Position Summary: The M&E and Research Specialist works closely with the Managing Director, Associate Managing Director and the Research Program Manager to support quality and timely execution of M&E and research projects. The M&E and Research Specialist provides technical support to projects throughout their lifecycle, including but not limited to project planning and management, tool development, data cleaning, management and analysis, reporting and maintaining client communications. The position requires strong collaboration with all teams involved with the project (Field, Translation, IT, and Research teams). The M&E and Research Specialist may be assigned to work on a single project or multiple, either individually or in teams, as determined by the Managing Director, the Associate Managing Director and the Research Program Manager.
Location: Remote, work from home.
Start: Immediate
Duration: 1-year contract with possibility of extension (3-month probationary period)
Reports to: Managing Director, Associate Managing Director, Research Program Manager, CEO
RESPONSIBILITIES & DUTIES:
• Work independently or in teams (depending on the project) to carry out SREO’s research projects ethically and efficiently at the micro level:
Systems Development
• Produce project work and implementation plans;
• Design and improve project methodologies and qualitative/quantitative tools including but not limited to surveys, interview guides, checklists, et al. These will need to be designed for a range of projects in multiple sectors (e.g. FSL, WASH, Health, Education, Protection, etc.);
• Work with project team to determine information needs and data collection procedures, in line with Do No Harm Principles and Core Humanitarian Standards.
Data Management and Analysis
• Collaborate in conducting research by working with interns, SREO teams, and clients and partners;
• Communicate data collection needs (workplans with locations and focal point information) to Field Coordinators;
• Communicate with Field Coordinators and Translation team to ensure that data is collected and processed in a quality and timely manner;
• Compile and analyze data to draft ME&V research products and other client reports and products;
• Collaborate with the Research Program Manager to track project timelines and organize all project data and products;
• Manage project timelines, to ensure ME&V and research is carried in a timely and ethical manner;
• Analyze M&E data and summarizing it into accessible, understandable, useful information for client staff to use for decision-making and applying adaptive and results-based project and program management;
• Identify and manage effective and efficient information sharing mechanisms that are useful and supportive for client staff;
• Ensure accountability and learning through planning and facilitating periodic progress reviews (at the activity and output levels) and results-based reviews (at the outcome level) and M&E and client staff for all projects;
• Support external consultants and evaluators;
• Oversee efforts to promote documentation and sharing of program impact and learning, ensuring sharing of lessons learnt between SREO offices;
• Actively promote sharing of learnings from baselines, end-lines, reviews and evaluations internally and externally;
• Facilitate learning workshops after every external evaluation and ensure the completion of quality management responses to all evaluation recommendations;
• Provide input to project learning reviews and client reports, as required.
Reporting and Communication
• Draft, revise and finalize completed project deliverables including but not limited to MV&E inception and data reports, recommendations and guiding documents, studies, and presentations;
• Plan and facilitate inception meetings with client staff to complete detailed activity planning and M&E planning for all projects (including logframes, M&E plans, activity, output, and outcome tracking);
• Actively manage relationship with client staff to ensure the relationship is supportive, coordinated, and that the M&E system is meeting the project team’s needs in terms of enabling them to apply adaptive results-based management practice;
• Meet regularly with stakeholders, clients, Field Coordinators/Researchers/Monitors to collect and communicate client requirements, set expectations for the ME&V and research project and present findings, when necessary.
Business Development
• Provide technical advice to the Business Development Team for technical proposals as requested.
Capacity Development
• Participate in SREO-initiated professional development sessions;
• Supervise and mentor graduate research interns;
• Contribute to SREO’s working environment by encouraging knowledge of, respect for, and development of skills to engage with those of other cultures and backgrounds;
• Develop and implement needs-based training for client staff and partners on project management systems and M&E tools, concepts, and their application;
• Research, analyse and disseminate to staff relevant/ new approaches, concepts and frameworks, and learning from SREO, stakeholders, and the wider development sector;
• Any other duties as deemed appropriate by the Managing Director and/or Managing Partner.
QUALIFICATIONS AND SKILLS:
Required:
• Master’s degree in relevant field (related to M&E, development, research, data analytics, etc.);
• Minimum 4 years of experience in M&E (positions where M&E is the primary area of responsibility);
• Minimum 2 years of experience at a management level;
• Clear understanding and experience in managing and directly implementing primary quantitative data collection (surveys, etc.) and primary qualitative data collection (key informant interviews, focus group discussion, participatory qualitative methods, etc.);
• Clear understanding and experience in managing quality assurance in data collection and performing quality checks on data;
• Experience managing research small scale ME&V, Research, and Learning projects, with knowledge of industry-standard research technology;
• Ability to plan, coordinate, organize, effectively communicate, with strong interpersonal and presentation skills;
• Fluency in speaking, reading, and writing English is required;
• Ability to work under time pressure and meet deadlines; time management;
• Ability to analyze and be a proactive problem-solver;
• Initiative, self-starter with ability to set goals and priorities;
• Demonstrated professional use of Microsoft Office applications, particularly Excel;
• Demonstrated capacity in quantitative and qualitative data analysis and interpretation (Experience with Kobo Collect, SPSS, Qaultrics, NVivo, MaxDQA, or other analytical tools preferred).
Desirable:
• Understanding of Monitoring and Evaluation principles, protocols and challenges;
• Sectoral specialization, knowledge of humanitarian principles and minimum standards;
• Knowledge of the context in and geography of countries in which SREO works is an advantage (Syria, Iraq, Libya, Lebanon, Jordan, Somalia, Ethiopia, Uganda, Ukraine);
• Familiarity with large donors (United Nations, USAID, FCDO, GIZ, World Bank, etc.) objectives, approaches and operations, as they relate to M&E is an advantage;
• Innovation, strategic thinking and change management skills;
• Additional language skills (e.g. French, Arabic, Spanish, etc.).
About SREO
SREO Consulting Ltd. (SREO) is an independent monitoring & evaluation and research consultancy committed to serving humanitarian, stabilization and development actors operating in the most challenging environments around the world by providing unbiased and actionable data, analysis and research. Our international team combines local insight with interdisciplinary expertise to deliver information from those in need to those who need it most.
SREO was originally founded in Gaziantep, Turkey in 2013 to assist in the Syria cross-border response. Over the past eight years, we have built one of the largest field teams inside Syria and expanded across the region to Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, then to Mali, Senegal, Afghanistan, Myanmar and Venezuela. We have completed over 250 monitoring and evaluation/ research projects with partners ranging from the United Nations, the World Bank, UK Department for International Development (DfID), Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), International Non-Government Organizations (INGOs), the private and public sector.
SREO Consulting is a Small to Medium Enterprise (SME), registered in Turkey and the United States. We are headquartered in Istanbul, Turkey with offices in Tunisia (Tunis), and Iraq (Erbil & Baghdad).
How to apply
If interested, please send your CV, cover letter and writing sample to [email protected]
Writing samples are recommended to be a maximum of 5 pages of an analytical piece (can be an excerpt) that demonstrates analytical skills using primary and secondary sources (qualitative and quantitative data preferred), clear and organized writing free of grammatical errors.
Any questions concerning this position can also be directed to this email address.