Policy & Embedded Lab Manager, Nigeria at Innovations for Poverty Action

Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) is a research and policy nonprofit that discovers and promotes effective solutions to global poverty problems. IPA brings together researchers and decision-makers to design, rigorously evaluate, and refine these solutions and their applications, ensuring that the evidence created is used to improve the lives of the world’s poor.

We are recruiting to fill the position below:

Job Title: Policy & Embedded Lab Manager, Nigeria

Location: Abuja
Reports to: Country Director
Desired Start Date: ASAP
Job Type: International

Job Description

• IPA is seeking a Policy & Embedded Lab Manager to support a project which partners with regulators, civil society, and academia to promote evidence-based anti-trafficking in Nigeria.
• The project will help build long-term capacity among stakeholders to collect and act on high-quality data to design, adapt and more effectively target their programs, as well as determine the effectiveness of counter-trafficking programs.
• The Lab will follow the methodologies developed by IPA’s Embedded Labs program, https://www.poverty-action.org/advisory/embedded-labs, adapted to the local context and research needs.
• This lab will focus on sex trafficking, but given it is a systematic intervention, its impact will likely spill over into forced labor and irregular migration.
• The position holder will report directly to the IPA Nigeria Country Director.

Responsibilities 
Embedded Evidence Lab:

• The Manager will perform a variety of tasks related to leveraging existing data and developing new research projects to drive greater use of evidence within the regulator. For example, the Manager may conduct activities including but not limited to:
  • Mapping the data needs of specific departments within the regulator against the existing data available, complemented with an assessment of its quality
  • Assessing existing datasets and indicators according to criteria of relevance, objectivity, and reliability
  • Identifying opportunities to test low cost “pilots” of new approaches to data collection and analysis to generate actionable information and analysis
  • Developing and executing opportunities to leverage administrative data for analysis to inform key programs and decisions
  • Providing technical support through coaching, feedback on Monitoring Evaluation and Learning (MEL) tools, training and other on-site support
  • Developing and executing “learning-by-doing” capacity building projects with the goal of strengthening quality and use of data among partners on this project and beyond
  • Developing opportunities to leverage administrative data for research; connecting local and international researchers to pursue these openings
  • Producing policy reports and briefs based on key insights generated from lab activities
  • Developing a policy-driven research agenda for the lab and facilitating the development of research projects to respond to the agenda
  • Coordinate the research project development process across all phases: Project design, partnership agreements, budgeting and procurement, implementation and dissemination
  • Monitor project implementation to ensure quality control and adherence to the research specifications agreed upon, including supervision of research teams during data collection to ensure high quality and strict adherence to research design
  • Support project relationships with local stakeholders, including government authorities, multilateral and bilateral partners, civil society organizations, and private sector firms to facilitate the successful implementation of the research projects
  • Contribute to the delivery of high-quality policy and research outputs and activities. These include internal and external communications on the progress and outcomes of the research projects
  • Ensure project deliverables, such as reports and financial statements, are submitted on time
  • Facilitating events to disseminate lessons learned from implementation of lab activities

Qualifications 
We are seeing three different types of profiles that could fit this position particularly well (and if you don’t fall in any of these categories but feel like you meet the qualifications below, please do apply as well!:

• Management consultants with international development experience who would be excited in a career shift to an entrepreneurial and impact-focused environment leveraging their skillset
• M&E practitioners who are interested in broadening their scope and impact on the field by advising multiple organizations on state-of-the-art M&E practices
• Researchers and research management professionals in international development who enjoy working closely with practitioners and are interested in broadening their scope to all the types of data and evidence that can inform policy and practice.

Required Qualifications

• Master’s Degree in a related field such as International Development, Economics, Public Policy, Public Health, Education Policy or Social Sciences, including significant coursework i in quantitative methods. MBAs also welcome.
• 4-8 years of experience in the development or humanitarian sectors, with experience in monitoring and evaluation
• Experience in the development of MEL plans and tools, including sampling and questionnaire design
• Experience supervising quantitative and qualitative data collection
• Strong client facing and presentation skills, and ability to build relationships of trust with stakeholders at various levels
• Ability to present information in a structured and insightful way, both in writing and orally, to a variety of audiences
• Self-starter, entrepreneurial mindset, versatility and willingness to learn.
• Strong time management and multi-tasking skills • Experience working in developing countries, and preferably in Africa.
• Complete fluency in English

Preferred Additional Qualifications:

• Experience working on research or MEL on programs relating to Human Trafficking, Forced Labor and/or Irregular Migration
• Experience working with government stakeholders
• Experience in management consulting or other professional services
• Familiarity with the concepts surrounding the Theory of Change and the core tools of MEL (both quantitative and qualitative research methods)
• Understanding of causal inference and RCTs
• Ability to use Stata, R or similar statistical software
• Familiarity with SurveyCTO, Open Data Kit or similar survey software
• Demonstrated ability to coach and train others on MEL methodologies data analysis or statistics.

Application Closing Date
Rolling Basis.