Economic Empowerment Project Lead

The Project Management Lead is responsible for the effective, high-quality management of the full project lifecycle across the organization's program portfolio, integrating partnership management, program implementation, MEAL, and budget management. The role supports refugees and economic migrants in Poland to rebuild financial independence and find sustainable work through career counselling, vocational training, entrepreneurship support, and partnerships with employers and local labor market institutions.

Responsibilities

• Identify, assess, and select implementing partners in line with organizational procedures.
• Negotiate and manage partnership agreements including scope of work, budgets, and indicators.
• Conduct regular partner performance reviews and support partners in strengthening organizational capacity.
• Ensure partner compliance with donor requirements, safety and safeguarding standards, and organizational policy.
• Serve as the primary point of contact for partners on operational and strategic matters.
• Resolve disputes and issues with partners in a constructive and timely manner.
• Oversee day-to-day project delivery in line with approved work plans, timelines, and scope.
• Coordinate across technical, operational, and support teams to ensure coherent delivery of activities.
• Identify implementation risks and bottlenecks and propose corrective actions.
• Ensure timely delivery of project outputs in line with donor and organizational quality standards.
• Prepare and update implementation plans including work plans, procurement plans, spending plans.
• Lead regular project team coordination meetings and report progress to the Head of Program.
• Oversee the implementation of MEAL frameworks across projects, including logframes and indicators.
• Ensure regular collection, verification, and analysis of data on indicator progress.
• Coordinate midline and endline evaluations, as well as project reviews.
• Implement community accountability mechanisms including complaints and feedback mechanisms (CFM).
• Foster a culture of learning by documenting good practices and lessons learned to inform program adaptation.
• Ensure the quality of data reported to donors and compliance with their monitoring requirements.
• Prepare, monitor, and update project budgets in coordination with the finance team.
• Conduct regular Budget vs. Actuals (BvA) reviews and take corrective action in case of variances.
• Manage the process of budget reallocations and project modifications including no-cost extensions and budget amendments.
• Ensure expenditure compliance with donor rules and the organization's financial policies.
• Support partners in managing their sub-budgets and review partner financial reports.
• Contribute to budget preparation for new grant proposals.

Requirements

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in project management, social sciences, international development, or a related field.
• Minimum 3 years of project management experience in the humanitarian/development sector or a related field, including experience managing partnerships.
• Demonstrated experience managing project budgets, ideally for multi-donor grants.
• Experience designing and implementing MEAL systems.
• Project management certification (e.g. PMP, PRINCE2) is an asset.
• Strong analytical skills and proficiency with data management and reporting tools.
• Excellent communication and negotiation skills, including with partners and donors.
• Ability to manage multiple priorities and work under time pressure.
• Good understanding and experience in economic empowerment and labor market activation approaches such as vocational training, entrepreneurship support, and employer engagement, ideally with refugee or migrant populations, is considered an asset.
• Strong understanding of the migration, asylum, and refugee context in Poland, including service provision frameworks and the local landscape of public institutions and civil society actors.
• Experience contributing to donor proposals and fundraising processes, including narrative input and budget development for new grants is considered an asset.
• Familiarity with major institutional donor requirements depending on organizational context.
• Fluency in Polish is required.
• Strong command of English (spoken and written); knowledge of additional languages is an asset.
• Ability to build and maintain relationships based on trust and mutual accountability.

Skills

• Project Management
• Partnership Management
• Budget Management
• Multi-Donor Grant Management
• MEAL System Development
• MEAL Implementation
• Data Management
• Data Reporting
• Communications Skills
• Negotiation Skills
• Economic Empowerment
• Labor Market Activation
• Vocational Education
• Entrepreneurship Support
• Employment Engagement
• Donor Proposals
• Fundraising
• Donor Budget Management
• Migration Context Knowledge
• Refugee Service Provision
• Polish Language
• English Language

Languages

Polish, English