Associate Research Manager Job – Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA)

Job Title:   Associate Research Manager   

Organisation: Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA)

Duty Station:  Kampala, Uganda

Reports to: Country Director

 

About IPA

Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) is a research and policy nonprofit that discovers and promotes effective solutions to global poverty problems. IPA brings together researchers and decision-makers to design, rigorously evaluate, and refine these solutions and their applications, ensuring that the evidence created is used to improve the lives of the world’s poor. In recent decades, trillions of dollars have been spent on programs designed to reduce global poverty, but clear evidence on which programs succeed is rare, and when evidence does exist, decision-makers often do not know about it. IPA exists to bring together leading researchers and these decision-makers to ensure that the evidence we create leads to tangible impact on the world. Since its founding in 2002, IPA has worked with over 600 leading academics to conduct over 900 evaluations in 52 countries. This research has informed hundreds of successful programs that now impact millions of individuals worldwide.

 

Job Summary:  The (Associate) Research Manager will manage a portfolio of two to three research projects, each of which is staffed with a team of 1 to 3 regular staff. These projects include a Process Evaluation  of six implementing partner organizations working on out of school children (OOSC) pilot interventions in Uganda and Ethiopia. As part of their supervisory role, the (Associate) Research Manager will work closely with the Uganda country office team to ensure credible and responsible data collection, cleaning, and analysis. The (Associate) Research Manager is also expected to work closely with the Right-Fit Evidence (RFE) team, to engage implementing partners in building their capacity to carry out more effective data collection, cleaning, and analysis. In addition, the (Associate) Research Manager will participate in IPA Uganda Senior Management discussions and contribute to the development of new projects, policy outreach, and capacity building.

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Key Duties and Responsibilities:

• Working closely with the Country Office and RFE team, ensure sound logistics for advance planning and smooth execution of data collection, data cleaning, and data analysis for portfolio of projects
• Keep the Country Director and RFE team appraised of all developments on the projects in their portfolio, and serve as key link between the field office, project staff, and implementing partners
• Ensure project adherence in the field to research design, sample selection, data management and analysis, and overall project management
• Oversee country office allocation of project financial management, including creation and monitoring of project budgets, and ensure smooth integration of projects into IPA financial systems
• Work with field office staff to ensure sound human resource and operational management of projects
• Directly supervise project research staff (Research Associates and Field Managers), and help with transitions, on-boarding of new research staff and maintaining “institutional memory” of project activities
• Ensure that project deliverables, such as reports and financial statements, are submitted to donors and partners on time
• Lead training on data management and general project management for new/incoming project research staff
• Integrate capacity building of implementing partners to the degree possible in data collection, cleaning, and analysis
• Promote inter-project best practices and take a lead in sharing best practices with projects through formal and informal training opportunities
• Be the point of contact for data management and analysis support for project staff by serving as the link between projects and IPA headquarters
• Attend meetings with local government officials and partners to ensure success of both project specific and key IPA programmatic activities
• Support the Country Director in the development of new research studies in cooperation with principal investigators and partner organizations

Qualifications, Skills and Experience:

• The applicant must hold a Master’s degree in related field, such as development economics, public policy, public health, or education policy
• Five years of research or project management experience
• Strong budgeting and financial management skills
• Strong written and oral communication skills and complete fluency in English is required
• Experience supervising data collection, teams of field workers, survey design and implementation and data management.
• Cultural sensitivity and demonstrated ability to work successfully with diverse constituencies required; developing country experience required
• Demonstrated ability to mentor and train staff and partner organizations in data collection, cleaning, and analysis
• Strong qualitative and quantitative skills
• Experience conducting process evaluations
• Experience with electronic data collection platforms (SurveyCTO, KoBo, etc.)
• Significant education sector expertise
• Demonstrated ability to work with donors and partner organizations; experience with grants management
• Flexible and proactive work ethic with a demonstrated interest in the vision and mission of IPA

 

Additional Desired Qualifications:

• Advanced experience with data management and applied statistics
• Experience with interventions for out of school children (OOSC), refugees, and internally-displaced persons (IDPs)
• Experience with presenting research findings at public forums, including to non-research focused audiences

 

IPA’s Commitment to Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion (DEI)

As an organization, IPA is dedicated to improving the lives of the world’s most vulnerable populations through evidence and policy. We also recognize how important it is for our staff to reflect the diversity of the places where we work and the communities we work with. As such, IPA is committed to hiring from a diverse pool of candidates, from a range of backgrounds, beliefs, experiences, and perspectives. We know that this makes our work stronger and more responsive to the challenges faced by those we work with and for and we encourage people from historically underrepresented groups to apply. Click here to learn more about IPA’s commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion.

 

How to Apply:

All candidates should apply online at the link below.

 

Click Here

 

Deadline: Rolling Basis