The International Rescue Committee is a global humanitarian aid, relief and development nongovernmental organization.

Job Summary

The IRC Education Unit currently has programs in conflict and post-conflict contexts in over 20 countries around the globe. Our programming approach is one that promotes and supports the realization of the rights of children and young people. Currently, our programs include formal and non-formal education and life skills training for children and youth ages 0-16, with a focus on psychosocial well-being and cognitive development. The Education Unit works closely with behavioral sciences and designers from IRC’s Research & Development (R&D) Center – the Airbel Center – to apply best practices in behavior science, human centered design, and multidisciplinary problem-solving to improve access to and quality of education in humanitarian contexts. Combining IRC’s technical expertise, extensive field presence, and leadership in innovation, we believe it is possible to design and scale breakthrough humanitarian programs that could impact millions of people most affected by conflict and disasters.

Job Overview:

As refugee crises grow more protracted and urbanized, how can we avoid interruptions in children’s education? How do you support educators’ professional development and wellbeing in a scalable, culturally appropriate way?  That’s where you come in. As a Design Manager in IRC’s Education Technical Unit (TU), you will be a key part of the design, testing and scaling of solutions for major challenges such as these.

Based in IRC’s Innovation Hub in Tanzania or elsewhere in the East Africa region, the Project Manager will support the development of education products and services to improve outcomes for people affected by crisis. The role will include collaborating with colleagues to choose design and testing approaches for various interventions, planning user experience research, building capacity of country-based team members, and facilitating testing activities for a variety of projects. This role requires operational and project management skills, as well as a strong understanding of design research and humanitarian issues.

 Major Responsibilities:

•  Support the design and manage the testing of new solutions in education programming by :
• • Working collaboratively with the Education TU, R&I and distributed global IRC teams to determine relevant design and testing approaches for programming ideas, ensuring correct budgeting for design and testing activities and drafting of testing plans.
• Contributing to design research plans as part of project start-up.
• Managing prototyping, testing and iteration plans for education products and services.
• Together with technical experts, facilitating co-creation/brainstorming workshops with teams and training teams on prototyping/testing processes.
• Collaborating with staff and local government/system stakeholders to ensure the necessary approvals are obtained for prototyping and testing.
• Overseeing prototyping and testing efforts being led by in-country staff.
• Synthesizing, or helping teams synthesize, findings and presenting them in digestible/visual ways that support the evolution of programming ideas.

Job Requirements

 Minimum Requirements

• Bachelor’s Degree in a social sciences or design discipline, or equivalent work experience
• Fluency in English
• Substantial project management experience
• Experience working with human-centered design, user testing, user story development, participatory action research, and other product development techniques in a wide range of projects
• Experience in rapid prototyping new services and products (low and high fidelity) and iterating them in response to successive rounds of feedback
• Experience in synthesizing large amounts of qualitative data into a digestible and visual story
• Experience facilitating workshops
• Unparalleled team collaboration skills; comfort working with researchers, frontline implementers, technical experts, clients, engineers, donors, and communications staff
• Excellent interpersonal skills and ability to communicate with colleagues and stakeholders at all levels in a distributed, multicultural professional environment to motivate the uptake of behaviorally-informed solutions

Preferred

1. Master’s Degree
2. Experience and/or education in behavioral science (behavioral economics, psychology, anthropology, ethnography, neuroscience)
3. Fluency in French, Kiswahili, and/or Arabic
4. Experience in visual design
5. Work in humanitarian setting, development contexts or in low-resource settings / with underserved populations
6. Experience/familiarity with NGO setting
7. Understanding of educational interventions, and experience working on education projects, particularly in humanitarian settings

Working Environment:

Standard office work environment

Potential to travel to IRC program locations up to 25% of the time