Research Manager – Burkina Faso

REPORTS TO : Country Director
DEADLINE TO APPLY : April 30th, 2018
DESIRED START DATE : June 1st, 2018
HOW TO APPLY : J-PAL/IPA Common Application
JOB TYPE : International
CITY : Ouagadougou
COUNTRY : Burkina Faso

Research Managers manage a portfolio of up to five projects. These projects will include both research and project implementation components. They span a range of sectoral areas, such as finance, agriculture, health, education and gender issues. As part of their supervisory role, the Research Manager works closely with the country office to ensure effective support is provided to projects, and that projects are working within the relevant policies and procedures. Research Managers are members of country program management teams, thus they play a senior management role through contributions to country program development, project development, policy conversations as well as capacity building.

ResponsibilitiesROLE WITHIN THE TEAM

• Facilitate communication between the projects, regional FWA office, and IPA headquarters;
• Serve as key link to the Principal Investigator(s) and any partner organizations in the projects portfolio;
• Serve as FWA-liaisons for research transparency, research ethics and data protection (i.e. IRB, ethical committees, pre-analysis plan, registry, measurement, etc.);

SPECIFIC TASKS FOR THE PROJECT PORTFOLIO (50%)

• Overall management of a portfolio of 2 to a maximum of 5 projects within the FWA Country Program;
• Ensure projects adherence to research protocols, research design, sample selection, data management and analysis, and overall project management;
• Oversee project financial management, including creation and monitoring of project budgets, and ensure smooth integration of projects into IPA financial systems;
• Ensure sound human resource and field operational management of projects;
• Ensure that project deliverables, such as reports and financial statements, are of high quality and are submitted to donors and partners on time;
• Supervise data management and train staff team in the conception of preliminary and descriptive statistics;
• Liaise with the CD-FWA and keep her/him apprised of developments on the projects portfolio;

HR MANAGEMENT (25%)

• Directly supervise any project research staff within the project portfolio (Research Associates and Field Managers), and help with transitions, on-boarding of new research staff and maintaining “institutional memory” of project activities;
• Lead training on data management and general project management for new/incoming project research staff – not limited to her/his project portfolio;
• Support FWA teams in critically think about research design and research implementation (i.e. thinking about research questions and theory of change) – not limited to her/his project portfolio;
• Coaching and training FWA staff on knowledge management and strategic development of the organization, especially in Mali and Ivory Coast and install IPA culture in the FWA team – not limited to her/his project portfolio;

PROJECT DEVELOPMENT (15%)

• Participate to project development activities on specific topic of interest (first by shadowing the CD and then independently);
• In collaboration with the Policy & Business Development Associate, participate to proposal submission processes on the topic of interest;

EXTERNAL RELATIONS (10%)

• Attend meetings with local government officials, NGOs and partners to ensure success of both project specific and key IPA programmatic activities;
• When requested, support the dissemination of results via presentations and reports to academic and non-academic audiences;
• Participate to RM international meetings and other research gatherings.

Qualifications

• Master’s degree in related field, such as development economics, public policy, public health, or education policy
• Two years of research or project management experience
• Strong budgeting and financial management skills; experience with writing donor reports and grant proposals
• 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. Background in randomized control trials is strongly preferred
• Cultural sensitivity and demonstrated ability to work successfully with diverse constituencies required; developing country experience required
• Quantitative skills; working knowledge of Stata is essential
• An desire to commit to this position for two years
• 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 electronic data collection platforms
• Demonstrated ability to work with donors and/or partner organizations; experience with grants management
• Experience with presenting research findings at public forums, including to non-research focused audiences, is preferred