Save the Children seeks a Chief of Party (COP) for an anticipated five-year USAID-funded Multi-Sector Nutrition Activity in Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The Activity will improve nutrition outcomes in rural and hard-to-reach communities in the DRC, particularly for women and children, through locally led, multi-sectoral approaches integrating health, agriculture, WASH, education, and social and cultural norm shifts.
The COP will be responsible for leadership, team management, technical direction, monitoring, reporting, compliance, and stakeholder coordination. They will serve as key liaison with USAID, government counterparts, and local partners. Critical competencies for this role include strategic planning, technical expertise, team building, cultural sensitivity, adaptive management, financial acumen and excellent communication abilities.
This is a Key Personnel position, subject to USAID approval. It is also subject to project award and funding.
National candidates are strongly encouraged to apply.
This position will be based in Kinshasa, DRC.
What You’ll Be Doing (Essential Duties)
- Establish and articulate a clear and cohesive vision for the project, setting strategic priorities to guide the team in achieving project goals.
- Identify potential risks and challenges to program implementation, proposing timely and effective solutions and mitigation strategies to address them.
- Recruit, support and manage project staff, including senior managers and technical experts, ensuring effective team coordination and performance. Motivate teams to deliver results by establishing a strong team dynamic, open communication, and leading by example. Promote diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging in internal operations, management, and program implementation.
- Serve as the primary liaison for the project, fostering strong relationships with donors, government officials, community stakeholders, and other key partners to ensure effective collaboration and alignment.
- Build and maintain partnerships with government entities, civil society organizations, and local stakeholders, ensuring open and transparent communication across the project team and external partners.
- Provide oversight for financial and administrative operations, ensuring budgetary discipline, compliance with donor policies, and adherence to local regulations and organizational guidelines.
- Oversee the timely development and submission of project deliverables, ensuring accurate, high-quality reporting to donors and stakeholders across all programmatic areas.
- Lead updates and revisions to the project’s strategy and pathways as priorities evolve, ensuring alignment with overarching project objectives.
- Champion locally led development initiatives, promoting community ownership and sustainable approaches across all project activities.
- Establish and monitor robust systems for project reporting, monitoring and evaluation (M&E), financial management, personnel administration, and procurement to ensure efficient and transparent operations.
- Ensure the delivery of high-quality outputs and results, aligned with the project’s work plan and M&E framework, while maintaining adherence to international best practices and standards.
- Provide on-site support and supervision to project teams and partners, ensuring effective implementation and continuous quality improvement of project activities.
- Collaborate with partners to clarify roles, expectations, deliverables, timelines, and budgets, ensuring shared accountability and a unified approach.
- Conduct regular performance assessments of team members, identifying areas for growth and supporting professional development opportunities to enhance team effectiveness.
- Create and sustain a safe, equitable, and inclusive working environment, ensuring systems are in place to prevent harassment, violence, and other risks to staff and participants.
- Support the professional growth of project staff through ongoing feedback, coaching, and capacity building, fostering a respectful and collaborative work culture.
- Provide leadership in the broader country context, supporting strategic priorities beyond the project, when necessary, in alignment with organizational and donor goals.
Required Qualifications
- University degree required. Graduate degree in nutrition, public health, food security, development studies, international development, or a related field preferred.
- 10-12 years of senior level professional experience designing, managing, and implementing large, complex ($25M+) donor-funded international development activities, preferably in a program director, Deputy Chief of Party or Chief of Party role.
- Substantial technical experience in multi-sectoral nutrition programming, including health, agriculture, WASH, and social behavior change, with a focus on improving outcomes for women and children in resource-constrained settings.
- Proven leadership skills managing projects of a similar size and scope in developing countries facing complex, volatile, and uncertain contexts.
- Experience managing USAID cooperative agreements and/or contracts.
- Strong financial management, compliance, budgeting and project operations/administrative oversight abilities.
- Experience working and living in DRC preferred.
- Experience strengthening the capacity of national non-government partner organizations to achieve USAID’s goals for localization.
- Demonstrated experience managing multi-disciplinary teams to achieve project results in a fast-paced and complex environment.
- Proven ability to work collaboratively with donors, host governments, development partners, the private sector, and community organizations.
- Experience overseeing M&E systems for donor-funded projects.
- Excellent oral and written communication skills in English and French.
- Ability to produce clear and concise reports, publications, briefs and other written materials related to the project.
- Ability to travel within DRC as required and as security conditions allow.
- Commitment to child rights and to the aims and objectives of Save the Children.
About Save the Children
Save the Children believes every child deserves a future. In the United States and around the world, we give children a healthy start in life, the opportunity to learn and protection from harm. We do whatever it takes for children – every day and in times of crisis – transforming their lives and the future we share.
Our work for children and their families requires that we commit—at every opportunity—to work together to identify and dismantle persistent systemic and structural racism, inequality, and any other forms of discrimination in this country and beyond. As an anti-racist organization, Save the Children will not tolerate discrimination in any form—in our employment practices, amongst our staff, in our leadership or toward the people we serve. We stand in solidarity with all people to fight for equal rights, justice, inclusion, and belonging.
Save the Children is committed to conducting its programs and operations in a manner that is safe for the children it serves and helping protect the children with whom we are in contact. All Save the Children representatives are explicitly prohibited from engaging in any activity that may result in any kind of child abuse.
Save the Children is committed to minimizing safety and security risks for our valued employees, ensuring all are given training, support and information to reduce their risk exposure while maximizing the impact of our programs for children and families. Our shared duty, both agency and individual, is to seek and maintain safe working conditions for all.
More Information
- Job City Democratic Republic of the Congo
