Senior Technical Advisor, Humanitarian and Business Development at Pathfinder International

Your Impact: The Senior Technical Advisor, Humanitarian and Business Development, will provide strategic and technical leadership in designing high-quality humanitarian and nexus programmes and will support organizational growth through competitive business development. The position will lead to the development of evidence-based, innovative, and donor-responsive proposals across humanitarian, recovery, resilience, and development programming. Reporting directly to the Director Business Development & Partnerships and working closely with country offices, technical advisors, BD advisors, the MEL team, and partnerships teams, the Senior Technical Advisor will translate organizational strategy into winning funding opportunities and technically robust programme designs. This position will also strengthen organizational capacity in programme design, technical writing, and proposal development in the humanitarian sector.

Key Responsibilities:

Strategic Programme Design:  

• Lead the design of high-quality humanitarian, recovery, resilience, and humanitarian-development-peace nexus programmes.
• Translate donor priorities, contextual analyses, assessments, and organizational strategies into innovative programme concepts.
• Ensure programme designs are technically sound, gender-responsive, climate-sensitive, conflict-sensitive, inclusive, and country-led.

Business Development and Proposal Leadership:

• Lead technical proposal development for strategic humanitarian and development funding opportunities.
• Ensure program designs integrate protection, emergency preparedness and response, early recovery, and humanitarian-development-nexus approaches.
• Support technical quality assurance across humanitarian programs through technical guidance, reviews, and adaptive learning.
• Serve as Proposal Lead or Technical Lead for priority bids.
• Develop technical narratives, implementation approaches, and Theories of change.
• Support capture planning, opportunity positioning, competitive analyses, and partner engagement.

Technical Writing and Technical visibility:

• Prepare high-quality technical documents including concept notes, proposals, strategic papers, donor reports, briefing notes, case studies, and learning products.
• Review technical quality, consistency, and compliance of proposals before submission. Ensure evidence, data, lessons learned, and organizational experience are effectively incorporated into proposals.
• Maintain high standards of technical writing, editing, and document presentation.

Program innovation and impact:

• Promote evidence-informed programme design across the organization.
• Identify and document innovations, promising practices, and lessons learned.
• Support development of organizational guidance, templates, and programme design tools.
• Contribute to organizational thought leadership on humanitarian programming and business development.

Capacity strengthening:

• Strengthen organizational capacity in humanitarian programme design.
• Design and deliver formal training and informal mentorship programs to enhance internal technical writing for humanitarian settings and program design capacity across global teams.

What You Bring:

• Master’s degree in public health, International Development, Humanitarian Assistance, Social Sciences, Economics, Monitoring and Evaluation, or a related field.
• Minimum 10 years of progressively responsible experience in humanitarian programming, programme design, and international development.
• Demonstrated experience leading successful proposals for major institutional donors.
• Strong understanding of humanitarian architecture and humanitarian-development-peace nexus programming.
• Proven track record of leading successful proposal development processes for bilateral (e.g., FCDO, GAC), multilateral (e.g., UN agencies, Global Fund, World Bank), and private sector donors.
• Experience working in multicultural, multi-country contexts with demonstrated ability to engage global teams and stakeholders.
• Excellent communication skills, with ability to tailor complex technical content to diverse audiences (donors, policymakers, partners, internal teams).

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience working in humanitarian settings and humanitarian actors.
• Experience in graphic design and desktop publishing
• Experience in mentoring staff and capacity strengthening
• Fluency in French, Portuguese or Arabic

Why You’ll Love Working with Us:

• Join an innovative, forward-thinking organization that values your growth and ideas.
• Work within a supportive, collaborative environment.
• Make a meaningful impact on our business development and partnership portfolio.
• Enjoy a competitive salary and comprehensive benefits package.
• Benefit from the opportunity for global engagement.