Plan International is an independent development and humanitarian non-profit organisation that advances children’s rights and equality for girls. We support children’s rights from birth until they reach adulthood, and enable children to prepare for – and respond to – crises and adversity. We believe in the power and potential of every child, but know this is often suppressed by poverty, violence, exclusion and discrimination.
We are recruiting to fill the position below:
Job Title: Humanitarian Needs Assessment Specialist
Location: Nigeria
Job Type: Full-time
Job Summary
- We are seeking an experienced Humanitarian Needs Assessment Specialist to strengthen the quality, consistency and impact of needs assessments across our humanitarian portfolio.
- In this highly dynamic role, you will support Country Offices to design and implement high-quality, principled humanitarian needs assessments in real time—ensuring Plan International is well positioned to design effective programmes, secure funding and respond to the needs of the most at-risk children, especially girls.
- This role involves significant global travel and deployments to humanitarian crises, often at short notice.
Key Responsibilities
You will:
- Develop and maintain user-friendly tools, guidance and methodologies for rapid and multi-sectoral needs assessments.
- Ensure gender, child protection, disability inclusion and age considerations are central to all assessments, in line with Sphere and Core Humanitarian Standard requirements.
- Support Country Offices to deliver high-quality assessment reports suitable for donors, clusters and peer agencies.
- Design and deliver needs assessment training to build organisational capacity.
- Work closely with MERL and Digital teams to promote the use of digital data collection tools and alignment with monitoring and evaluation systems.
- Deploy to Country Offices (up to 4 months at a time) to directly support assessment design and implementation.
- Represent Plan International in inter-agency coordination forums, including IASC-related networks.
- Support fundraising, advocacy and influencing teams by translating assessment data into compelling insights and products.
- Strengthen alignment with donor requirements, including ECHO submissions during HIP cycles.
- Produce an annual global overview of assessments and emerging humanitarian trends.
- Ensure safeguarding, child protection, and gender equality policies are fully embedded in all areas of work.
About You
- You are an experienced humanitarian professional who thrives in complex and fast-moving environments.
- You bring both technical expertise and a collaborative, capacity-building mindset.
Essential experience and skills:
- Extensive experience leading or supporting humanitarian needs assessments across diverse emergency contexts, including rapid-onset crises.
- Strong expertise in gender analysis and integrating protection and inclusion into assessments.
- Experience developing and delivering training.
- Familiarity with donor expectations and humanitarian standards (Sphere, CHS, CPMS, INEE).
- Experience using digital tools for data collection and analysis.
- Strong analytical, coordination and report-writing skills.
- Ability and willingness to deploy at short notice and work in challenging environments.
Desirable:
- Experience contributing to funding proposals or donor submissions.
- Experience developing advocacy or influencing messaging from assessment findings.
- Experience working with partner organisations.
- Fluency in English; French, Spanish or Arabic is an asset.
Working Conditions:
This is a global, deployment-heavy role. You will spend approximately:
- 50% of your time in-country during the first year
- Up to 75% in subsequent years.
More Information
- Job City Africa
