SPM/PL - RMEAL

Organisation: Central Square Foundation

Position: Senior Project Manager/ Project Lead

Team: Research, Monitoring & Evaluation, Assessments, and Learning (RMEAL)

Location: Delhi

About Central Square Foundation (CSF)

Founded in 2012, Central Square Foundation is a non-profit philanthropic foundation working to ensure quality school education for all children in India. CSF has a mission focused on ensuring high-quality foundational learning for all children in India. To achieve this, we partner with individuals and social impact organizations to bring innovative solutions in education to build the capacity of the government to drive systemic impact. To learn more about us and our work, visit www.centralsquarefoundation.org.

About the Research, Monitoring, Evaluation, Assessment and Learning (RMEAL) team

CSF endeavours to transform the school education system in India and advance children’s learning outcomes, especially for those from vulnerable socio-economic backgrounds. The RMEAL practice undertakes a range of research and M&E activities to understand the ‘what works’ and ‘why it works’ elements of driving systems improvement and impact. Intending to generate evidence to strengthen education programs and policy, the team provides technical support to other verticals within CSF as well as oversight on third-party research studies.

CSF’s Research and M&E team is deeply engaged, advised, and mentored by renowned experts like Luis Crouch (Chief Technical Officer, RTI International), Ben Piper (Sr. Director, RTI International), Karthik Muralidharan (Chair, JPAL S.Asia), Asiya Kazmi (Global Education Policy Lead, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation). The Project Manager will join a high-caliber leadership team with collective experience working in both corporate and development sector organizations like BCG, IFMR, J-PAL, IGC, NITI Aayog, and National Skill Development Corporation.

The team is looking for a Project Lead/Senior Project Lead to drive our efforts on spearheading rigorous evaluations for our programmatic efforts, institutionalising monitoring, and leading research and evidence generation. S/he will work closely with programmatic teams within CSF, our technical partners and state officials. The candidate will be expected to support and engage with existing experts and build partnerships with other leading experts in the field. S/he will join a high-calibre leadership team with collective experience in both corporate and development sector organisations such as BCG, IFMR, J-PAL, IGC, NITI Aayog, and the National Skill Development Corporation.

Key Responsibilities

The candidate will play a senior technical role in shaping and delivering the RMEAL vertical’s agenda and portfolio, while providing key inputs in agenda setting itself. The post holder will lead multiple workstreams, leading the design, measurement, analysis, documentation and dissemination of the work. The post holder will also help ensure effective use of evidence and contribute to learning across the wider organisation beyond the immediate vertical.

The candidate’s key responsibilities include, but are not limited to:

Evidence strategy and leadership

Set and own the RMEAL strategy for the evidence portfolio: the learning agenda, evaluation pipeline, monitoring priorities and research roadmap, aligned to CSF's organisational strategy

Represent the RMEAL function in organisational strategy, programme design and annual planning discussions

Build and maintain CSF's evidence standards, templates and guidance for evaluation design, monitoring frameworks, data quality and research ethics

Lead engagement with government, funders and senior partner stakeholders to socialise results, frame successes and challenges, and drive decisions on adaptation, continuation and scale

Evaluation

Lead the design of rigorous evaluations - including research frameworks, sampling approaches, and tools - to understand the impact of our programs on improving student learning

Provide technical direction on evaluation design across the portfolio, including research frameworks, identification strategies, sampling approaches, power calculations and tools, to understand the impact of programmes on student learning

Identify, build and manage long-term relationships with evaluation partners, research institutions and independent researchers for CSF's programmes

Oversee the commissioning of external evaluations end to end, from terms of reference and partner selection to contract management and quality assurance

Engage with partners to socialise preliminary results to help identify successes/challenges and undertake decisions around scale

Monitoring

Conceptualise and design end-to-end monitoring frameworks (including tools and processes) that can be adopted by internal teams, state governments, and partners

Review existing approaches and management information systems of states, and align and support required changes

Design and operationalise dashboards that can facilitate data use and decision-making

Coordinate between different teams within and outside of CSF to ensure the generation of high-quality monitoring data

Ensure the data informs key programmatic iterations

Research

Identify critical research areas to strengthen the portfolio practices

Conceptualise and manage robust research studies, analysis, and findings generation

Contribute to intervention design and organisational strategy through evidence-driven decision-making

Team Leadership and Research Quality

Lead and grow a team of Leads, Senior Managers, Managers and Associates, including hiring, performance management and career development

Provide technical guidance, mentorship, and professional development support to Associates and other team members, including Managers, Senior Managers and Leads

Support the effective allocation of work across projects and ensure timely, high-quality delivery of research outputs.

Act as the final quality reviewer for the portfolio's research designs, tools, analysis and reports

Undertake field visits and partner engagement where useful for strengthening research design, understanding implementation realities, and ensuring research quality

Required Qualifications, Skills and Abilities

Minimum requirement of a Master’s degree in relevant fields, including economics, public/education policy or any related field

Senior Project Manager (5-8 Years) or 8-10 years (Project Lead) of relevant experience in M&E in development projects/contexts

Knowledge of the major evaluation methodologies (experimental and non- experimental), data collection and analysis methodologies

Keen understanding of both quantitative and qualitative research methods

Experience in designing, implementing, and operating project M&E systems

Strong understanding of concepts like Logic Model/ Logical Framework, Theory of Change, Monitoring cycles, baselining, end-lining, benchmarking, etc. Ability to understand complex research/data to draw actionable inferences

Ability to facilitate and serve as project liaison for externally-managed evaluations

Proven experience of managing multiple team members and projects, setting priorities, planning timelines and meeting deadlines

Excellent writing and presentation skills

Desired Qualities

Strong action-bias, influencing & communication skills - ability to synthesise technical insights into actionable program agendas, facilitate conflicting points of view, drive collective decision-making

Passion to make a scaled impact in education and belief in the possibility of foundational learning for all children

Excellent people and project delivery skills, including ability to manage multiple projects at a time and maturity to influence multiple internal and external stakeholders

Willingness to adapt to the dynamic nature of work and travel to project locations

Ability to work independently and proactively, without support staff and with little supervision

Enthusiasm to collaboration and work with multiple teams and stakeholders

Compensation

Remuneration will be competitive with Indian philanthropy pay scales and will depend upon the candidate’s experience level.

How to Apply

Interested candidates can click on the Application Form and fill in the required details before the stipulated deadline. Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted.