Save the Children is seeking a Food Security Technical Coordinator/Deputy Chief of Party (DCoP) for an anticipated five-year USAID-funded Development Food Security Activity (DFSA) in Ethiopia. The program will seek to sustainably improve food and nutrition security and resilience among poor and chronically vulnerable households and communities in the selected regions. The program will be implemented in close collaboration with the Government of Ethiopia’s Productive Safety Nets Programme (PSNP).Hiring is contingent upon successful award of the project and USAID approval of the candidate.

What You’ll Be Doing (Essential Duties)

The proposed program will be an integrated, multi-sectoral food and nutrition security intervention. The Food Security Technical Coordinator, who will also function as the technical DCoP, will establish and manage systems to ensure a coherent and high-impact approach across all program activities and themes. The Coordinator will ensure that activities are appropriately layered, sequenced and integrated at all stages of the intervention. The Coordinator will develop tools and procedures to guide the implementation of food and nutrition security programming, monitoring outputs and outcomes and ensuring course corrections as required. The Coordinator will oversee thematic leads and ensure the quality of their– and their teams’– work. The Coordinator will work closely with the resource transfer operations team to ensure strong complementarity between resource transfers and complementary activities.

Key Functions:

• Establish an integration framework (drawing explicitly on the theory of change) such that all sectoral interventions and thematic areas and approaches align at the household and community levels to maximize food and nutrition security impacts, with a particular emphasis on improvements in nutrition status, reductions in extreme poverty and chronic food insecurity, and complementarity with PSNP. This applies not only to technical sectors such as agricultural livelihoods, non-agricultural livelihoods, nutrition, maternal-child health, disaster risk management, and WASH, but also to cross-cutting considerations and program approaches such as gender, youth, social cohesion, resilience, and social accountability and operational modalities such as resource transfers.
• Create, and monitor the use of, tools to ensure integration, cohesion, and alignment with food security and nutrition security and resilience best practices. Train and coach team members in the use of the same.
• Establish and implement a layering and sequencing strategy to ensure that each activity in the intervention is timed and implemented in a way that builds towards overall desired food and nutrition security and resilience impacts. Manage activities to achieve this layering and sequencing plan. Ensure that external activities and investments in the intervention area are considered, and that appropriate linkages are created.
• Ensure that all members of the program consortium are contributing technical inputs in a coordinated fashion that leverages the expertise of each organization, and that each consortium member is coordinating closely and effectively with the Government of Ethiopia (at central, regional and local levels).
• Under the direction of the COP, support coordination of the Refine period’s (year 1) formative research studies, ensuring that these remain on track and that findings are synthesized to inform revisions to the program’s design (including its theory of change), scope, targeting methodology and implementation approach.
• Working with the Collaborating, Learning and Adapting (CLA) Lead, hold discussions with partners and collaborating agencies to create and implement plans for program coordination at the household, community, kebele and woreda levels.
• Assist the CoP in overall program quality assurance, and the M&E Lead in the measurement of the program impacts.
• Lead the documentation and dissemination of information regarding program practices and outcomes.
• Ensure that team members are provided with learning opportunities that support the technical quality of field interventions.
• Provide day to day assistance, guidance and support to thematic team leaders to ensure quality implementation and integration.
• Lead the technical aspects of routine and ad hoc program reporting.

Required Qualifications

• Advanced degree (Master’s or PhD) in a relevant field and at least five years of relevant field-based program and operational management experience; or, a Bachelor’s degree in a relevant field and at least seven years of relevant field-based experience
• Specific technical expertise in food and nutrition security, social protection, and resilience programming.
• Ability and willingness to travel frequently.
• Excellent written communication and presentation skills in English. Knowledge of a local language is an asset.
• Strong tool/ curriculum development and training skills.
• Demonstrate experience with food security-related MEAL tools, best practices and analytics required.

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