Key Responsibilities
Programme design and feasibility assessment:
Collaborate with country teams to ideate and surface new programme concepts. For promising ideas, conduct rapid, structured assessments including stakeholder landscape mapping (government partners, local NGOs, community groups, etc.), institutional capacity assessment, community readiness evaluation, political economy analysis, and risk identification. Help refine programme design based on feasibility findings, adapting for local context and implementation reality, informed by your assessment. Identify sustainable revenue and cost-recovery models that would allow programmes to continue beyond Pharo's initial investment. Produce feasibility assessment memos that make clear recommendations and flag what we need to believe for the programme to work. Speed and judgment matter as much as comprehensiveness.
Community engagement & social accountability design:
Design community engagement from programme inception. This includes pre-implementation dialogue with communities about programme rationale and design, feedback and grievance mechanisms, and social accountability frameworks. Ensure communities understand we are serious about listening. Produce community engagement plans that go to country leadership teams (and other stakeholders) before implementation begins.
Implementation readiness planning:
Before a new programme launches, produce a launch readiness plan covering partnership agreements, monitoring and feedback loops, risk mitigation strategies, maintenance arrangements (especially for infrastructure), and ESG narrative. Identify what could derail this programme and outline mitigation. Your plan will signal to all stakeholders that we've thought through implementation challenges and accounted for them.
Collaboration with country teams and impact team colleagues.
Work closely with country teams on contextualisation and adaptation, ensuring research insights translate into locally-grounded programme design. Partner with research associates on qualitative and quantitative feedback loops during programme execution and community learning. You represent implementation reality and community voice in programme design discussions. Surface tensions between research evidence, feasibility concerns, and implementation reality for resolution. Help articulate programme theory, implementation approach, and learning strategy to donors and partners.
Flexible contribution to urgent priorities.
As part of the Impact team, you pitch in where needed across our research, monitoring, evaluation, and investment functions. This might include supporting fieldwork on an urgent evaluation, helping with community due diligence for an investment decision, or contributing to a time-sensitive analysis. You respond quickly to evolving priorities and can maintain flexibility to handle what's urgent as well as what's planned.
Ideal Profile
Bachelor's or master's degree in development economics, public policy, social sciences, or a related field. Strong academic record.
5+ years designing and managing programmes, community engagement, or implementation with an NGO, bilateral donor, or government. Experience launching new programmes and managing budgets, timelines, and teams. Experience in fragile or conflict-affected contexts.
Conversant with development economics literature and evidence-based programme design. You understand what works in your sector (e.g., water, education, skills training, etc.). You can engage substantively with research findings and help translate them into feasible programme design.
Creative problem-solver. You help design solutions that are both grounded in evidence and adapted to local context. You're comfortable proposing alternatives when the standard approach won't work. You draw from multiple sectors and contexts to inform your thinking.
Financial literacy. You can build basic programme budgets, model simple financial projections (e.g., programme NPV, cost per beneficiary, etc.), and understand cash flow implications of programme design. You may not identify as a financial modeler, but you can plug numbers and flag when the math doesn't work.
East Africa experience (ideally Somaliland, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Kenya, or similar). You understand the operating environment and are not learning it from scratch.
Culture fit. You are collaborative, not defensive. You surface problems early and directly, without documenting for cover. You take feedback as real input, not criticism to rebut. You celebrate teammates' wins. You ask for help when you need it and offer it readily. You can build trust across different groups — government officials, community leaders, implementation partners, research teams. You can disagree without being disagreeable. People enjoy working with you, and you genuinely enjoy working with others.
Comfortable spending extended time in Hargeisa, rural Ethiopia, Kigali, and other field locations across our country portfolio. (This is not occasional travel.)
You write and present with clarity and economy. You can produce a crisp field memo or a polished programme briefing. You can adapt your message for different audiences.
You operate independently. You can receive a brief, define your assessment approach, spend time in the field, and deliver a polished output without being closely managed.
You work with urgency, moving fast with imperfect information while making defensible judgments and flagging uncertainties honestly.
Curious and mission-aligned. You want to understand how things work and care whether our programmes create impact. You are willing to push back when evidence warrants it.