The International Rescue Committee (IRC) responds to the world’s worst humanitarian crises, helping to restore health, safety, education, economic wellbeing, and power to people devastated by conflict and disaster. Founded in 1933 at the call of Albert Einstein, the IRC is one of the world’s largest international humanitarian non-governmental organizations (INGO), at work in more than 40 countries and 29 U.S. cities helping people to survive, reclaim control of their future and strengthen their communities. A force for humanity, IRC employees deliver lasting impact by restoring safety, dignity and hope to millions. If you’re a solutions-driven, passionate change-maker, come join us in positively impacting the lives of millions of people world-wide for a better future.
The Airbel Impact Lab is the IRC’s “R&D” unit, working to maximize the impact of every humanitarian aid dollar through rigorous testing and evidence-based scaling. We have led the field in impact measurement and cost analysis, and we drive breakthrough innovations that achieve 10x scale potential, 2x greater impact, and 20% more cost-effectiveness than existing solutions. Our Strategy & Delivery team enables this work by building and delivering the systems, processes, and other infrastructure that help ensure the department is efficient, high-performing, and high-impact.
Position Overview
We are hiring a Strategic Systems Officer to make Airbel’s most critical department-wide systems function as clearly, efficiently, and intelligently as possible. This role is for someone equally skilled in designing new solutions and implementing them—someone who enjoys rolling up their sleeves to test and iterate and who plans for change management and stakeholder engagement from the outset.
The Strategic Systems Officer will own the infrastructure that supports knowledge management, learning, governance, reporting, and key operational interfaces—especially where better system and process design and automation can streamline effort without sacrificing quality. They will collaborate closely with portfolio teams, business development functions, and the finance and operations team to spot inefficiencies, solve for bottlenecks, and streamline team-wide routines and processes. AI and automation will be key tools in this role’s toolkit; driving adoption of both throughout the department will be a priority goal.
The ideal candidate thrives in entrepreneurial and adaptive environments and meets shifting needs and priorities with agility, curiosity, and a strong customer service orientation. Some quarters will emphasize building or piloting new data tracking tools; others will focus on maintenance and refinement of key learning and decision-making systems. Across all of it, this person will help reduce friction, streamline effort, and raise clarity and usability of centralized systems.
Key Responsibilities
How You’ll Work (Core Competencies)
• Develop practical, user-centered and inclusive systems and tools that meet shared operational needs across the department—prioritizing clarity, simplicity, and efficiency.
• Test new tools and process improvements through structured pilots and help integrate them into daily operations through strong planning, change readiness, and user engagement.
• Keep core systems functional and relevant, identifying where existing tools need updates, streamlining, or sunsetting. Build lightweight, tech-enabled solutions that reduce manual work—leveraging Microsoft 365 (Power Automate, Excel scripting) and AI-based tools where appropriate to enhance efficiency, accuracy, and scalability.
• Work closely with staff across teams to understand needs, gather feedback, and deliver solutions that are adopted and sustained. Bring a service-oriented mindset to make others’ work easier— including identifying opportunities to streamline how the team interacts with shared services (e.g., HR, procurement) where processes allow. Within specific problem-solving instances, identify opportunities to disseminate know-how and transfer knowledge throughout the team, so that each improvement has “teach a person to fish” benefits. One particularly high priority area for this orientation is with AI use and uptake across the team.
Where You’ll Apply It (Focus Areas)
• Maintain intuitive, reliable systems and routines to organize and share information across a distributed team, from centralized repositories to synchronous meetings. Ensure critical documentation and file management is accessible, current, and easy to use.
• Support efficient decision-making by maintaining clear processes, responsibilities, and documentation for team governance structures and annual goal setting, planning, and progress monitoring.
• Build and improve routines, tools, and dashboards to track project goals, priorities, and progress in a way that leanly supports both accountability and learning.
• Improve internal processes that support proposal development and coordination, easing burden on technical and delivery teams.
• Serve as a systems-savvy collaborator to the finance and operations team—helping identify technical and AI-driven solutions that reduce rework, ambiguity, or duplication.
Required Qualifications
• 6 – 8 years of experience in systems building, process design, or operational strategy roles in a similar operating context (e.g. global nonprofit). **
• Strong technical skills with Microsoft 365 tools (e.g., Power Automate, Excel scripting) and other leading productivity tools (e.g Notion, project management software).**
• Experience developing or implementing AI-enabled tools or smart automations for professional needs.**
• Strong interpersonal and cross-cultural communication skills (written and verbal) to engage diverse global stakeholders, gather feedback across regions and functions, and drive adoption of new processes and tools.
• Demonstrated ability to design, maintain, and optimize systems to meet current and evolving organizational needs.
• Excellent organizational skills, strong attention to detail, and a proven ability to manage multiple competing priorities in a fast-paced environment.
Preferred Qualifications
• Experience or strong interest in humanitarian aid, innovation and research methodologies, and/or adjacent areas is highly valuable.
• Comfort with light coding, scripting, or AI integration.
• Familiarity with agile management and change facilitation.
Note: Criteria in the Person Specification marked with ** are the minimum criteria in line with our commitments under the Disability Confident Employer Scheme in the UK. UK based candidates who state that they have a disability and meet these criteria will be invited to interview.
Recruitment Process
The process for this role will be as follows
• Screening call online (approximately 30 minutes)
• 1:1 Interview online with hiring manager (approximately 30 minutes)
• Panel interview online (approximately 1 hour) – including a practical exercise that will be prepared in advance
IRC UK strives to be an equal opportunities employer. IRC UK is committed to equality of opportunity and to non-discrimination for all job applicants and employees, and we seek to ensure we achieve diversity in our workforce regardless of gender, race, religious beliefs, nationality, ethnic/national origin, sexual orientation, age, marital status or disability.
IRC UK welcomes applications from all candidates, including underrepresented groups and refugees who have the right to work in the UK.
IRC UK will ensure that individuals with disabilities are provided with reasonable adjustments to participate in the job application and/or interview process, and for essential job functions if appointed to a role. Please contact us if you may need such adjustments.
Compensation: Posted pay ranges apply to US and UK based candidates. Ranges are based on various factors including the labor market, job type, internal equity, and budget. Exact offers are calibrated by work location, individual candidate experience and skills relative to the defined job requirements.
Equal Opportunity Employer: IRC is an Equal Opportunity Employer. IRC considers all applicants on the basis of merit without regard to race, sex, color, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, disability or any other characteristic protected by applicable law.
US Benefits: We offer a comprehensive and highly competitive set of benefits. In the US, these include: 10 sick days, 10 US holidays, 20-25 paid time off days depending on role and tenure, medical insurance starting at $143 per month, dental starting at $6.50 per month, and vision starting at $5 per month, FSA for healthcare and commuter costs, a 403b retirement savings plans with immediately vested matching, disability & life insurance, and an Employee Assistance Program which is available to our staff and their families to support counseling and care in times of crisis and mental health struggles.
**Standard of Professional Conduct:**The IRC and the IRC workers must adhere to the values and principles outlined in the IRC Way – our Code of Conduct. These are Integrity, Service, Accountability, and Equality.
More Information
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