Job Purpose: The Senior Technical Advisor – Localization will lead the roll-out of the Beyond Barriers: Overcoming Funding and Workforce Obstacles to Achieve a Localized Humanitarian Response Project;  a two-year, research and capacity development program with the end goal of assisting a variety of stakeholders, including the UN, INGOs, NGOs and donor governments to overcome barriers to more effective, localized humanitarian response.

This project will sit within Concern’s Strategy, Advocacy and Learning (SAL) Directorate located in Dublin and will liaise closely with Humanitarian Training Staff in Concern’s New York Office – which oversees a growing collection of capacity strengthening programming funded by USAID’s Bureau of Humanitarian Assistance (BHA).

In this role, the Senior Technical Advisor will have the primary responsibility for the design and delivery of the 24-month USAID-funded research program. This program will conduct focused research – including multiple in-country stakeholder consultations and direct program site data collection – across five humanitarian contexts in order to develop a series of guidance documents, toolkits, and resources.

All of the above will be done in close collaboration with five in-country academic partners who the Senior Technical Advisor will be responsible for sourcing and coordinating research.

The program is still in the start-up phase, and as such, a high degree of flexibility and adaptability will be required to ensure that program implementation can begin successfully.  The successful candidate will have a strong background in both research and humanitarian response, ideally directly in the humanitarian contexts to be studied.

Key Responsibilities:

Programme Development & Implementation

• The Senior Technical Advisor will be responsible for conducting a detailed desk review on context-specific barriers to localization in order to analyze and document the factors that have led to advances in local and national NGO capacity in and across various humanitarian contexts. This will include both third-party data, as well as Concern and Concern’s partner-specific data, evaluations, and research.  This will also include developing criteria for contexts to be studied and illustrative of differing humanitarian challenges.
• Identify and engage key local academic partners with the expertise necessary to promote evidence-based approaches to improved delivery of humanitarian assistance through enhanced localization, focused mainly on humanitarian financing and human resource-related topics.
• Support local academic partners in the development of the study protocol and conduct extensive in-person and online consultations – gathering first-person research and data in the five selected study contexts. This will be done in both a supporting and direct role and will strive to standardize approaches as much as possible across the five contexts.
• Develop and manage the overall research design, ensuring that the design is in line with the objectives and outline in the program proposal.
• Write up or otherwise facilitate the distillation of research findings and the production of key research outputs such as reports, learning documents, and other products as outlined in the program proposal.
• Lead in the development of the program’s learning products (e.g., coordination mapping tool, commitment compass, joint value-capacity assessment, etc.).
• Support dissemination and roll-out of the program’s learning products including coordinating a series of stakeholder meetings as well as 1-day workshops where study findings and suggested solutions to barriers and limitations of actualizing a localized humanitarian response will be presented.
• Ensure that the program incorporates humanitarian principles throughout the project/research design and is in line with Concern’s policies and best practices in humanitarian research ethics and guidelines.

Program Management

• Actively manage all the research and outputs of the project, including coordinating all the key stakeholders in the research in an effective and efficient manner.
• Act as the program convener throughout the life of the project, including facilitating the academic partner’s contributions and ideas into the broader project across the five contexts.
• Fulfillment of all key donor deliverables such as programmatic reporting, work plans, and donor check-ins as required.
• Direct line management of one to two project staff – as well as oversight of work for additional project staff.

Skills and Experience Required:

Essential

• Post-graduate degree in Humanitarian Action, International Development, or related discipline
• At least five (5) years experience working, researching, or studying in or with conflict settings and fragile states, specifically in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia contexts
• Knowledge and experience in conducting quantitative data collection, including developing data collection tools, sampling, and data analysis
• Knowledge and experience in mixed methodologies including developing data collection tools, sampling, and data analysis
• Experience with operational research, data collection, and peer-review writing
• High level of analytical capacity and use of data analysis tools (SPSS, Dedoose, etc.)
• Demonstrated experience in using data for project/program management
• Confidence in representing M&E methodologies, findings, and priorities to donors
• Experience in developing practical guidance and templates for field-level staff
• Possess deep knowledge of trends in humanitarian reform and commitments to localization, with a specific focus on the NGO community.
• Understanding of the international humanitarian coordination system, including the cluster approach, and humanitarian leadership (e.g. HCT/HC)
• Excellent interpersonal, communications, and facilitation skills
• Ability to work within multi-cultural teams
• Ability to manage own work as well as collaborate within a larger team
• Flexibility and ability to work under pressure and in complex environments
• Willingness to travel internationally routinely including on short notice and for extended missions (up to 6 weeks)

Source:https://jobs.concern.net/jobs/ireland/vacancy/senior-technical-advisor–localization–1365-dublin/1383/description/?ujid=1639603460