Open Roles at Busara Center

As a Senior Associate, you will work closely with the Portfolio Lead to design and deliver rigorous behavioural science research and advisory projects across school systems, vocational and skills education, youth employment, and entrepreneurship. The role focuses on generating actionable insights into how students, educators, employers, and other stakeholders make decisions, respond to incentives, and navigate key transition points from education into work.

Key Accountabilities/Responsibilities:

• Senior Associates will work closely with Busara offices and  directly with academic researchers and advisory clients to perform a variety of tasks including, but not limited to:

Technical Expertise

• Lead the design and execution of rigorous mixed-methods research across the education-to-work pipeline, integrating qualitative and quantitative approaches into coherent, decision-ready evidence.
• Ensure methodological robustness across study design, sampling, data collection, and analysis, with strong attention to validity, consistency, and analytical rigor.
• Conduct advanced qualitative and quantitative analysis, and synthesize multiple evidence streams into clear, actionable insights for education, skills, and workforce stakeholders.
• Serve as a technical quality gatekeeper across projects, reviewing research tools, analysis plans, and outputs to ensure adherence to agreed research standards.
• Identify methodological risks and implementation gaps early, and proactively strengthen research design and execution to safeguard output quality.
• Oversee the integrity of data pipelines and analytical processes across concurrent projects, ensuring accuracy, coherence, and traceability of findings.

Project & People Management

• Guide and technically supervise Associates in the execution of research tasks, including data collection, analysis, and reporting, ensuring alignment with protocols and analytical frameworks.
• Own project timelines, budgets, deliverables, and staffing plans; escalate risks early and manage scope proactively.
• Directly manage and mentor Analysts and Project Leads embedded on your engagements; build their research and advisory skills through active coaching.
• Coordinate across Busara's Data, Programming, and Operations teams to ensure smooth execution of field and remote research activities.
• Contribute to onboarding and knowledge management so institutional learning is captured and usable.

Client & Advisory Leadership

• Own the client relationship across the full engagement lifecycle — from scoping and contracting through delivery and dissemination.
• Lead senior-level conversations with donors, implementing partners, ministries, and private sector clients; anticipate needs, navigate complexity, and manage expectations proactively.
• Translate client problems into well-defined research and advisory briefs; push back constructively when questions are ill-formed or scope is misaligned.
• From time to time, develop proposals, concept notes, and pitch decks, and contribute to business development within the education and youth employment space.
• Represent Busara at conferences, technical working groups, and client convenings — presenting findings with clarity and confidence to non-specialist and expert audiences alike.

Knowledge, Skills, and Experience

Minimum Requirements

• At least 5 years of experience in research, advisory, or program design roles with a meaningful focus on education and youth employment in sub-Saharan Africa or comparable contexts.
• Deep expertise in mixed methods research.
• Expertise with quantitative methods and data analysis tools (Stata, R, or Python)
• Demonstrated ability to manage senior client and partner relationships with confidence, clarity, and professional maturity.
• Proven track record leading complex, multi-stakeholder projects from inception to delivery.
• Strong analytical and synthesis skills — you can turn messy data into a crisp, defensible argument.
• Excellent written and verbal communication in English; able to write for both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Bachelor's degree in a relevant field (Social Sciences, Development Studies, Economics, Public Policy, or related).

Desired Qualifications

• Master's degree in a relevant field.
• Experience applying behavioral science — formally or informally — to education and workforce development.
• Experience with experimental or quasi-experimental designs (RCTs, difference-in-differences, etc.) as a research lead or collaborator.

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About the Role

• As a Partnerships Development Associate, you will work closely with employees of the Busara Center for Behavioral Economics in Kenya and other global offices, as well as external clients and partners, to strengthen and coordinate business development practices and processes.
• A Partnerships Development Associate is expected to be able to quickly gain an expert understanding of a particular problem and use all tools at their disposal, both within and outside Busara, to develop a proposal, strategy or internal process to a high quality. The role holder is expected to have strong business development, writing and organizational skills, as well as an understanding of qualitative and quantitative research methods. The ideal applicant is an excellent communicator who thrives meeting new people, enjoys making connections, and bringing innovative ideas into new spaces. A curiosity mindset is encouraged, and familiarity with funding cycles, development organization landscapes and research and design organizations is a plus.
• As a Partnerships Development Associate, you will collaborate closely with our teams, external clients, and partners. You will aim to enhance and coordinate our business development practices, foster strategic partnerships, and ensure impactful outcomes.
• This is a growth-oriented position, and under successful circumstances, the ideal candidate can expect to grow within the partnerships division and the organization. 

Key Accountabilities/Responsibilities

CORE PARTNERSHIPS RESPONSIBILITIES

Pipeline & Opportunity Management

• Scout and identify new opportunities across funders, implementers, and research partners, both proactively and through inbound channels.
• Maintain CRM compliance and metrics tracking in Copper, ensuring all submitted opportunities are logged consistently.
• Support proposal development, drafting sections, accessing approved technical content, coordinating inputs across teams, and ensuring submissions are responsive to partner priorities.
• Manage submissions and maintenance of Long-Term Agreements (LTAs) with partner organizations, including tracking timelines and compliance requirements, and collecting input from relevant teams.
• Forging strategic partnerships with academic, commercial, public sector, and third sector organizations, with whom we can design, test, and scale solutions, with support from Senior Leadership.
• Manage a pipeline of organizations to watch.

Partnership Support Services

• Maintain the BD calendar, including trainings, conference schedules, and the cadence of the Director Activation Strategy.
• Plan and coordinate trainings for internal staff, including scheduling, materials preparation, and follow-up.
• Support facilitation of partner landscape analysis as part of the Director Activation Strategy, initially in collaboration with senior leadership.
• Attend external networking meetings alongside senior leadership, responsible for note-taking, drafting follow-up communications, and identifying next steps.
• Manage follow-ups from high-level meetings, ensuring commitments are captured and actioned.
• Update and maintain the Partnership Development landing page, ensuring content is current, accurate, and aligned with Busara's positioning.
• Support the development of partnership tools, templates, and resources.
• Advocate for knowledge management within Busara’s Partnerships function.
• Operator of partnership intelligence methodology. 

Internal Coordination & Cross-Team Collaboration

• Serve as internal liaison between the Partnership Development function and other Busara teams, ensuring delivery teams are connected to the right technical and operational expertise.
• Facilitate the creation and coordination of inter-portfolio delivery teams when opportunities cut across thematic areas.

 Administrative support

• Maintain and improve internal Partnerships Team resources (e.g., shared team drives) and ensure that content is relevant, appropriate, and up to date.
• Assist in the planning and execution of weekly Partnerships team meetings.
• Assist the VP, Partnerships, in the tabulation and reporting of business development targets and attainments.
• Plan and manage logistics for Busara roadshows, including scheduling, briefing materials, and follow-up coordination.

Knowledge, Skills, and Experience

Minimum Requirements 

• A Bachelor’s degree in Economics, Social Sciences, Public Policy, or other related field
• 1-3 years of previous work experience related to business development or partnership relationship management.
• Experience in managing large proposal development processes across multiple teams.
• Fluency and excellent communication and writing skills with a mastery of English.
• Outgoing personality and enjoys making connections with new people.
• Ability to manage high-level relationships with partner organizations.
• Understanding of qualitative and quantitative research approaches and methods.
• Excellent management and organizational skills.
• Flexible, self-motivating, able to manage multiple tasks efficiently, and a team player
• Interest and experience working in a fast-paced environment.

Desired Qualifications

• A Master’s degree in Economics, Social Sciences, Public Policy, or related fields
• Experience in business development with core Busara funders, e.g., the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Mastercard Foundation, USAID, DfID, etc., will be an added advantage.
• Experience in developing country contexts.
• Experience managing or mentoring staff.
• Familiarity with behavioral science.