Position: Research and MEL Specialist
Location: Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Apply by: March 7, 2023
Background
LINC is a mission-driven US-based small business organized around a commitment to local organizations leading their own development. We do this by implementing programs and delivering consulting and training in the areas of monitoring, evaluation, research, and learning (MERL), capacity-strengthening, and collective action. The recipient of USAID’s Small Business of the Year award in 2017, we are a team of reflective and passionate development professionals. Our country experience spans Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Europe. For more information on LINC, please visit www.linclocal.org.
In Ethiopia, LINC is implementing the new five-year, USAID-funded Resilience Learning Activity (RLA). The activity supports USAID and its resilience partners with learning, collaboration, and research around resilience issues in Ethiopia. RLA serves as a “learning sidecar” to USAID/Ethiopia and its implementing partners, helping them to better understand what relief and development interventions can help make households, communities, and systems more resilient to increasingly persistent shocks and stresses. RLA provides support with learning processes and frameworks, development and consolidation of learning and research agendas, and support to resilience partners for adaptive management, results measurement, and the increased integration of systems thinking and rapid feedback into their respective toolboxes.
This position reports to the Director of Research and Learning.
Position Description
The Research and MEL Specialist provides support to the RLA team and resilience partners to formulate and harmonize MEL approaches, advise on MEL strategies and systems, develop research and MEL guidance and how-to documentation, and actively contribute to the establishment and ongoing development of a knowledge management system. Advises on best research methods to accomplish objectives, and contributes to research efforts with advice on methods, data collection, quality assurance, analysis and write-up as required. The MEL Specialist will ensure compliance with various activity-level MEL requirements on the part of the project and actively maintain systems and processes that capture and report on programmatic progress and results.
Responsibilities
- Works with IPs to gather documentation and evidence and supports them in the application of relevant monitoring system, research and data collection efforts through training and technical assistance.
- Devises approaches to more rapidly monitor and track the trajectory of interventions through rapid feedback methods.
- Actively identifies support needs of resilience partner organizations and develops guidelines and how-to resources to support them.
- Contributes to or leads research design, development of data collection instruments, data collection and quality assurance, analysis, and write-up of results.
- Conduct assessment and analysis of evidence across USAID and IP’s portfolios of resilience programming.
- Analysis and provision of expertise on the development of research products and monitoring documentation and methods.
- Organizing and cataloging evidence and research by relevant thematic areas.
- Provides guidance and support to the development of reporting dashboards.
- Engages with the Communications and Knowledge Manager (CKM) to appropriately organize evidence resources and knowledge management system.
- Review of research plans and methods to ensure that information generated will contribute to relevant indicators and learning/research agenda(s).
- Engages with relevant Communities of Practice on research and evidence related issues.
- Contributes to work planning and periodic reporting.
- Establishes and maintains RLA’s project level MEL systems, including indicator progress and results collection and reporting.
- Other duties as assigned.
Skills and Qualifications
- Advanced degree in a relevant field.
- A minimum of 8 years’ experience managing or providing research and MEL expertise to UDAID-funded projects.
- Demonstrated skills and experience designing and applying advanced research methods.
- Skills and experience with both qualitative and quantitative data collection and analysis.
- Familiarity and practical experience applying rapid feedback and other related monitoring methods to capture and report on data in a timelier way.
- Demonstrated understanding and experience with qualitative coding methods and software.
- Familiarity and understanding of complexity-aware monitoring and evaluation approaches and methods, ideally including ethnography, outcome harvesting, systems dynamics analysis, and modeling.
- A minimum of five years’ experience training/facilitating large groups.
- Excellent planning, management, and communication skills, ability to work in teams.
- Previous experience implementing USAID or donor-funded projects preferred.
- Strong verbal and written skills in English (Level III for both) are required. Knowledge of Amharic is required.
Application Instructions
Please send your resume/CV to jobs@ethiopiaresilience.org by March 7, 2023, with the subject line “Research and MEL Specialist”. All applications will be reviewed, but only shortlisted candidates will be contacted. LINC LLC is an equal-opportunity employer.