Deadline: Not specified

Location: Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso

The Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) has announced a vacancy for the role of Research Manager.

IPA is a research and policy nonprofit that discovers and promotes effective solutions to global poverty problems.

Responsibilities

• Manage day-to-day operations of research projects, ensuring adherence to timelines, budgets, and quality standards
• Keep the country directors informed of all developments on the projects in their portfolio and serve as the vital link between the field office, project staff, and principal investigators
• Ensure project adherence in the field, sample selection, data management, and analysis, and overall project management
• Keep track of progress and delays of all assigned assessments throughout the research cycle
• Ensure that delays or identified challenges for specific reviews are promptly reported in writing and orally
• Ensure that projects under supervision adhere to all IPA policies and procedures, both at the global and country office levels
• Play a crucial role in identifying new research opportunities and contributing to the design of innovative studies addressing poverty-related challenges
• Support the country directors in the development of new research studies in cooperation with principal investigators and partner organisations
• Oversee project financial management, including creation and monitoring of project budgets, and ensure smooth integration of projects into IPA financial systems
• Maintain an oversight of budget availability and expenditure for assessment activities 
• Conduct induction for new staff members, including training in basic technical competencies for assessment design, implementation, and analysis
• Work with field office staff to ensure sound human resource and operational management of projects
• Be responsible for supervising and appraising project staff
• Be available to provide regular support and technical backstopping
• Build and maintain relationships with donors, government agencies, NGOs, and other relevant stakeholders
• Attend meetings with local government officials and partners to ensure the success of both project-specific and key IPA programmatic activities
• Ensure that external communications with partners and key stakeholders, including relevant local and government and NGOs have been conducted and documented as appropriate
• Oversee data collection and reporting to derive meaningful insights from research findings

Requirements

• Master’s degree in Development Economics, Public Policy, Public Health, or Education Policy
• Four years of research or project management experience in collaborating with and managing people remotely
• Strong budgeting and financial management skills; experience with writing donor reports and grant proposals
• Strong written and oral communication skills and complete fluency in the English language (French is an added advantage)
• Experience supervising data collection, team of field workers, survey design and implementation, and data management (background in randomised control trials is strongly preferred)
• Cultural sensitivity and demonstrated ability to work successfully with diverse constituencies
• Developing country experience 
• Working knowledge of Stata 
• Desire to commit to this position for two years
• Flexible and proactive work ethic with demonstrated interest in the vision and mission of IPA
• Advanced experience with data management and applied statistics
• Experience with electronic data collection platforms
• Demonstrated ability to work with donors and/or partner organisations; experience with grants management
• Experience with presenting research findings in public forums, including to non-research-focused audiences

To apply and for more information, click here.

Photo source: IPA