Poverty and Social Protection Principal Consultant - Global

OPM is expanding its Poverty and Social Protection team to address the rising levels of poverty and vulnerability globally. We recognise the critical role of social protection in empowering individuals to manage risks, improve living standards, and enhance economic empowerment.  As part of our growth strategy, we seek a Principal Consultant with a strong blend of technical expertise and leadership skills. As part of our growth strategy, we are looking to hire a principal consultant for OPM’s Poverty and Social Protection team to take on business development, technical leadership, bidding ownership, client relationships, line management and contributing to strategic delivery.

As a Principal consultant within OPM's Poverty and Social Protection team, the role involves developing strategic initiatives, ensuring their alignment with client goals and advancing policy discussions. This entails winning projects through effective business development strategies and providing technical leadership throughout project implementation. Additionally, the role includes contributing to team learning and representing OPM in broader social protection forums. Principal consultants also take on mentoring responsibilities, guiding junior consultants in their professional development, and engaging in line management duties to support the team's growth and success.

The Poverty and Social Protection team: What we do

Our team combines thought-leadership with practical technical skills and an understanding of political economy to support governments and development partners in low- and middle-income countries to develop nationally-owned, effective and inclusive social protection systems.

As a team, we implement a range of different projects that span the policy cycle and different aspects of social protection and social care services. Our current and previous work includes:  

• Shock responsive social protection: Assessment of shock responsiveness of the social protection system in Zimbabwe for UNICEF, and analysis of social protection systems across 17 countries for WFP;
• Leveraging digitalisation: Global alliances for social protection in Rwanda and Uzbekistan for GIZ and using big data to develop low-cost data mapping technologies for FCDO to measure poverty;
• Inclusive and gender-sensitive social protection: Strengthening child protection and social protection services in the Middle East and North Africa for UNICEF, and a study examining disability inclusion for the flagship social protection programme in Ghana for the World Bank; and
• Economic inclusion: MEL within the Kenya Economic and Social Inclusion Programme (KSEIP)

We have team members based in Germany, Kenya, Pakistan, Tanzania, and the UK, but we have 12 global hubs in total, supported by a wide network of trusted associates. We also work closely with other practices within OPM, to deliver large and complex programs of work for our clients in health, governance, research and evaluation, climate and education.  

Our areas of expertise include:  

Social protection systems strengthening:

• Mapping and diagnostics of social protection systems
• Supporting the development of financially and politically feasible social protection strategies
• Supporting effective programme implementation with a focus on operational elements of delivery, (including targeting mechanisms; information systems and digitisation; monitoring and evaluation frameworks; service standards, accountability mechanisms and performance management; and institutional reform)
• Supporting the costing and design of integrated national programmes and their delivery systems
• Digital innovations for social protection delivery

Supporting shock-responsive (SRSP) and adaptive social protection (ASP),

• Mapping, diagnostics, design and implementation of SRSP / ASP policies and system
• Social protection and humanitarian linkages in fragile and conflict affected contexts
• Supporting economic inclusion or graduation approaches which combine social assistance with support to strengthening human capital and livelihoods in a changing climate          

Inclusive social assistance and social care services:

• Gender sensitive social protection and disability inclusive social protection
• Social workforce strengthening, capacity development and training

Poverty, inequality and vulnerability measurement and analysis:

• Impact simulations
• Situational analysis
• The use of big data and new techniques to improve the granularity and frequency of measures

Monitoring, evaluation, research and learning:

• Strengthening programme implementation and the global evidence base through rigorous independent monitoring and evaluation of impact, process, and cost-effectiveness.

What we are looking for

The ideal candidate we are looking for combines technical expertise and experience of building technical areas of work, with being an experienced team leader, experience of business development, winning work and developing pipelines.

We are open to candidates with diverse profiles who combine strong social protection expertise with experience of leading projects, of winning work and of leading teams.

As a principal consultant on Poverty and Social Protection you will be both a self-starter and team player who;

Is widely acknowledged and respected for your technical expertise. You will be known for influencing debates and providing high-quality and context specific advice for the development of inclusive, effective and nationally owned social protection systems. You will have a strong reputation within the sector for delivering high-quality, context-specific, and innovative work that achieves impact and critically shapes debates on social protection.

Has experience of team leadership. You will have successfully delivered social protection projects as a technical Team Leader. Delivering these to achieve impact, on-time and to-budget.

Is a proven business winner. You have experience of leading bids for a range of different donors. You will be able to combine your technical understanding of social protection with market intelligence of the priorities and interests of key donors to win and deliver a range of projects; spanning small technically strategic studies to large-scale technical assistance and monitoring and evaluation projects.

Has strong networks and relationships. Including with key clients, partners and individual consultants, developing synergies to maintain and strengthen the team’s reputation of shaping and being at the forefront of social protection thinking and practice.

Is experienced in engaging with senior government officials and development partners and demonstrate successfully building and sustaining strong relationships with them. You can quickly understand political and personal dynamics in the projects you implement and have experiences of different strategies and approaches to resolving challenges with these.

Methodologically, brings strong experience in research methods and know how to formulate research questions and design and apply appropriate methods to best answer them.

The role in more detail

The emphasis of the role will vary depending on the type of technical leader that you are, but will include some combination of:

• Developing strategically important and coherent bodies of work on particular aspects of social protection; ensuring that this work is designed and implemented with the goal of achieving impact and pushing forward relevant policy debates;
• Winning work in your area(s) of expertise and supporting bids led by other team members (sometimes outside your area of expertise);
• Technically leading social protection projects spanning small analytical diagnostic studies, cross-country research; technical assistance to governments; large-scale evaluations.
• Contributing to team learning through internal seminars, blogs and being an active and engaged team member.
• Representing OPM and our work in the wider social protection fora, through webinars, blogs or publications and finding ways to make these integral parts of the projects you deliver;
• Mentoring junior consultants; developing and supporting the technical development and career ambitions of the next generation of social protection consultants working in OPM’s offices.
• Line managing more junior members of the team, supporting their development, and having tough conversations when needed.

Qualifications and experience

• Education to at least Masters level in a subject relevant to PSP’s work;
• Minimum of 15 years relevant work experience, including in management or leadership roles;
• Demonstrated experience in business development, with proven ability to win work, create new client opportunities, and technical and financial proposal writing;
• Demonstrated expertise in one or ideally more of the team’s technical areas;
• Experience of leading a business unit or technical area of expertise;
• Strong client and stakeholder management and engagement experience, including experience of managing challenging situations (such as delays, changing TORs etc.);
• Project and budget management experience, including setting up workplans and budgets, and delivering projects within time and budget constraints;
• Experience of line management;
• Ability and willingness to be flexible and take on new challenges;
• Ability and willingness to develop the role in order to help improve team and company systems and ways of working;
• Ability and willingness to travel internationally (travel restrictions permitting);
• Ability to write and work in English, especially good writing skills;
• Ability to work in at least one additional language (desirable); and
• Quant skills/ experience (desirable)

Our work bridges the gap between evidence and practice. We produce high-quality, leading thinking that addresses the drivers of poverty and barriers to sustainable growth to help bring about change where it is needed most. Working at OPM allows each of us to play our part in that over-arching mission.

Above all of this, we are committed to helping all our employees to develop personally and professionally. Build your career with us and you’ll benefit from training and learning opportunities, internal knowledge sharing, and a network of experienced colleagues. We encourage a healthy work-life balance, and our working environment is informed by an open, supportive culture. OPM also offers a very generous holiday allowance and contributory pension scheme, as well as a highly competitive salary.