Senior Program Quality and Learning Officer, POWER Partnership at the International Rescue Committee
The International Rescue Committee (IRC) is recruiting a Senior Program Quality and Learning Officer for the POWER Partnership, a multi-country program focused on gender-based violence prevention and response through strengthened women-led and local organizations. The role is open to candidates located in Kenya, Uganda, or Burundi who have the right to work in their location.
The position is a senior technical and coordination role spanning six POWER countries: Burundi, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, and Sudan. It combines program quality, learning, MEAL, partnership strengthening, grant management, advocacy, and cross-country coordination.
Senior Program Quality and Learning Officer: Key Details
| Detail | Information |
|---|---|
| Employer | International Rescue Committee (IRC) |
| Position | Senior Program Quality and Learning Officer, POWER Partnership |
| Opportunity type | Job |
| Primary work focus | Program quality, learning, WPE, protection and partnership |
| Program | POWER Partnership |
| POWER countries | Burundi, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan and Sudan |
| Eligible locations for this role | Kenya, Uganda and Burundi |
| Minimum professional experience | 8 years |
| Education | Advanced degree in a relevant field or equivalent combination of qualification and experience |
| Required language | Fluent English |
| Additional languages | French and Arabic are assets |
| Travel | Possible travel across the six countries, including hardship and conflict-affected locations |
| Contract arrangement | Local employment contract and local salary scale |
| Closing date | 30 November 2026 |
What is the POWER Partnership?
POWER is an Irish Aid-funded strategic partnership running from 2025 to 2027 across six countries: Burundi, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, and Sudan. Its work centers on holistic gender-based violence prevention and response, with an emphasis on strengthening local women-led organizations.
The partnership includes advocacy, emergency response, and learning components. It also uses approaches such as women-led safety audits, which generate community-based risk analysis that can inform local advocacy and decision-making.
For the Senior Program Quality and Learning Officer, this means the job is not limited to monitoring whether activities are completed. The position is designed to connect program evidence, technical standards, learning, partner leadership, and adaptive management across different country contexts.
What does the Senior Program Quality and Learning Officer do?
The officer coordinates quality and learning across the six POWER country programs while working with country WPE and program teams, local and women-led partners, the WPE Global Practice, and IRC’s Award Management Unit. The position is responsible for technical quality assistance and for monitoring delivery against scope, timelines, and budgets.
A major part of the role is maintaining technical quality in areas such as survivor-centered response, case management, women’s and girls’ safe spaces, clinical and MHPSS referral pathways, and social norms programming. These areas must align with IRC WPE standards and the IASC GBV Minimum Standards.
The officer will also help determine where common approaches can be applied across countries and where local adaptation is needed. The source specifically emphasizes maintaining consistency without ignoring contextual differences.
Another important responsibility is ensuring that MEAL and program data actually influence implementation. In practical terms, the position is expected to help teams use evidence to adjust programs rather than treating data simply as something to include in reports.
Learning, evidence and advocacy responsibilities
Learning is a central part of this position. The officer will lead the design and delivery of the partnership learning pillar, including cross-country learning cycles, documentation, and structured reflection involving IRC and its partners.
The role also places significant value on implementation learning. Candidates should be comfortable identifying what is working, what is not working, and where program assumptions fail in practice.
The position will help strengthen the evidence base around what enables or constrains change in protracted crisis settings. It also connects evidence generated through the partnership to advocacy, allowing partners to use their own findings in local, national, and global policy discussions.
Working with women-led and local organizations
Partnership strengthening is another major area of responsibility. The officer will support local organizations in areas including governance, financial systems, safeguarding, and MEAL, while working in ways that allow partners to define and lead their own institutional strengthening priorities.
The role also supports emergency readiness and surge capacity. This includes helping local organizations maintain a meaningful role when crises intensify, rather than automatically shifting responsibility to international surge teams.
The source specifically identifies SSWC in Somalia and FODDAJ in Kenya as partner organizations and emphasizes moving analytical and decision-making authority toward organizations with genuine institutional standing.
Who is eligible for this IRC position?
This is a senior-level opportunity requiring at least eight years of professional experience in GBV, WPE, or protection programming within humanitarian and conflict-affected settings. That experience should include technical leadership as well as work involving partnerships and locally led social action, program quality or learning, and program or grant management with budget oversight.
The educational requirement is an advanced degree in a relevant area such as:
- Social work
- Gender studies
- International development
- Human rights
- Public health
- Law
The source also allows for an equivalent combination of qualification and experience.
Candidates should have strong knowledge of WPE practice and the IASC GBV Minimum Standards. The employer also seeks practical experience with feminist partnership and localization, particularly experience working with women-led organizations as partners rather than simply as subgrantees.
Other important competencies include:
- Learning and MEAL capability
- Multi-country program and grant management
- Scope, timeline and budget tracking
- Evidence-based policy communication
- Coordination across diverse and insecure settings
- Contextual and political sensitivity
- Strong safeguarding and Do No Harm judgment
- Experience dealing with conflict-related sexual violence contexts
Location, language and travel requirements
The role is specifically open to candidates located in Kenya, Uganda, or Burundi who have the right to work in their location. Successful candidates will be employed under a local employment contract and the applicable local salary scale. The position is described as hybrid.
Fluent English is required. French is listed as an asset because of the East and Central Africa footprint, while Arabic is an asset for work connected to the Sudan and South Sudan contexts.
Travel may be required across the six POWER countries, including hardship and conflict-affected locations. Applicants should therefore pay close attention to the role’s field and cross-country nature rather than viewing it as a standard office-based program quality position.
How to apply
Applications should be submitted through the International Rescue Committee’s careers system using the official vacancy page. The listed closing date is 30 November 2026.
Before applying, candidates should compare their professional background with the specific requirements, particularly the eight-year experience threshold, technical WPE/GBV knowledge, multi-country coordination, partnership and localization experience, and program or grant management responsibilities.
