Education and Early Childhood Development (ECD) Technical Advisor – MENAU

The IRC is seeking an Education & Early Childhood Development (ECD) Technical Advisor to provide temporary coverage during a period of parental leave for 6 months focused on the MENAU region. The role involves providing technical support to country programs in education and early childhood development, ensuring quality programming, and collaborating with multiple sectors to deliver high-impact interventions.

Responsibilities

• Support designated MENAU country and regional programs to design winning submissions and position IRC for success in Education and ECD technical domains.
• Support country programs’ proposal technical lead through participation in and/or facilitation of program design meetings.
• Promote and support design collaboration with partners and clients.
• Advise on program modalities and strategic partnership development to support and reinforce local systems.
• Advise on and/or provide hands-on support on assessments, including application and contextualization of technical standards.
• Review technical design quality, including alignment of narratives, log-frames, and budgets to IRC standards and outcomes.
• Support country program staff and stakeholders in implementing technical interventions.
• Support recruitment and training of technical coordinators.
• Assess program quality and inform improvements, providing follow-up support as needed.
• Collaborate to monitor and analyze key indicators to inform review, adaptation, and course-correction.
• Provide technical capacity strengthening through mentoring, coaching, and trainings.
• Document learnings and share takeaways and opportunities.
• Share cross-contextual learnings with country program staff across MENAU.
• Refresh sectoral evidence base in collaboration with global and regional staff.
• Collaborate with other technical advisors to promote integrated programming leadership.
• Contribute to delivery of education strategic priorities.
• Maintain currency with sectoral best practices through continual learning and development.
• Coordinate closely with ECD Content Specialist and Regional ECD Portfolio Team to align on country requests and avoid duplicative deliverables.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Education or a relevant field required; Master’s degree preferred.
• A minimum of 10 years of relevant experience in implementing and/or managing ECD education programs, preferably with on-the-ground programmatic experience in humanitarian or crisis-affected contexts.
• Experience and familiarity with related donors, peer agencies, and national contexts required, preferably in humanitarian and transitional, post-crisis contexts within the MENAU region.
• Demonstrated expertise in technical program design, monitoring and evaluation, research methods, and data analysis, with the ability to turn concepts and strategy into measurable action.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills.
• Strong organizational and time-management skills; proven ability to prioritize and deliver projects on time and independently.
• Demonstrated ability to navigate a dynamic, cross-functional, global team structure in a large multi-national organization.
• Demonstrated ability to work effectively with internal and external stakeholders at all levels.
• Strong analytic problem-solving skills, data analysis, and data visualization skills.
• Highly proficient in Microsoft Office suite.
• Ability to manage and work through change in a proactive and positive manner.
• Strong cross-cultural communication skills and familiarity with the MENAU region’s humanitarian context.
• Fluency in Arabic (spoken and written) is required.
• Excellent spoken and written English is also required.

Skills

• Early Childhood Development
• ECD Program Management
• Humanitarian Program Execution
• Program Design
• Monitoring and Evaluation
• Research Methods
• Data Analysis
• Data Visualization
• Stakeholder Engagement
• Cross-Cultural Communication
• Task Prioritization
• Microsoft Office Suite
• Technical Advisory
• Education Program Management
• Humanitarian Sector Expertise
• MENAU Regional Knowledge
• Fluency in Arabic
• Fluency in English

Languages

Arabic, English