Consultant - Cost & Pricing

HealthX Partners•Washington, DC

3d•Remote

About The Position

PSI seeks an external consultant to provide on-call advisory services to its Cost and Pricing (C&P) function, supplementing internal capacity during periods of high proposal volume. The consultant will provide specialist support in cost and pricing, budget development, and budget review to staff across PSI’s global network. The C&P team will assign and prioritize requests. At the C&P team’s request, the consultant will respond to cost and pricing queries; review proposal budgets and narratives; advise on solicitation cost and pricing requirements; support or lead budget development; and provide ad-hoc assistance. The consultant will also strengthen staff capacity in budget development and cost estimation, provide time-bound training and support, and troubleshoot Excel budget models. Deliverables include written review comments, monthly progress reports, and agreed capacity-strengthening activities. The engagement is a part-time consultant contract and is remote in the United States. The consultant sets their own working hours, with most tasks completed asynchronously, and is expected to coordinate with team members for meetings and updates. Biweekly check-ins are expected throughout the engagement.

Requirements

Demonstrated cost and pricing experience, including developing proposal budgets for a variety of government and non-government funders in international development.
Experience budgeting for a variety of grant and contract types, such as cost-reimbursable, milestone-based, and firm-fixed-price arrangements.
Professional proficiency in the MS Office suite.
Strong MS Excel skills, including familiarity with advanced functions such as Pivot Tables, XLOOKUP, SUMIFS, and IF statements.
Excellent interpersonal, written, and verbal communication skills.
Flexibility to handle a workload that often necessitates adjusting priorities.

Responsibilities

Provide first-line responses to cost and pricing queries submitted through the C&P mailbox, and flag policy-level or sensitive issues to the C&P team for decision.
Conduct technical reviews of assigned proposal budgets and budget narratives, providing written feedback on accuracy, consistency, cost reasonableness, indirect cost rates, donor cost principles, and solicitation requirements.
Provide advisory input on solicitation cost and pricing requirements for assigned proposals.
Draft responses to solicitation questions, prepare budget templates, and support or lead budget development for assigned proposals.
Share guidance and good practices to strengthen country office capacity in budget development and cost estimation.
Deliver a discrete, time-bound training and support series to strengthen staff capacity and confidence in independently completing proposal budgets.
Troubleshoot formula errors, broken links, and template issues in budget models, and recommend improvements to spreadsheet structure.
Submit written review comments within agreed turnaround times.
Provide a monthly progress report covering help-desk tickets, observations, tool revisions, and other cost and pricing requests.
Coordinate with PSI C&P staff, including through expected biweekly check-ins and scheduling joint meetings and updates.