Request for Expressions of Interest

Individual Consultant – User experience (UX) Designer

World Bank Micro, Small and Medium-Sized Enterprise Competitiveness Project

Republic of Moldova

Sector: General industry and trade sector

IDA Credit No. 71740

IBRD Loan No. 94230

Project ID No. P177895

Reference No. MD-CEP-566790-CS-INDV

The Republic of Moldova has received financing from the World Bank toward the cost of the Micro, Small and Medium-Sized Enterprise Competitiveness Project (MSME) and intends to apply part of the proceeds for consulting services.

The consulting services (“the Services”) include:

  • UX research support;
  • service and interaction design;
  • user flow development;
  • information architecture;
  • wireframing;
  • interface design;
  • responsive design;
  • interaction specifications;
  • usability improvements;
  • accessibility improvements;
  • prototype development;
  • design system implementation;
  • product discovery;
  • concept validation;
  • design quality assurance;
  • support during implementation.

The assignment will be implemented in the period from October 2026 – July 2027.

The Terms of Reference (TOR) for the assignment is available here.

The Project Implementation Unit of the MSME Competitiveness Project now invites eligible individual local consultants (“Consultants”) to indicate their interest in providing the Services. Interested Consultants should provide information demonstrating that they have the required qualifications and relevant experience to perform the Services.

The qualification requirements are:

Education

  • University degree in Design, Human-Computer Interaction, Product Design, Visual Communication, Computer Science or another relevant field, or relevent certifications.

Professional Experience

  • Minimum three years of professional UX/UI or Product Design experience in digital products, web applications, mobile applications or digital services.
  • A portfolio containing at least two detailed case studies. Each case study must demonstrate:
    • a clearly defined problem statement;
    • evidence used to understand the problem;
    • the candidate’s individual role and contribution;
    • the approach, methods and deliverables used, including why they were selected;
    • key design decisions and their rationale;
    • the proposed or implemented solution;
    • evidence of measurable or observable impact.
  • At least one case study must demonstrate the candidate’s work on a product or service problem beyond a standalone UI redesign or visual update. The project may come from any industry, but must involve at least two of the following complexity factors:
    • multiple user roles, organizations or permission levels;
    • multi-step workflows with conditional paths or dependencies;
    • complex business rules, regulatory requirements or operational processes;
    • integration with external platforms, services or legacy systems;
    • multiple system states, edge cases, errors and recovery scenarios;
    • payments, identity verification, consent or sensitive data;
    • high-volume data, dashboards or administrative workflows.
    • The case study must explain how the candidate analysed and structured the complexity, worked within the existing constraints and translated it into a feasible solution.
    • At least one case study must present a solution that was implemented or validated with users, stakeholders or product data.
  • Portfolios consisting mainly of visual UI screens, templates, marketing interfaces or generic personas without a clear connection to the problem, design decisions and impact will not be considered sufficient.
  • Proven experience working within multidisciplinary product teams, including collaboration with product managers, business analysts, developers, QA engineers and institutional or business stakeholders.
  • Proven experience working collaboratively with other designers.
  • Demonstrated experience applying or contributing to a design system, including at least one example of a reusable component or pattern with defined states, variants, behaviour and documentation.
  • Experience designing at least one government services, regulated digital services, financial products, healthcare products or complex enterprise applications will be considered an advantage.

Technical Skills

  • Proficiency with industry-standard design tools, including:
    • Figma;
    • FigJam;
    • prototyping tools;
    • collaborative design platforms.

Knowledge of accessibility standards and responsive design principles is expected.

The Consultant shall provide relevant references to confirm the experience and qualifications.

The attention of interested Consultants is drawn to Section III, paragraphs, 3.14, 3.16, and 3.17 of the World Bank’s “Procurement Regulations for IPF Borrowers” November 2020 (“Procurement Regulations”), setting forth the World Bank’s policy on conflict of interest.

A Consultant will be selected in accordance with the „Open Competitive Selection of Individual Consultants” method set out in the Procurement Regulations and to be specifically set out in the Request for submission of the technical and financial proposal.

Further information can be obtained at the address below during office hours.

The applications should include a letter of Expression of Interest, CV in English, and related recommendation letters, if any, together with a copy of CV in MS WORD format.

Expressions of interest must be delivered in a written form to the address below (in person, or by mail, or by e-mail) by September 22, 2026, COBD, indicating the assignment title in subject line.

Project Implementation Unit of the MSME Competitiveness Project

180, Stefan cel Mare Ave., office 815, MD-2004, Chisinau, Republic of Moldova

Tel: + 373 22 296-723

e-mail: piu@mded.gov.md with cc: procurementmgf@gmail.com

web: https://uipac.md/