Country: United States of America
Closing date: 22 Dec 2017
Requisition ID: req673
Job Title: Design Project Manager
Sector: Research & Development
Employment Category: Fixed Term
Location: USA-New York, NY - HQ
Job Description
Background/IRC Summary: The International Rescue Committee (IRC) responds to the world's worst humanitarian crises and helps people whose lives are and livelihoods are shattered by conflict and disaster to survive, recover, and gain control of their future. Founded in 1933, the IRC is a prominent international organization working in relief, rehabilitation, protection, post-conflict development, resettlement services and advocacy in over 40 countries and 22 U.S. cities.
The IRC's Airbel Center is aimed at investing in the design, development, and scaling of new humanitarian interventions and delivery models. The lab seeks to apply best practices from human-centered design, rapid iteration, cross-functional problem-solving, and a portfolio management function in the humanitarian context. Combining these capabilities in IRC's extensive field presence, supported deep sector expertise from our research capability, we believe it is possible to design and scale breakthrough humanitarian programs that could impact millions of people most affected by conflict and disasters.
Job Overview/Summary: IRC's Airbel Center is looking for a Design Project Manager to support development and testing of a program to improve primary school education and informal learning in refugee settings in Tanzania and beyond. Reporting to the Product Design Lead, the PM will apply strong design and project management skills to ensure successful testing and validation of various mobile based and video-based solutions in the field.
The role will be based in IRC headquarters in New York City with significant travel to camps in Tanzania.
This is a limited-term role with potential for creating a longer-term role either on the core R&D team or in one of programs in the field
Major Responsibilities
- Work collaboratively with the Project lead, other team members at the Airbel Center, IRC Education Unit, and field staff to manage prototyping, build-out, testing and continuous improvement of solutions to improve primary school education and social emotional learning for people in crisis
- Participate in different stages of the design research process such as in-person interviews, workshops, ideations, service design, survey design, pilot design and more
- Drive project progress and coordinate activities of cross functional team members, including high-level planning and detailed short-term activity scheduling.
- Proactively manage project risks, dependencies, issues, gaps, reporting and resource conflicts.
- Identify local stakeholders and enlist them in community-based testing and feedback, giving them an opportunity to participate in the innovation process;
- Engage and facilitate meetings with stakeholders across globally distributed business units, and coordinate stakeholder communications.
- Ensure that project communications are timely, relevant and accurate, including regular status updates. Quickly channel insights to IRC researchers and implementation partners working remotely
- Provide input to budget management processes so that expenditure can be tracked and accurate projections can be maintained.
- Identify opportunities for fundraising and program development to advance project
Key Working Relationships:
Position Reports to: Product Design Lead Position directly supervises: None
Indirect Reporting: None Other Internal and/or external contacts:
Chief Innovation Officer, R&D
R&D Core Team
Technical Unit Directors and Team Members
Country Program Staff
Job Requirements:
- Bachelor's Degree with about 3-5 years of experience in design or project management or both
- Experience deploying human-centered design techniques in a wide range of product and service design projects. Experience with video based solutions is a plus.
- Experience in project managing large scale, cross functional projects
- Field experience would be a plus
- Synthesis skills and confidence distilling complex data into actionable insights
- Unparalleled team collaboration skills; comfort working with researchers, frontline implementers, beneficiaries, engineers, donors, and communications staff
- Excellent interpersonal skills, able to communicate with colleagues on all levels in a distributed, multicultural professional environment
- High level of proficiency with MS Office, documents management solutions and project management tools. Task management software appreciated.
Preferred Requirements
- Fluency in Arabic and/or French
- Experience in humanitarian setting or development contexts
- Experience implementing and supporting team collaboration tools
Working Environment:
- Standard office work environment
How to apply:
Please follow this link to apply: http://www.aplitrak.com/?adid=YXN0cmlkLm1hdGhldy4xMjY1Mi4zODMwQGlyY2NkLmFwbGl0cmFrLmNvbQ