Business Development Specialist II, ESARO at Catholic Relief

Roles and Key Responsibilities

• Provide BD expertise to country leadership and programming teams in positioning, capture planning and proposal preparation for specific opportunities with institutional donors (government, multilateral, foundations, corporations and other awarding non-governmental organizations).
• Manage pre-positioning, capture and proposal development processes to ensure timely execution and submission of high-quality proposals that are responsive to donor requirements, applicable regulations, and CRS’ technical and cost standards. 
• Deploy as proposal coordinator, and advise on opportunity analysis, lead go/no-go decisions, capture planning, and coordinate partner inputs and proposal review panels.
• Deploy as a lead or support writer on proposals, contributing both technical and non-technical content and integrating inputs from staff and partners into a responsive, coherent proposal with a compelling vision and clear win themes.
• Deploy as budget lead or to support the lead in developing proposal budgets. Provide recommendations to develop a competitive proposal, as required.
• Serve as proposal design lead, guiding technical strategy, structuring the design process, and coordinating inputs across regional, country, and global teams to ensure coherent, donor‑aligned proposals.
• Strengthen design quality and competitiveness of projects by ensuring evidence‑based approaches, integration of cross‑cutting priorities (e.g., MEAL, partnerships, gender, climate), and timely delivery of high‑quality concept notes and proposals.
• Guide and advise on partner identification and negotiating CRS’ role in proposal consortia. Ensure a competitive position for CRS that adheres to the agency’s partnership principles and strategic directions. 
• Liaise with senior management and donor engagement focal points to develop a resource mobilization strategy for a specific region, country, sector, or donor. Support senior management in cultivating and strengthening relationships with institutional donors, partner organizations and other stakeholders.
• Research, track and analyze new opportunities and CRS’ competitive position within the marketplace. Lead and/or support donor mapping exercises for a specific country or sector.
• Lead and/or support development of CRS BD tools, resources and guidance on BD best practices and CRS approaches across the BD cycle.
• Train and mentor staff, as needed, to improve their skills across the CRS BD Cycle, including in proposal development, representation to donor and partner organizations, intelligence-gathering, and marketing within their country program or portfolio.
• Work with appropriate staff to maintain data on past performance and corporate capacity, to provide timely information for proposal submissions. Support KML and Gateway maintenance.
• Actively contribute to CRS' Business Development and Donor Engagement Community of Practice and advance CRS' Business Development practices through contributions to strategic initiatives.
• Required Languages: Fluency in English required; working ability in French, Arabic and/or Portuguese preferred.
• Travel: Must be willing and able to travel up to 35%.
• Location: Cross border or in CRS country office; prefer candidate located in East or Southern Africa; must be within 3 hours of East Africa time zone (GMT +3).

Supervisory Responsibilities: None

Qualifications

Basic Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in international development, international relations, or related field. 
• Minimum eight years of international development experience.

Preferred Qualifications

• Master's degree in international development, international relations, or related field. 
• At least three years' experience in a developing country.
• Demonstrated experience utilizing diverse, proactive strategies to competitively position an organization for new funding and productive institutional relationships.
• Demonstrated experience leading and producing competitive proposals in programming contexts similar to CRS. 
• Experience with both grants and contract funding mechanisms.
• Demonstrated experience leading project teams and processes to produce deliverables under tight deadlines and at exceptional quality.