Project Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning Director at United States International University - USIU Africa

Key Responsibilities/Tasks/Duties

• Guide the technical execution of the program, ensuring effective monitoring, evaluation, learning, and research efforts align with project goals.
• Develop and oversee monitoring, evaluation, and reporting systems, setting up indicators, baselines, targets, and evaluation plans.
• Report directly to the Chief of Party, ensuring strategic alignment and coherence in project activities.
• Work closely with the Chief of Party, Deputy Chief of Party, and USIU-Africa Deputy Vice Chancellor to manage MEL components, using project and relevant to youth and employment data for strategic planning.
• Implement quality assurance and auditing of data as part of leading all MEL activities, including project evaluations.
• Create opportunities for continuous learning and adapting among project staff, partners, donors, and government counterparts.
• Manage a team of MEL professionals, maintaining clear communication and defined responsibilities.
• Incorporate findings and lessons learned into project implementation to enhance intervention quality.
• Conduct research, contributing to the project's knowledge base and strategic direction.
• Provide technical support in MEL systems and approaches to build USIU-Africa and TVET partners’ capacity.
• Lead the project’s learning questions and agendas in collaboration with affiliated researchers.
• Assist in planning and implementing MEL Plans for project programming.
• Utilize practical indicators for development outcomes, reflecting a synthesis of USAID and partner priorities.
• Integrate learning methodologies to enhance the effectiveness and sustainability of project.
• Facilitate consensus among diverse activity stakeholders, ensuring aligned decision-making.
• Capture and share learning to develop and disseminate learning products for wider stakeholder uptake.
• Monitor recipient progress in achieving objectives, communicating regularly with the Chief of Party about implementation strengths and challenges.
• Handle data management tasks, including database maintenance, dashboard development, and liaising with USAID specialized departments and partners around the world.
• Keep abreast of new developments in locally led development, actively participating in relevant events, and sharing insights.
• Operate in compliance with USAID rules and regulations and USIU-Africa policies.

The position is subject to the availability of funds and approval by USAID. The role would be in-person at project headquarters in Kenya with periodic travel to target Kenya counties up to 30% of the time.

Required Qualifications:

• 10+ years of progressively responsible professional experience in monitoring, evaluation, and learning.
• 5+ years experience in USAID-funded projects in MEL functions.
• 3+ years of supervisory experience.
• Minimum of 5 years of experience in collecting, analyzing, and managing donor funded project data.
• Demonstrated experience managing monitoring and evaluation systems, consistent with USAID protocols for data collection and reporting.
• Experience with the United States Government (USG) CLA approach, including developing and integrating the CLA approach within project frameworks and leading CLA approaches across partners and technical focuses.
• Familiarity with USG administrative, management and reporting procedures and systems.
• Bachelor’s degree in international development, political economy, economics, business, quantitative methods and research, or a related field required.

Preferred Qualifications but not required:

• An advanced degree that incorporated research methods, statistics, quantitative/qualitative data analysis in the social or behavioral sciences.
• Experience in the successful MEL management of international projects of similar scope and size.
• Work specifically on USAID/Kenya & East Africa funded projects.