and/or working with mobile operators in emerging markets.
• Experience working across cultures with globally dispersed teams.
• Ability to work independently, self-motivated, entrepreneurial, and organised to deliver high-impact outputs.
• Strong interpersonal, relationship-building and public speaking skills are a must have, in order to develop constructive relationships with diverse stakeholders with an emphasis on mobile network operators. Ideally candidates would have solid experience of C-suite level interactions.
• Project management skills, fluent and compelling written and oral communication (English is essential), the ability to summarise insights and articulate concisely in both PowerPoint and other reports. Conscientious and creative with a can-do attitude, and capable of managing complex projects that may present unexpected challenges.
• A professional working knowledge of French would be helpful for this role.
• Excited to travel

Contract type

Worker type

What We Offer

Working at the GSMA offers you unparalleled access to the mobile industry. We offer a chance to truly shape the direction of mobile, whatever your role. By joining the GSMA, you will be exposed to a fast-paced rapidly evolving environment, working on global solutions, genuinely fascinating and industry-changing projects and a stimulating and dynamic environment designed to enable you to flourish.

In addition to architect-designed offices and competitive compensation, our benefits include fantastic learning & development opportunities, generous holiday allowances, four additional days off for professional development and many others.

To learn more about the GSMA, visit our career site, our LinkedIn page and our Twitter page.

Being You at the GSMA

We care deeply about diversity, equity and inclusivity and aspire to be the best at it. Your well-being and work/life balance is important, so flexi-time and remote working is available to all staff. We're keen to ensure everyone is equal, represented and connected so we particularly encourage applications from all demographics. The sucess of the GSMA year on year will continue to be contributed by people from all walks of life.

GSMA Values

Our values not only drive our culture – they shape how we work and interact inside and outside our global organisation.

Passionately driven

We approach everything we do with unparalleled capability, tenacity and commitment, knowing that the challenging scale, pace and complexity of our work is what leads to its world-changing impact.

Insightful leaders

We continually develop and engage our expertise, insight and creativity so that we’re always ready to respond to the changing landscape with authority, agility and nuance.

Stronger together

We lean on each other so the industry can lean on us, embracing our diversity by actively seeking out perspectives and skill sets beyond our own, fuelling each other’s successes and constantly asking how we can help.

Underpinning our values is our collective mindset to show up purposefully as good human beings every day, in every situation. When we’re at our best – we are collaborative, considerate and compassionate to others, and we create a safe space for one another to thrive, assuming positive intent in our colleagues. And if we aren’t at our best and the pressure is on – we feel free to be ourselves but still remain curious, lean into the tough stuff and we are always respectful to others and accountable for the part we play.