Senior Technical Lead, Agriculture, Resilience, and Water

Winrock International

Arlington, VA, USA 🇺🇸

Little Rock, AR, USA 🇺🇸

Home-based/Remote

Position Title:              Senior Technical Lead (Experience in Natural Resource Management or Market Linkages)

Location:                      Arlington, Virginia; Little Rock, Arkansas; or Remote within the U.S.

Department:                 Agriculture, Resilience, and Water

Reports To:                  Associate Director, Agriculture, Resilience, and Water

Winrock International (Winrock) is a non-profit organization that works around the world to increase economic opportunity, sustain natural resources, and protect the environment. Winrock strengthens the capacity of women, children, youth, civil society organizations, and businesses to actively participate in sustainable development and to positively impact society.

Agriculture, Resilience and Water (ARW) Group  

The Agriculture, Resilience and Water (ARW) group partners with communities, businesses, and government to develop scalable market-oriented solutions that advance inclusive agriculture led growth and water security, ultimately building the resilience of households to recover from predictable and unforeseen shocks. ARW’s approach to making agriculture, market access and water systems more resilient to climate change has three focus areas: 1) improving agricultural production and water management systems, especially among the most vulnerable; 2) strengthening natural resource management; and 3) reducing environmental degradation. We also work with communities, public and private sectors to safeguard critical ecosystems. Currently, ARW manages a portfolio of 13 projects across 16 countries, totaling over $231 million dollars. Implementation is focused on partnership, as well as technical and data-driven innovations and learning, adapting, and scaling proven models.  

POSITION SUMMARY:

The Senior Technical Lead provides technical assistance and project implementation oversight to programs operating at the nexus of inclusive market-led growth and sustainable management of natural resources. In particular, the position will provide implementation support to two USAID-funded projects. The first is an initiative that is improving forest governance and sustainable forest management with the aim of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The second is building a business ecosystem that provides smallholder farmers with the information, technologies and services needed to increase market-based production. The Senior Technical Lead will ensure high quality technical implementation and impact reporting on those projects. The position will also be expected to foster close working relationships with field offices to guide the development of creative solutions to technical and operational challenges that maximize the impact of interventions on beneficiary populations.

The candidate is also expected to significantly contribute to proposal development and program design efforts, including leading or writing proposals or other roles as needed to expand Winrock’s funding and partnership opportunities.

The position requires international travel (approximately 20%).

 MAJOR RESPONSIBILITIES:         

  • Serve as home office senior technical lead for assigned projects, working closely with project teams to ensure activities are on time, on budget, and delivering high quality technical impact. 
  • Provide consistent advisory support to project staff to ensure accountability for project technical, financial, and operational excellence.
  • Work with project and home office staff to identify and implement solutions to addressing technical, operational and financial implementation risks.
  • Travel to the field to conduct training, oversight, monitoring, and strategic relationship building.
  • Supervise and coach assigned Program Associate(s), as needed, providing direct support and guidance.

Technical

  • Promote programming strategies that go beyond individual beneficiary-level impacts to promote systemic change, ownership, sustainability, and scalability.
  • Work with project teams to document evidence and learning from technical interventions and develop and package high quality learning material.
  • Collaborate with project teams to guide the adaptation of approaches and solutions based on iterative learning and impact on beneficiaries.
  • Work closely with project teams to prepare high-quality, results-oriented, project performance reports (i.e. quarterly/annual reports, workplans), including playing a leadership role in facilitating storyboarding sessions, writing and providing comprehensive technical reviews.
  • Provide concrete guidance and recommendations into the development and implementation of results-oriented subawards, grants and partnerships plans.

Operations

  • Work with relevant internal Winrock operating units to ensure that project staff have the appropriate level of support and tools needed to ensure timely and compliant activity. implementation, including M&E, subaward management, procurement and human resources.
  • Provide strategic guidance to the design and management of subawards, ensuring compliant and timely implementation linked to project results.
  • Develop and maintain close communications with host country government counterparts, local organizations, field personnel, and sub-awardees to strengthen maintain partnership networks and strengthen implementation, monitoring, and compliance.
  • Manage information dissemination and electronic communications among relevant parties, including project teams, internal groups, and external audiences.

Financial

  • Serve as budget manager for projects to ensure effective financial management including tracking of budgets, monthly field spending, obligations, and subawards, and flag issues for field as needed.
  • Work closely with project teams to develop, monitor and update monthly burn rate projections.
  • Ensure timely, accurate and compliant financial reporting.

Business Development

  • Contribute to conceptualizing and developing new programming in the areas of climate change adaptation, natural resource management, agriculture and resilience.
  • Substantially participate in new business development by serve in key roles such as proposal writer or champion/lead.
  • Build and maintain relationships with current and future donors, partners, and external audiences.
  • Develop evidence-based learning and impact pieces, with a focus on the food systems climate change nexus, to inform organizational and industry wide learning.
  • Represent Winrock at external events, nationally and internationally.

QUALIFICATIONS AND BACKGROUND:

Education:          Bachelor’s degree in education, social sciences, international development, or related field. Master’s degree preferred.

Experience:       Minimumof seven+ (7+) years’ experience in international development, especially in technical project management, home office management, financial oversight, and donor compliance;

  • USAID project management experience required, USAID contracts experience strongly preferred
  • Experience in at least one of the following relevant technical areas: market systems, climate adaptation and natural resource management required. Experience working on programs operating at the nexus of market-led growth and sustainable management of natural resources preferred
  • Prior experience providing comprehensive and holistic technical, financial, and operational support to projects, with significant time spent in the field either through short-term assignments or a long-term field-based position required
  • Experience training field staff and coaching and mentoring junior staff and field experience preferred
  • Demonstrated success in proposal development for US Government or other donors, in a substantive leadership capacity such as proposal champion/lead, writer or manager.

Skills:                   

  • Ability to communicate effectively with donors, local partners and host country governments
  • Adept at technical activity planning, budgeting, management, and financial analysis
  • Demonstrated skills in operationalizing technical activity plans
  • Excellent technical writing skills for performance reporting, impact pieces, and business development
  • Demonstrated strong analytical capability and problem-solving abilities required
  • Fluent English is required, competency in additional foreign languages preferred

Physical Requirements

  • Willingness and ability to travel appropriately 20%
  • Position requires flexibility in work hours due to late nights or early morning meetings calls with projects in different time zones

As a condition of employment at Winrock, all US-based Winrock staff, regardless of location, must be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 or request reasonable accommodation. 

Winrock offers competitive pay and an excellent benefits package.

Winrock is an equal opportunity employer. We are committed to providing equal employment opportunity for all people and value diversity and inclusiveness. Winrock recruits, employs, trains, promotes, and compensates regardless of race, color, religion, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, national origin, ancestry, citizenship, age, physical or mental disability, medical condition, family care status, or any other basis protected by law.  

At Winrock we have a clear mission: Empower the disadvantaged, increase economic opportunity, and sustain natural resources through unwavering dedication to accountability, equity, innovation, integrity, and transformation.   


POSITION TYPE

ORGANIZATION TYPE

EXPERIENCE-LEVEL

DEGREE REQUIRED

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