SPM/PL – RMEAL

Central Square Foundation; Delhi; On-site; INR 2,400,000 - 4,200,000; Full time

Job summary

Central Square Foundation in Delhi seeks a Senior Project Manager/Project Lead to drive the RMEAL portfolio. You will lead multiple workstreams, shaping evaluation design, monitoring frameworks, and learning agendas while coordinating with partners and internal teams to deliver high-quality research outputs.

The role requires a Master’s degree and proven ability to manage teams, develop evidence-based strategies, and communicate results to diverse stakeholders, including government and funders.

Qualifications

• Minimum requirement of a Master’s degree in relevant fields (economics, public/education policy or related).
• Strong writing and presentation skills.
• Ability to facilitate and serve as project liaison for externally-managed evaluations.
• Understanding of Logic Model/Logical Framework, Theory of Change, Monitoring cycles, baselining, end-lining, benchmarking, etc.

Responsibilities

• Lead the design of rigorous evaluations, including research frameworks and sampling approaches.
• Provide technical direction on evaluation design across the portfolio.
• Identify and manage relationships with evaluation partners and researchers.
• Oversee external evaluations from terms of reference to contract management and quality assurance.
• Engage with partners to socialise results and inform decisions around scale.

Skills

Excellent writing & presentation

Facilitation & liaison for evaluations

Analytical thinking

Multi-project leadership

Evaluation methodologies knowledge

Education

Master’s degree in economics/public policy/education policy

Job description

Position: Senior Project Manager/ Project Lead

About The Job SPM/PL - RMEAL

Organisation: Central Square Foundation

Position: Senior Project Manager/ Project Lead

Team: Research, Monitoring & Evaluation, Assessments, and Learning (RMEAL)

Location: Delhi

About Central Square Foundation (CSF)

Founded in 2012, Central Square Foundation is a non-profit philanthropic foundation working to ensure quality school education for all children in India. CSF has a mission focused on ensuring high-quality foundational learning for all children in India. To achieve this, we partner with individuals and social impact organizations to bring innovative solutions in education to build the capacity of the government to drive systemic impact. To learn more about us and our work, visit www.centralsquarefoundation.org.

About the Research, Monitoring, Evaluation, Assessment and Learning (RMEAL) team

CSF endeavours to transform the school education system in India and advance children’s learning outcomes, especially for those from vulnerable socio-economic backgrounds. The RMEAL practice undertakes a range of research and M&E activities to understand the ‘what works’ and ‘why it works’ elements of driving systems improvement and impact. Intending to generate evidence to strengthen education programs and policy, the team provides technical support to other verticals within CSF as well as oversight on third-party research studies.

CSF’s Research and M&E team is deeply engaged, advised, and mentored by renowned experts like Luis Crouch (Chief Technical Officer, RTI International), Ben Piper (Sr. Director, RTI International), Karthik Muralidharan (Chair, JPAL S.Asia), Asiya Kazmi (Global Education Policy Lead, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation). The Project Manager will join a high-caliber leadership team with collective experience working in both corporate and development sector organizations like BCG, IFMR, J-PAL, IGC, NITI Aayog, and National Skill Development Corporation.

Key Responsibilities

The candidate will play a senior technical role in shaping and delivering the RMEAL vertical’s agenda and portfolio, while providing key inputs in agenda setting itself. The post holder will lead multiple workstreams, leading the design, measurement, analysis, documentation and dissemination of the work. The post holder will also help ensure effective use of evidence and contribute to learning across the wider organisation beyond the immediate vertical.

Evidence strategy and leadership

• Set and own the RMEAL strategy for the evidence portfolio: the learning agenda, evaluation pipeline, monitoring priorities and research roadmap, aligned to CSF's organisational strategy
• Represent the RMEAL function in organisational strategy, programme design and annual planning discussions
• Build and maintain CSF's evidence standards, templates and guidance for evaluation design, monitoring frameworks, data quality and research ethics
• Lead engagement with government, funders and senior partner stakeholders to socialise results, frame successes and challenges, and drive decisions on adaptation, continuation and scale

Evaluation

• Lead the design of rigorous evaluations - including research frameworks, sampling approaches, and tools - to understand the impact of our programs on improving student learning
• Provide technical direction on evaluation design across the portfolio, including research frameworks, identification strategies, sampling approaches, power calculations and tools, to understand the impact of programmes on student learning
• Identify, build and manage long-term relationships with evaluation partners, research institutions and independent researchers for CSF's programmes
• Oversee the commissioning of external evaluations end to end, from terms of reference and partner selection to contract management and quality assurance
• Engage with partners to socialise preliminary results to help identify successes/challenges and undertake decisions around scale

Monitoring

• Conceptualise and design end-to-end monitoring frameworks (including tools and processes) that can be adopted by internal teams, state governments, and partners
• Review existing approaches and management information systems of states, and align and support required changes
• Design and operationalise dashboards that can facilitate data use and decision-making
• Coordinate between different teams within and outside of CSF to ensure the generation of high-quality monitoring data
• Ensure the data informs key programmatic iterations

Research

• Identify critical research areas to strengthen the portfolio practices
• Conceptualise and manage robust research studies, analysis, and findings generation
• Contribute to intervention design and organisational strategy through evidence-driven decision-making

Team Leadership and Research Quality

• Lead and grow a team of Leads, Senior Managers, Managers and Associates, including hiring, performance management and career development
• Provide technical guidance, mentorship, and professional development support to Associates and other team members, including Managers, Senior Managers and Leads
• Support the effective allocation of work across projects and ensure timely, high-quality delivery of research outputs.
• Act as the final quality reviewer for the portfolio's research designs, tools, analysis and reports
• Undertake field visits and partner engagement where useful for strengthening research design, understanding implementation realities, and ensuring research quality

Required Qualifications, Skills And Abilities

• Minimum requirement of a Master’s degree in relevant fields, including economics, public/education policy or any related field
• Senior Project Manager (5-8 Years) or 8-10 years (Project Lead) of relevant experience in M&E in development projects/contexts
• Knowledge of the major evaluation methodologies (experimental and non- experimental), data collection and analysis methodologies
• Keen understanding of both quantitative and qualitative research methods
• Experience in designing, implementing, and operating project M&E systems
• Strong understanding of concepts like Logic Model/ Logical Framework, Theory of Change, Monitoring cycles, baselining, end-lining, benchmarking, etc. Ability to understand complex research/data to draw actionable inferences
• Ability to facilitate and serve as project liaison for externally-managed evaluations
• Proven experience of managing multiple team members and projects, setting priorities, planning timelines and meeting deadlines
• Excellent writing and presentation skills

Desired Qualities

• Strong action-bias, influencing & communication skills - ability to synthesise technical insights into actionable program agendas, facilitate conflicting points of view, drive collective decision-making
• Passion to make a scaled impact in education and belief in the possibility of foundational learning for all children
• Excellent people and project delivery skills, including ability to manage multiple projects at a time and maturity to influence multiple internal and external stakeholders
• Willingness to adapt to the dynamic nature of work and travel to project locations
• Ability to work independently and proactively, without support staff and with little supervision
• Enthusiasm to collaboration and work with multiple teams and stakeholders

Compensation

Remuneration will be competitive with Indian philanthropy pay scales and will depend upon the candidate’s experience level.