Monitoring, Evaluation & Learning (MEL) Director

Position description

Jhpiego seeks a Monitoring, Evaluation & Learning (MEL) Director to provide technical leadership, oversight and strategic direction for monitoring and evaluation (M&E) activities for an upcoming USAID-funded HIV/AIDS project in South Sudan. The project will focus on improving equitable access to and use of quality comprehensive HIV prevention, testing, care, and treatment services for all South Sudanese, providing quality comprehensive services for key populations at the current locations and expanding as needed, and developing local partner capacity and preparing local partners to manage direct awards. It will operate over a five-year period.

The MEL Director will provide technical leadership to develop the project framework, M&E systems and indicators to capture performance results and provide effective, accurate and timely monitoring, evaluation and reporting of all project activities. The MEL Director will supervise and manage the project’s M&E team and oversee the collection, management, analysis, and use of project data, ensuring that lessons learned are integrated into project implementations to continuously improve quality of interventions and outcomes. The MEL Director is responsible for documenting and disseminating project successes, challenges and lessons learned to USAID. The MEL Director will also be responsible for designing and conducting assessments and evaluations to address project needs. The MEL Director will liaise with and support consortium partners and the Ministry of Health to implement monitoring and evaluation (and learning) activities, and they will work within the broader Jhpiego South Sudan MEL team to ensure compliance with internal standards and practices.

This position is contingent upon award from USAID. Qualified South Sudanese nationals are strongly encouraged to apply.

Responsibilities

• Provide leadership and direction on M&E to ensure the project achieves its goals and corresponding objectives and targets;
• Oversee the development and implementation of the Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning Plan (MELP) to efficiently track, use and disseminate performance indicators and results over the life of the project, including routine service delivery data reporting, baseline and end line assessments, and all monitoring for process and outcome evaluations;
• Supervise a team of M&E professionals, ensuring high-quality implementation of all monitoring, evaluation and learning activities;
• Develop and oversee implementation of robust context-appropriate systems for data collection, quality assurance, analysis and reporting on activity outputs/outcomes and program quality;
• Lead results reporting to USAID by providing written documentation on M&E activities and indicator results for progress and annual reports, as appropriate;
• Ensure alignment of project systems and approaches with national monitoring and evaluation guidelines, protocols, information and reporting systems;
• Cultivate strategic M&E relationships and alliances with monitoring, evaluation and learning counterparts in other USAID projects national institutions, and key stakeholders, leading initiatives to learn from project data and adapt intervention strategies as appropriate;
• Lead efforts to utilize training monitoring systems to track and monitor trainers and participants at training events to facilitate follow-up and recordkeeping;
• Use data to contribute towards strategic decision-making and project planning with project leadership;
• Support project leadership to champion holistic approaches to collaboration, learning and adapting (CLA), including design and implementation of an action-oriented project research and learning agenda, routine analysis of available health sector data sources, and application of best practices in knowledge management;
• Oversee and/or conduct targeted assessment, evaluations and operations research, ensuring compliance with Ministry of Health and Johns Hopkins University Institutional Review Board (IRB) policies;
• Ensure quality of data through data verification procedures including routine data quality audits and that these are routinely carried out during the project lifecycle;
• Represent M&E activities in public and professional circles through meetings, conferences, and presentations;
• Ensure relevant data is entered into Jhpiego’s organization-wide performance management system designed to capture, analyze, and disseminate project data;
• Ensure project compliance with USAID monitoring, evaluation, research and open data policies;
• Promote and support the dissemination of project information among the project team;
• Work with project and financial staff to prepare and track progress of project and activity budgets;
• Train and mentor project staff and implementing partners in monitoring and evaluation methods, tools, and systems;
• Ensure protection of participant data and confidentiality during all monitoring, evaluation and research implementation and dissemination processes;
• Support the designated IRB focal point in-country including maintaining current certification from 1) CITI human subjects ethics course and 2) CITI Good Clinical Practices (GCP) course.

Qualifications

• Master’s degree in public health, demography, statistics, social sciences or related field or equivalent experience;
• At least 9 to 10 years of work experience in monitoring and evaluating large, multi-year international health sector development projects (approximately $5 – 10M per year), including 5 years in senior management roles;
• Proven expertise in quantitative and qualitative data collection and analysis methodologies, health management information systems, data visualization and reporting;
• Experience developing and implementing implementation science, surveillance and research agendas;
• Demonstrated strong management, coordination, teamwork and planning skills with proven ability to function effectively with multiple host-country counterparts in both the public, NGO and private sectors;
• M&E experience in HIV under USAID/PEPFAR, including M&E of a country’s national plan;
• In-depth experience with USAID/PEPFAR MER guidelines and indicators;
• Familiarity with South Sudan’s health management information system and other national M&E systems;
• Strong technical skills, including ability to process and analyze data using multiple sources of data to identify data trends and provide recommendations on project implementation using DHIS2 and one or more statistical software packages, e.g., SPSS, Epi-Info, Stata, MS Excel;
• Experience hiring and supervising personnel and ensuring they acquire the necessary training and skills to meet evolving project needs;
• Excellent diplomacy skills and a proven ability to establish and maintain interpersonal and professional relationships with USAID, host-country counterparts and representatives from other key stakeholders such as NGOs, CSOs, and the private sector;
• Demonstrated outstanding leadership, strategic thinking, organizational, team-building, and representational skills;
• Excellent skills in facilitation, team building, and coordination;
• Excellent verbal, written interpersonal and presentation skills in English;
• Ability to coach, mentor and develop technical capacity in regional and national projects and technical staff;
• Proficiency in Microsoft Office365 operations including PowerBi;
• Ability to travel nationally as needed.

Preferred Qualifications

• Knowledge of local languages preferred.

Application instructions

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