Senior Monitoring, Evaluation, Research and Learning (MERL) Director

Position description

Chemonics seeks a Senior Monitoring, Evaluation, Research and Learning (MERL) Director for the Integrated Health Systems Strengthening project. This global flagship activity will work in multiple countries to achieve sustainable, equitable and resilient health systems through locally-led, evidence-driven, and context-specific approaches to HSS and thereby improve health outcomes. Through a range of technical assistance mechanisms, the activity will advance universal health coverage, primary health care, and global health security. The activity will achieve its goal by aligning with and advancing relevant USAID initiatives and frameworks including the Vision for Health System Strengthening 2030 , the Bureau for Global Health’s Primary Impact initiative, and the Global Health Workforce Initiative, among others.

The Senior MERL Director will be a key member of the technical leadership team, making significant contributions to thought leadership and providing strategic oversight of the project’s monitoring, evaluation, research, and learning portfolio. The Senior MERL Director will provide technical oversight, quality assurance and supervision to a global MERL team, through direct oversight of managers at the central level and collaboration with those based in country offices. This position is responsible for ensuring that activities on the project and partners on the consortium effectively contribute to improving learning and data and evidence generation, synthesis and utilization to strengthen health system policies and practice. The Senior MERL Director will also represent the project in external forums to share and promote the learnings of project activities.

Responsibilities include

• Design and oversee the implementation of the overall MERL strategy and M&E plan to track program activities and results against targets
• Ensure the smooth operation of the IHSS MERL team, support effective communication across IHSS activities and between countries with buy-ins, overall management of the learning portfolio budget, technical oversight of all learning team consultancies or subawards, and timely execution of MERL-related deliverables
• Oversee the design and implementation of M&E and adaptive learning data collection approaches, tools, quality assurance plans, and analysis
• Lead the design, contracting, and implementation of monitoring surveys, research, and evaluation activities for each country buy-in
• Lead overall project research efforts, including collaborating with local and regional partners to conduct implementation research to inform HSS practice and respond to context-specific evidence needs
• Work with technical teams, project staff, partners, and local stakeholders to develop appropriate indicators, assess the project’s progress, and use results to inform continual improvement of performance
• Supervise the design and implementation of the project’s M&E trainings for country partner teams
• Conduct process and result evaluation to address key health systems issues and generate innovative ideas to test; facilitate learning activities like pause and reflect or feedback loops to learn and adapt implementation approaches based on findings
• Oversee development and quality of technical deliverables, including required reports
• Produce and present data analytics reports to clients and partners

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in epidemiology, evaluation research, statistics, data analytics, public health, or a related discipline required; master’s degree strongly preferred
• Minimum 10 years of experience designing and implementing MERL strategies with a focus on health systems indicators for large or similar donor-funded programs in developing countries
• Technical expertise in program monitoring and evaluation using mixed methods, preferably with experience evaluating in innovative ways and evaluating program innovations
• Prior experience designing and conducting quantitative and qualitative research in relevant fields and contexts, and strong analytical skills (e.g. using statistics software, relational databases, and/or other software for analysis, visualization, and reporting).
• Experience with systems thinking approaches and the use of systems aware measurement approaches
• Experience in utilizing digital/mHealth solutions for data collection and analysis preferred
• Experience collaborating with diverse teams across different contexts, time zones, and languages
• Prior experience working on complex, global USAID projects. Proven track record of developing and managing USAID-compliant M&E plans and past experience with CLA and adaptive learning approaches
• Experience working in a leadership role and engaging with a diverse set of stakeholders
• Strong communicator, excellent verbal communication and writing skills.
• Demonstrated leadership, versatility, and integrity
• Effective English oral and written communication skills is required, strong preference for proficiency in a second language

Application instructions

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