Sector Head – Education

Cegis

Chennai District

On-site

INR 1,200,000 - 1,800,000

Full time

14 days+

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Benefits offered by this job

Competitive remuneration based on experience

Job summary

A prominent governance-focused organization in India is seeking a Sector Head for Education to lead strategy development and manage a diverse multi-state portfolio. The ideal candidate will have extensive experience in education reform, working directly with government bodies, and demonstrating leadership skills. This role involves fostering partnerships with various stakeholders, ensuring project alignment with strategic objectives, and providing technical direction. The position offers a competitive remuneration package based on experience.

Qualifications

15–20 years of progressive experience in education or related fields.
At least 5 years in senior leadership roles involving direct engagement with governments.
Strong interpersonal abilities and comfort with rapid change.

Responsibilities

Architect the education sector strategy and oversee multi-state engagements.
Build and maintain partnerships with senior bureaucrats and funders.
Provide technical leadership and quality assurance across projects.

Skills

Strategic thinking

Leadership

Stakeholder engagement

Quantitative data analysis

Qualitative data synthesis

Education

Masters degree in Education, Public Policy or related field

Job description

Centre for Effective Governance of Indian States (CEGIS – pronounced See-Jis) aims to improve lives by helping Indian state governments deliver better development outcomes. We believe that the most impactful lever for accelerating national development is to improve governance and state capacity to better deliver core public services at scale.

Informed by cutting-edge research and evidence as well as a practical orientation toward implementable ideas, CEGIS works with state governments in India to enable a transformative improvement in their functioning. CEGISs vision and Theory of Change (ToC) are an outcome of extensive research done by Prof. Karthik Muralidharan (CEGIS Co-Founder and Scientific Director) and outlined in his multiple award-winning, national bestselling book Accelerating India\'s Development, and enabled by strategic philanthropic support provided by Ashish Dhawan (CEGIS Co-Founder).

CEGIS Approach and Model of Functioning:

CEGISs solutions to enhance governance are co-created with state governments in a state-led way, where we focus on deep partnerships with states using an iterative cycle of think-demonstrate-document-transfer. We work closely with the top bureaucratic leadership, front-line workers and public officials in Finance, Planning, Human Resources and a few other priority line departments. Many of our solutions reflect ideas outlined in the book Accelerating India\'s Development, and these solutions are constantly refined based on real-time feedback and are designed to both be customized to the contexts we are working in, and to create templates that can provide the starting point for replication across contexts.

Our focus areas reflect evidence that key characteristics of high-performing organisations include (a) measuring outcomes through reliable, high quality data that enables goal setting and progress monitoring; (b) strategic use of personnel – competency based hiring and training, skilling, and performance appraisals to determine job assignments, pay, and promotions – to achieve the goals above; (c) strategic budgeting where resource allocation and revenue collection are based on evidence and cost-effectiveness; (d) and creating efficient systems to leverage external actors (including for-profit and nonprofit organisations). CEGIS partners with states to improve capacity by focusing on these pillars of State effectiveness, and aims to also integrate these horizontal governance improvements into integrated sectoral roadmaps to accelerate the achievement of state and national development outcomes.

Internally, CEGIS is organized into solutions teams that lead the design and technical quality control of our research and evidence-backed approaches to improving governance and state capacity; delivery teams that lead state-facing work to contextualize the solutions, and support governments in implementing them; and enablement teams that enable the organization to function smoothly.

CEGIS at 6 to CEGIS at 10: Building on momentum to catalyse national development

Since its incorporation in 2019, CEGIS has gained significant momentum in building strong collaborations with state government(s) as a trusted partner who can provide both thought leadership and implementation support on key governance reforms. CEGIS position as a non-profit that does not take any funding from the government (other than in-kind contributions of office space/staff) has been a key enabler in earning this trust.

Beginning with 1 state government engagement in 2019, today CEGIS is working across 9 Indian states (Assam, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Odisha, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, and Uttar Pradesh). We also partner with union agencies/ministries such as Capacity Building Commission, Ministry of Women & Child Development (MoWCD), and Ministry of Statistics & Programme Implementation (MoSPI) to share insights from our state-level work to inform national-level guidelines and dissemination to other states. Finally, we also take on selected work at the district level to design and test implementation templates.

From a small group of founding members, we have grown to become a team of 150+ members located across the country, and expect to grow to over 200 in the coming year. Led by a former senior civil-servant with deep governance experience; state and solution team leads with decades of domain expertise; and enabling functions led by professionals with considerable corporate experience, the team at CEGIS brings together knowledge and experience that spans various sectors – from development economics, research, governance, management consulting, and social entrepreneurship.

Over the last 6 years, CEGIS has also garnered support for our vision and theory of change from several foundations and philanthropists whose partnership has enabled us to build our organisational capacity as well as continue to experiment and improve our solution design to augment state capacity and governance. With the rapidly growing demand for CEGISs offerings, CEGIS is well-positioned to play a key role in accelerating India\'s development.

To explore what the mission of CEGIS is and the impact we hope to have, please take a look at this video of our CEO, Dr Vijay Pingale.

About the Education sector Education is a core sector for CEGIS. We work with departments of School Education, SCERTs, examination boards and related agencies to improve learning outcomes and schooling trajectories for children. As a governance focused organization, our work focuses less on classroom-level interventions and more on the enabling conditions for building effective education systems. Through targeted interventions in data systems, personnel management, procurement, digital/public goods, and public finance, CEGIS supports governments to design and operationalize strategies that improve foundational learning and broader schooling outcomes. After 5+ years of testing and validating individual point solutions across data, personnel, and public finance systems, CEGIS aims to integrate these components of system strengthening interventions to accelerate improvement of education outcomes. The education sector-lead will drive this agenda.

Across Health, Education, and Nutrition, CEGIS anchors its sectoral strategies around a common early-life outcomes framework. Early Childhood Development (ECD) sits at the core of the Education portfolio, while the first 1,000 days—from conception to age two—form a central pillar of Health and Nutrition. These are not treated as parallel programmes, but as an integrated continuum of human development, where maternal health, nutrition, caregiving practices, early learning, and system delivery intersect.

Position Summary

The Sector Head – Education will be CEGIS senior-most leader for the education portfolio. The role is responsible for architecting the sector strategy, stewarding a multi-state portfolio of engagements, building relations with and coordinating among a broad coalition of ecosystem players in education, and providing deep technical and strategic leadership on education system reform.

The Sector Head will command credibility with senior government partners and funders, and will work closely with CEGIS state leads and horizontal solution teams to ensure that engagements are coherent, outcome-linked, and progress along the solution maturity curve.

This is a senior leadership role that combines sectoral expertise, technical rigour in understanding research and evidence, practical wisdom about how best to deploy technical solutions, portfolio management, ecosystem-building, and people leadership.

Reporting to the Chief of Solutions, you will oversee a diverse portfolio of projects, ensuring methodological rigor, quality, and alignment with strategic objectives, while fostering cross-learning and innovation. You will also be expected to work closely with CEGIS Founder and Scientific Director (Prof. Karthik Muralidharan) to understand the intellectual vision behind proposed reforms and work closely on refining them, in ways that reflect cutting edge evidence.

Sector Strategy and Portfolio Leadership

Refine and periodically update CEGIS sector strategy for education, anchored in CEGIS Theory of Change and solution maturity model.
Translate the strategy into a clear portfolio roadmap across states – including anchor projects, prototypes and learning agendas.
Work with the state leads to prioritise and sequence engagements based on impact potential, feasibility, and strategic fit.
Ensure each major engagement has a clear line-of-sight to student learning, equity and completion outcomes, with defined intermediate milestones and metrics.

Partnerships, Ecosystem Engagement and Funding Narratives

Build and maintain trusted relationships with senior bureaucrats in School Education Departments, SCERTs and other relevant agencies across states and at the Union level.
Represent CEGIS and its education work in key sector fora, working groups and high-level committees.
Co-create an outcome-linked funding narrative for the education portfolio with the fundraising and donor relations teams; anchor and review concept notes, proposals and reports.
Engage funders as thought partners, sharing learnings, risks and opportunities in a transparent manner.
Cultivate a network of academic and practitioner partners (universities, research labs, NGOs, EdTech/DPG actors) to complement and strengthen CEGIS work.

Technical Stewardship and Quality Assurance

Provide technical leadership on education systems to project teams across states, ensuring methodological rigour and internal coherence.
Guide teams on problem diagnosis, solution design, implementation support and adaptive course correction using administrative and survey data.
Work with Measurement, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) and Outcome Measurement teams to define sector-specific indicators and dashboards that link system and functionary-level changes to learning outcomes.
Aggregate learning across engagements into reusable solution playbooks, case studies and knowledge products for public use by governments and other organizations.

Internal Leadership and Cross-Sector Learning

Collaborate with the Health and Nutrition Sector Leads to leverage synergies – for example around ECD, school health and adolescent wellbeing.
Mentor and support mid-level colleagues working on education and contribute to building a strong sector bench within CEGIS.
Contribute to internal learning spaces and the CEGIS Academy/L&D agenda as faculty/anchor from the education side.
Model CEGIS values and operating norms – transparency, intellectual rigour and a strong bias to implementation and partnership with the state.

Cross-Sector Integration & Early Life Outcomes

Work collaboratively to design and operationalize solutions that cut across departmental silos aligning service delivery, data systems, and institutional incentives so that states move from fragmented interventions to a coherent early-life strategy that improves survival, growth, learning readiness, and long-term productivity.

Required Qualifications, Skills, and Abilities

Educational Qualification

Masters degree in Education, Public Policy, Economics, Development Studies, Public Administration, or a related field. A PhD in a relevant discipline is an advantage but not mandatory. What is essential is the ability to read, understand, and synthesize primary research with adequate judgment to assess the quality and generalizability of evidence.

Professional Experience

15–20 years of progressive experience in education – for example research, system reform programmes, large-scale delivery or advisory/consulting.
At least 5 years in senior leadership roles involving direct engagement with governments (state or Union), preferably on system-wide education reforms.
Demonstrated experience of leading large, multi-stakeholder projects or portfolios and working with/within government systems (education departments, SCERTs, boards).
Proven experience engaging with domestic and global funders or multilaterals on strategy, programme design and funding.
Strong strategic thinking and systems-thinking orientation; ability to connect sector reforms to citizen-level outcomes.
Ability to command credibility and trust with senior bureaucrats, funders, peers and team members.
Comfort with both quantitative and qualitative data and ability to translate analyses into actionable insights and narratives.
Excellent written and verbal communication skills in English; proficiency in at least one Indian language is preferred.
High degree of ownership, bias to action and comfort with ambiguity in a fast-growing organisation.

Personal characteristics & Interpersonal abilities

Operating style suited to working in a fast-paced, entrepreneurial environment where teamwork, resourcefulness, and ownership are highly valued.
Ability to think creatively, take calculated risks, and translate ideas into action.
High ability to collaborate and actively listen, valuing and integrating diverse perspectives.
Versatility and comfort in taking on new problems and quickly diving into unfamiliar sectors or contexts.

Location and Compensation

Location: The role can be based out of Delhi/ Mumbai/ Chennai/ Hyderabad/ Bangalore. Travel to other states will be required.

Remuneration will be competitive with Indian philanthropy and social sector pay scales and will depend on the candidate's experience levels.

Note: CEGIS has zero tolerance for sexual harassment. We therefore expect each applicant to self-declare related to the same. CEGIS could, if required, initiate a prevention of sexual harassment-based background verification. If an applicant is reported for misconduct, appropriate action that may include employment termination would be taken. Please complete the details for self-declaration on the application form.

Pre-reads

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