Senior Consultant - Thought Leadership

Senior Consultant – Thought Leadership (Knowledge Hub)

Location: Brighton/Hybrid

Contract type: Permanent

Team: Knowledge Hub

Closing date: 16th July

About the role:

The role is responsible for facilitating Itad’s knowledge sharing and learning across the organisation, with a particular focus on sharing with external audiences. Working closely with our practices, account managers and strategic initiative leads, they will proactively identify knowledge and communications priorities that engage effectively with the international development sector (and beyond). Through the sharing of high quality, innovative content they will help position Itad as a thought-leader in the field of MEL for global development, building reputational capital and contributing to knowledge and debate across the sector.

The role will involve capturing knowledge across the organisation, and ensuring internal knowledge curation and sharing equips consultants with the skills, knowledge and resources that they need to win and deliver high quality services whilst promoting a culture of learning. With the Knowledge Hub team, they will identify needs and opportunities for the development of knowledge resources, learning and development training, and spearheading innovative knowledge management and communications initiatives.

The role will also provide high quality technical and methodological advice to support Itad’s MEL assignments. This includes oversight of Itad’s technical quality assurance (QA) processes, providing training, guidance and technical support to our consultants; synthesising learning from our reviews and managing an external pool of QA reviewers.

A reasonable proportion of time will be spent on MEL consultancy projects that maximise the potential for learning and are of strategic importance for broader organisational knowledge and communications objectives. This requires leading and contributing to project delivery, developing and owning stakeholder relationships, supporting the development of strong, high performing teams, contributing to business development activities that build our reputational capital and market presence.

The role is essential to the success and development of our collective work. It will be delivered by close liaison with other team members and other parts of the business. This role requires a collaborative mindset, emotional intelligence and strong organisational skills.

The Candidate:

As a Senior Consultant you will have a track record in managing and leading the delivery of complex MEL projects, setting clear direction, managing risk and ensuring delivery of high quality outputs that meet commercial targets and provide value for money.

You will have strong facilitation and communication skills and the motivation to share knowledge and learning both internally and across the wider sector.

Your technical experience will include knowledge of different approaches to evaluation design in an international development context (such as theory-based, experimental or quasi-experimental, and mixed method evaluations). You will be experienced in facilitating workshops and learning processes, including convenings and co-design processes. You will have experience of qualitative and / or quantitative data collection and analysis techniques.

Key Responsibilities:

Thought Leadership

• Shaping debates and practice with clients, and creating new business opportunities
• Change: New focus on market-shaping through a pipeline of research work with convenings
• Identifying cutting-edge thought leadership opportunities

Building Itad, Active Sales and Knowledge Production, and Learning Culture:

• Provide technical leadership and direction across a number of MEL (and research) projects in the portfolio and provide quality assurance on projects
• Lead the development and execution of comprehensive MEL frameworks and systems to support adaptive and results-based management approaches for (Practice) projects, including quantitative and qualitative methods in evaluations
• Provide high-level technical guidance and capacity building to teams, including training, coaching, and mentoring on MEL methodologies
• Knowledge of company objectives and a demonstrated commitment to leading teams in achieving both organisational and individual targets

Technical:

• Provide technical leadership and direction across a number of MEL (and research) projects in the portfolio and provide quality assurance on projects
• Lead the development and execution of comprehensive MEL frameworks and systems to support adaptive and results-based management approaches for (Practice) projects, including quantitative and qualitative methods in evaluations
• Provide high-level technical guidance and capacity building to teams, including training, coaching, and mentoring on MEL methodologies
• Knowledge of company objectives and a demonstrated commitment to leading teams in achieving both organisational and individual targets

Project Management

• Develop and implement comprehensive project plans, ensuring alignment with client objectives
• Lead multidisciplinary project teams, fostering collaboration and ensuring effective communication to achieve project milestones and deliverables
• Identify potential risks and develop mitigation strategies, while proactively addressing challenges to ensure successful project outcomes
• Ensure contracts in their portfolio deliver high quality, timely outputs that meet client needs
• Manage and oversee a portfolio of contracts, ensuring accurate billing forecasts, minimizing slippage, and maintaining or improving gross profit (GP) on contracts. This includes quality assurance of interim and final deliverables across practices

Bidding

• Manage the entire bid submission process, ensuring all documentation is complete, accurate, and submitted on time, while adhering to the specific procurement regulations of funding agencies
• Contribute to the development of MEL-focused proposals, including writing technical sections, designing evaluation frameworks, and preparing budgets for new projects. This includes a new focus on ‘research’ projects that help position Itad as a thought leader.
• Sharing knowledge and supporting in development of others

Research and Analysis

• Oversee the design and implementation of data collection tools and methodologies, ensuring robust data analysis and reporting to inform decision-making and improve programme outcomes
• Contributes to internal knowledge sharing around MEL and technical areas though leading ItadTalks, CBD sessions and contributing to knowledge hub initiatives

Core Technical Strengths

As an evidence advocate
you will be using your deep knowledge and experience of MEL to lead and advise others in designing and implementing complex MEL projects and workstreams. You will have demonstrated technical expertise in designing MEL systems, tools and processes for a range of clients, and designing and delivering evaluations using a range of approaches and methodologies. You will have used these methods to present evidence and analysis to clients – both written and verbally – in a clear, distilled and accessible way, facilitating engagement and use.

As a change agent you will have excellent facilitation and communications skills and experience, and an ability to convey ideas to clients and teams in a clear and focused style, flexing your technique to suit the environment, and in a way that generates buy-in and supports learning.

As a project manager you will have a track record in managing and leading the delivery of complex MEL projects, setting clear direction, managing risk and ensuring delivery of high quality outputs that meet commercial targets and provide value for money.

As a trusted advisor you will have a strong understanding of how our clients work, and demonstrated ability to build strong relationships with clients that generate repeat work. You will also have experience in successfully leading complex bid processes, including building and managing large teams and consortia.

You will also have a track record in the management of internal and external high-performance teams.  With excellent communication skills, you can adapt to different situations and issues, have empathy, be able to delegate and empower effectively and have strong organisational skills, able to work closely with technical consultants and business units to efficiently deliver results.

If you’re enthusiastic about this opportunity but your experience doesn’t align perfectly with every requirement, we encourage you to apply anyway and demonstrate how your experience is transferrable.  You may be just the right candidate.

We are committed to equality and inclusion to empower people both within our organisation and through our work. We know that employees with diverse backgrounds, perspectives, and experiences make us a more effective and innovative company and we therefore welcome and encourage applications from interested candidates regardless of age, sex, gender identity, disability, sexual orientation, race, religion, or belief.