Senior Programme (Business) Development Advisor at International Rescue Committee

The Purpose of the Role

• The Senior Program/Business Development Advisor will join a global BD team and will help drive IRC’s new business development efforts by engaging with global, regional, country, and technical staff throughout the business development cycle from opportunity tracking and positioning/capture planning to proposal development, and submission. The ideal candidate will have a successful track record of leading large-scale and complex new business efforts in international development with particular emphasis on USAID contracts and cooperative agreements. Although this role will focus predominantly on FCDO and USAID, the successful candidate will serve an important surge support function and may work with other donors including AFDB, BHA, SIDA, World Bank, and others.

Key Working Relationships

• Country Teams, Technical Units, Peer agencies, Local Partners

KEY ACCOUNTABILITIES

Bid leadership and management (70%)

• Lead and support proposal development for primarily USAID opportunities, including capture strategy, management of proposal teams, calendars, and deadlines; strategy development with technical staff; partner identification and negotiations; recruiting; writing; production; and after-action reviews.
• Drafts sections of concept notes and proposals and/or serves as a point of quality control for USAID proposals.
• Collaborate with IRC’s pricing team, ensuring technical coherence with the cost proposal.
• Collaborates with Proposal Recruiter to identify and assess candidates for key personnel positions on proposals.
• Conducts compliance reviews of strategic bids and ensure certifications made on proposals are accurate and substantiated.
• Represents IRC and prepares key stakeholders including Country Teams and Technical Advisors for pitches and partner calls related to funding opportunities.
• Occasionally serve in support role for other IRC donors including ECHO, SIDA, World Bank and others.
• Business Development process improvement and knowledge management (10%)
• Conducts After Action Reviews and captures learning to disseminate to wider organization
• Contributes to and models the use of standard business development processes, tools, templates and information.
• May serve in short term mentor role to junior staff leading large bids for the first time.

Partnerships and Strategy (20%)

• Conducts landscape analyses to identify most strategic partnerships in FCDO and USAID markets with a particular focus on fostering local partnerships.
• Drafts high quality positioning materials as necessary, including capability statements and prior project reference sheets.
• Strengthen collaboration with internal stakeholders including country teams, technical units, and other team members.

Skills, Knowledge and Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in relevant field, including international relations, political science, public administration, and communications
• At least six years of focused experience working with US Government donors including USAID, DOS, and CDC.
• Strong knowledge of USAID rules and regulations including familiarity with the FAR, AIDAR, and 2 CFR 200.
• Fluency in English with proficiency in one other language (French, Spanish, German, Arabic) highly desirable

Experience:

• Successful track record leading large proposal teams on complex subject, multi-year, multi-partner proposals with minimal supervision
• Experience with both USAID assistance and USAID acquisition mechanisms
• Successful experience leading proposal teams through key bid processes including co-creation, oral presentations, and BAFO.
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills, including the ability to effectively manage a variety of relationships in a multicultural environment
• Familiarity with Shipley proposal development model highly desirable
• Ability to travel internationally (up to 20% of time)