Jobs at HELP Logistics (Now Hiring) — 2 open

Your mission

1. Background and purpose
HELP Logistics and the Kühne Foundation are preparing a customs-readiness pilot for humanitarian shipments in selected pilot countries. The pilot aims to reduce avoidable customs delays, demurrage, detention, storage costs, and rework by identifying and correcting documents and compliance issues before shipments reach import customs.
The Customs Expert will provide local customs, regulatory, documentation, and stakeholder expertise. The role is practical and operational: the expert should be able to review real shipment files, identify clearance risks, explain local procedures, engage brokers and authorities. Findings shall be translated into checklists, process maps, business rules for process monitoring and document validation, which form the MVP requirements.

2. Scope of work
2.1 Customs process and requirements mapping

• Map the end-to-end customs and import clearance process for selected humanitarian health shipments into focus countries, from pre-shipment preparation to release and handover.
• Identify relevant stakeholders, systems, approvals, and handoffs, including customs authorities, single-window platforms, health regulators, standards bodies, port or airport authorities, treasury or finance actors, brokers, forwarders, consignees, and humanitarian partners.
• Develop country-specific requirements for selected commodities, modes of transport, and import lanes.

2.2 Shipment document review and error analysis

• Review historical and live shipment document sets, including invoices, packing lists, transport documents, certificates of origin, donation letters, exemption documents, import permits, regulatory approvals, conformity certificates, product certificates, temperature records, and customs declarations.
• Identify missing, late, inconsistent, incorrect, or unclear information across the documents that would delay import customs clearance.
• Analyze root causes of clearance issues, including HS code errors, inconsistent quantities or values, missing permits, exemption delays, product registration gaps, poor document formatting, unclear consignee details, mismatched references, or other errors.
• Classify issues as operational, documentary, regulatory, policy, system, broker, partner, or capacity related.

2.3 Evidence, MVP logic, and stakeholder engagement

• Support collection and interpretation of shipment-level evidence on clearance delays, document rejection rates, customs queries, rework loops, demurrage, detention, storage exposure, and avoidable costs.
• Distinguish between issues that can be prevented through a customs-readiness solution and issues that require policy reform, escalation, system changes, or institutional decisions.
• Translate local requirements into practical readiness checks, including document completeness, cross-document consistency, content validation, country-specific validation rules, and exception flags.
• Support engagement with brokers, forwarders, customs officials, regulators, government consignees, UN agencies, NGOs, and other local actors.
• Support the development of practical guidance, checklists, and training material for participating partners.

3. Deliverables

• Country-specific customs and import process map, including stakeholder, system, and agency handoffs.
• Country-specific requirements matrix and document checklist for selected commodities and shipment types.
• Review of selected historical and/or live shipment cases, including recurring customs-readiness issues and delay causes.
• Classification of issues by root cause and addressability, including input to baseline KPIs and the impact model.
• MVP readiness logic, including completeness checks, consistency checks, and country-specific validation rules.
• Stakeholder validation notes, pilot case reports, lessons learned, and country-specific scale-up recommendations.

Your profile

4. Required profile
The consultant should have the following experience and capabilities:

• Hands-on customs clearance experience in the relevant import country, gained through customs brokerage, freight forwarding, in-house import operations, humanitarian logistics, or relevant customs / regulatory authority roles.
• Direct experience with humanitarian, UN or donor-funded shipments, including donation letters, duty and tax exemptions, government consignees, urgent clearance, and exemption processes.
• Strong local import customs knowledge, including applicable regulations, customs procedures, clearance systems, government agencies, approval pathways, sources of regulatory updates, and practical differences between the formal process and how clearance works in practice.
• Documentation and data-quality expertise, including deep understanding of which documents are required for different commodities, shipment flows, import regimes, and transport modes, and the ability to review full shipment files to identify missing documents, missing data, inconsistencies, format issues, incorrect references, and clearance risks.
• Strong understanding of customs and trade compliance fundamentals, including HS classification, customs valuation, origin determination, Incoterms, permits, licences, exemptions, product descriptions, quantity/value consistency, and common causes of document rejection or customs queries.
• Knowledge of regulated goods and transport operations, especially public health products, pharmaceuticals, medical supplies, vaccines, diagnostics, medical devices, cold-chain shipments, relevant import routes, ports, airports, inland corridors, brokers, forwarders, and key logistics actors.
• Ability to design practical readiness processes and rules, including process maps, document checklists, master-data requirements, validation rules, readiness criteria, root-cause analysis of clearance errors, and practical recommendations for operational and technical teams.
• Strong local network and stakeholder skills, with credibility among brokers, freight forwarders, customs authorities, regulators, government consignees, logistics providers, UN agencies, NGOs, and other relevant actors, plus the ability to communicate neutrally and constructively across these groups.

Additional experience with customs or freight software, national single-window systems, digital trade compliance tools, shipment performance measurement, or training teams on customs readiness would be an advantage.

5. Working arrangements and confidentiality
The Customs Expert will work as part of the core pilot team and report to the Project Lead or designated Workstream Lead. The consultant will work closely with local partner focal points.
The assignment may include remote work, document review, interviews, stakeholder meetings, validation workshops, and selected site visits. The consultant will handle sensitive shipment, partner, commercial, government, and operational information. All documents, data, findings, and stakeholder inputs must be treated as confidential and used only for the purposes of the pilot.
The role will be considered successful if the pilot team has a validated understanding of the selected country clearance process, a credible evidence base on recurring customs-readiness issues, practical MVP readiness checks, stakeholder validation, and pilot cases showing whether improved readiness can reduce document rejections, customs queries, clearance delays, rework, or avoidable costs.

Application:

Qualified individual consultants are invited to submit the following documents:

• A brief cover letter outlining their motivation and suitability for the assignment.
• A detailed, up-to-date CV, including relevant country experience, customs clearance experience, humanitarian or public health import experience, and contact details for three professional referees.
• A short technical proposal, maximum 3 pages, describing the proposed approach to the assignment, including shipment document review, customs process mapping, stakeholder engagement, identification of recurring clearance issues, and translation of findings into readiness checks for the pilot.
• A financial proposal, including the proposed daily rate, estimated availability, and any expected reimbursable costs. The financial proposal should specify whether the rate is inclusive or exclusive of taxes and other charges.

Applications will be reviewed based on technical qualifications, relevant country and humanitarian import experience, proposed approach, availability, and financial proposal. Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted.

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