Urban Finance Consultant

Role Overview

This consultant will examine Moscow’s municipal capital spending and connect financial records with the locations of the infrastructure they support. The resulting analysis will help inform the financing sections of the city’s Voluntary Local Review (VLR), showing where investment is concentrated, how it is delivered, and where funding may fall short of SDG priorities.

Key Responsibilities

• Review Moscow’s public finance registry and compile capital infrastructure investments made during the most recent three financial years, applying a consistent classification approach.
• Work with municipal departments to identify the locations of major capital assets and resolve gaps or inconsistencies in location data.
• Build an organised, geo-referenced dataset linking expenditure records to infrastructure locations for use in spatial analysis and thematic mapping.
• Assess patterns in capital spending across the city and identify areas of investment concentration and potential underinvestment.
• Examine how infrastructure projects are financed and delivered, including the use of public-private partnerships and green finance instruments.
• Compare financing patterns with SDG implementation priorities and identify relevant municipal funding gaps.
• Develop technical material for the VLR and related SDG Discussion Papers, including analysis, charts, tables, maps, and supporting narrative.
• Revise financial analyses and spatial data layers in response to feedback from UN-Habitat reviewers and government counterparts.

Requirements & Qualifications

• Master’s degree or equivalent in economics, public policy, public finance, political science, development studies, or a related discipline. A first-level university degree plus two additional years of qualifying experience may be accepted instead.
• At least five years of relevant experience in public finance, public policy, or urban governance research.
• Demonstrated ability to analyse complex municipal financial datasets and turn findings into clear policy materials and visualisations, including heatmaps.
• Experience with own-source revenue and/or municipal finance.
• Experience in the Russian Federation or Moscow is an asset.
• Background in SDG-related work, urban sustainability reporting, or preparation of VLRs or VNRs is an asset.
• Experience working with international development organisations, including the United Nations, is an asset.