Senior Program Quality and Learning Officer, POWER Partnership

The Senior Program Quality and Learning Officer coordinates quality and learning across the six POWER country programs, ensuring technical quality assistance against IRC core WPE standards and IASC GBV Minimum Standards. The role supports partnership learning, advocacy, and program adaptation across Burundi, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, and Sudan.

Responsibilities

• Provide quality oversight across the six country programs ensuring survivor-centered response, case management, women and girls' safe spaces, clinical and MHPSS referral pathways, and social norms work meet IRC WPE technical standards and the IASC GBV Minimum Standards.
• Serve as the connective role between the POWER partnership and the WPE Global Practice, translating core standards into partnership contexts and carrying partnership-generated practice back into the core.
• Support the sequencing of prevention and social norms activities to context, ensuring safe implementation conditions.
• Maintain coherence of approach across the six countries while respecting contextual differences.
• Track and report on delivery against scope, timeline, and budget across the six country programs, flagging deviations early for adaptive management.
• Ensure MEAL and program data feed directly into program adaptation.
• Connect program data and implementation evidence to wider sector trends and debates.
• Lead the program's learning function and support the partnership’s advocacy pillar.
• Lead the design and delivery of the partnership learning pillar, coordinating cross-country learning cycles and documentation.
• Position women-led safety audits as community-generated risk analysis and strengthen pathways into local decision-making.
• Build the program's evidence base on enablers and constraints of change in protracted crisis settings.
• Ensure learning is co-owned with partners and supports their institutional positioning.
• Steward the POWER advocacy pillar, supporting partners in local, national, and global advocacy.
• Work with advocacy and policy colleagues to inform IRC positioning toward donors and normative bodies.
• Support partner institutional strengthening across governance, financial systems, safeguarding, and MEAL.
• Strengthen partner surge and emergency response readiness under the emergency response pillar.
• Advance the shift of analytical and decision-making authority toward partners with genuine institutional standing.
• Support the broader civil society and women's movement ecosystem connected to the partnership.
• Ensure program design and adaptation are anchored in realities faced by women and girls in conflict and displacement contexts.
• Support conflict-related sexual violence sensitive practice including safe documentation and clinical pathways.
• Keep adolescent girls visible as a distinct group.
• Support coherence of technical delivery across countries and reporting cycles.
• Serve as a central program coordination point for the POWER partnership.
• Feed technical content on program direction, learning, and strategic opportunities into AMU's communication with Irish Aid and the Department of Foreign Affairs.
• Coordinate across country teams and IRC functions to keep the partnership coherent and commitments met.
• Contribute technical input to AMU's design and negotiation of the next Strategic Partnership phase post-2027.

Requirements

• Advanced degree in a relevant field such as social work, gender studies, international development, human rights, public health, or law, or an equivalent combination of qualification and experience.
• A minimum of 8 years professional experience in GBV, WPE, or protection programming in humanitarian and conflict-affected settings, at a technical lead level.
• Demonstrated experience in partnership and locally-led social action, program quality or learning, and program or grant management including budget oversight.
• Strong technical grounding in WPE practice and the IASC GBV Minimum Standards.
• Practical experience in feminist partnership and localization, including working with women-led organizations as partners rather than subgrantees.
• Learning and MEAL capability, with the judgment to treat implementation learning as evidence and to surface difficult findings.
• Program and grant management across multiple countries, including tracking and reporting delivery against scope, timeline, and budget, and the systems to flag deviation early.
• Ability to translate program evidence into policy-relevant framing for donors, multilaterals, and normative processes.
• Multi-country coordination across diverse and often insecure contexts, with contextual and political sensitivity.
• Sound Do No Harm and safeguarding judgment, particularly in conflict-related sexual violence contexts.
• Fluent English required.
• French is an asset given the East and Central Africa footprint.
• Arabic is an asset for the Sudan and South Sudan contexts.

Skills

• GBV Programming
• WPE Practice
• Protection Programming
• Program Quality Assessment
• Learning and MEAL
• Grant Management
• Budget Oversight
• Partnership Management
• Locally-led Social Action
• Feminist Partnership
• Localization
• IASC GBV Minimum Standards
• Multi-country Project Coordination
• Do No Harm Principle
• Safeguarding Judgment
• Program Evidence Translation
• Policy Framing
• Advocacy
• Conflict-Related Sexual Violence Analysis
• Technical Quality Assistance

Languages

English, French, Arabic