Director of Technology at Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA)

The following outlines the key duties and responsibilities of this role, to be carried out in close coordination with the Global Operations Senior Director and IPA’s Senior Management Team.

• Define and steward IT strategy and governance
• Develop and maintain IPA's IT strategy, ensuring it adjusts to organizational priorities, resource constraints, compliance obligations and operational realities across a distributed, multi-country environment.
• Own IPA's IT governance framework — policies, standards, and controls covering security, access management, data governance, acceptable use, vendor management, and emerging technologies.
• Ensure governance is practical, compliant with regulatory and donor requirements, and proportionate to organizational risk and operational realities. Policies should be enforceable and understood across country offices, not just documented.
• Advise senior leadership on technology risks, investment decisions, and compliance obligations in clear, non-technical terms.
• Evaluate emerging technologies — including AI and automation — and recommend responsible, mission-aligned adoption pathways.
• Lead the IT function and its people
• Manage, develop, and retain a team of six IT professionals, including systems administrators, data engineers, and support staff, providing clear direction, regular feedback, and opportunities for growth.
• Recruit for capability gaps and build toward a team structure where technical domains have clear ownership and accountability, while ensuring there are always enough redundancies on all tasks.
• Foster a culture of documentation, service orientation, and accountability — where good work is visible and standards are consistently upheld.
• Set team priorities in coordination with the Senior Director, Operations & Systems, and communicate clearly about trade-offs and capacity.
• Ensure that IT operates as a service-oriented function, prioritizing responsiveness, clarity, and alignment with operational and research needs.
• Ensure security, compliance, and risk management
• Lead IPA's information security direction, ensuring controls are proportionate to organizational risk and resourced appropriately.
• Ensure compliance with donor, contractual, and regulatory requirements related to data protection and information security.
• Oversee audit readiness and coordinate responses to security or data incidents, including engagement with legal and senior leadership.
• Drive organizational alignment
• Lead change management for significant technology transitions, ensuring staff across country offices understand and adopt new systems and practices.
• Oversee IT budget planning and financial reporting, ensuring transparency of total cost of ownership and value for money.

Qualifications

Required

• 7+ years in a senior IT leadership role with accountability for the reliability, security, and availability of enterprise systems in production environments.
• 5+ years managing IT teams, including direct oversight of senior technical staff (engineers, architects, system admins) — with a demonstrated track record of developing people and building team capability.
• 5+ years overseeing enterprise system integrations, SaaS platforms and cloud environments (ERP, CRM, data warehouse, or comparable).
• 5+ years as a senior escalation authority for technical or security incidents.
• 3+ years developing or managing IT governance frameworks, policies, and internal controls.
• 3+ years in environments with regulatory, donor, or audit compliance requirements related to data protection or information security.
• 3+ years overseeing IT budgeting, vendor management, and SLA accountability.
• 3+ years leading change management for enterprise technology implementations.
• Experience communicating technology risks and decisions to non-technical senior stakeholders.
• Familiarity with enterprise business intelligence environments (e.g., Power BI).