Country programme manager

Simprints is a nonprofit tech company with a mission to radically increase transparency and effectiveness in global development. We build ethical, inclusive digital ID powered by biometrics to ensure that every vaccine, every dollar, and every public good reaches the people who need them most. Simprints partners with organisations like Gavi to boost immunisation rates in developing countries, Ministries of Health like Ghana on pandemic response, and NGOs like BRAC to deliver maternal healthcare. Studies have shown Simprints increases impact through real-time, precision data, for example increasing maternal health visits by 38% in Bangladesh or accurate HIV tracing by 62% in Malawi. Today we’ve worked in over 17 countries helping deliver health, aid, and finance to >2.1M people.

We are looking for someone who is passionate about delivering and growing technology-based solutions in international development, through a partnership approach with the Ministry of Health and implementing partners. There is an opportunity to expand and grow within the organisation, whilst having an exciting role scope and the ability to contribute to social impact objectives.

You will be immediately responsible for ensuring the delivery of three of the company’s most important projects, working closely with Simprints’ partners on the successful adoption of biometrics within an electronic community health information system (eCHIS). Additionally this role will be required to work with our business development team to expand existing projects whilst developing new ones. Although the primary focus will be in Ethiopia, given the size of the company we expect the role to be able to support the development of international projects including deploying to other countries when necessary and subject to primary duties.

This role is unique in its breadth, offering the opportunity to collaborate with almost every team at Simprints. You’ll work closely with Simprints partnership managers to develop a deep understanding of our partners’ needs, work with our engineers to implement our technical solutions, lead our coordination in Ethiopia in collaboration with the leadership team, and analyse data with monitoring & evaluation (M&E) specialists.

This role will have one direct report and will report to the Director of Delivery based in the UK, whilst maintaining close working relationships with the Director of Partnerships and Regional Director. We expect the ideal candidate to grow with the company and country operations. This role is ideal for someone seeking a route to a leadership role, and foresee this role expanding into either Country Director, Ethiopia or Global Project Manager.

This post is based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia with frequent deployments to project sites.

Key Responsibilities

• Manage the coordination and performance of our projects: Lead, coordinate and regularly report on the progress of our projects applying good practice in line with your experience and our evolving methodology (including but not limited to achieving the project deliverables as per contract, on time, on budget and mitigated of risks); identify and mitigate project risks; and provide appropriate, effective, and timely action, including where necessary coordinating with cross departmental colleagues to ensure a technical solution that meets the project needs and resolve bottlenecks to meet the implementation needs.
• Proactively monitor, manage and improve our service performance: Analyse our performance data to identify adoption issues, investigate any reported issues; and do everything necessary to resolve in the short term, whilst improving practices in the long term.
• Supervise and support: Travel to project sites to conduct or support the training and ongoing coaching of trainers; and monitor field activities.
• Build and manage strong relationships: Coordinate with our key stakeholders, from government officials to users of our technology; demonstrating excellent stakeholder management and attention to detail whilst delivering our custom solution and providing detailed project input into donor reports.
• Identify and build new opportunities: Work closely with our partnerships teams and technical pre-sales manager to identify and develop new opportunities in Ethiopia and globally including; scoping, designing appropriate technology solutions, defining clear technical requirements, and developing project proposals and budgets.
• Coach and develop team members: support the development and growth of project managers and project coordinators

MUST HAVE REQUIREMENTS

• Significant project management and/or product management experience, ideally in the ICT4D space. You’ve deployed technology projects in developing country contexts.
• Significant technical project design experience (or solutions architecture or technical pre-sales), ideally in the tech for development space where you’ve either configured solutions or designed bespoke solutions projects with clients in developing country contexts.
• Experience configuring or implementing data collection platforms, such as DHIS2, CommCare, ODK, OpenSRP, and/or other technology platforms commonly used in global development. You are knowledgeable about, have designed, or implemented workflows common among frontline workers in development programs (e.g. health care, aid distribution, research, education).
• Understanding of technical concepts. You are able to understand at a high level the technical elements of desktop, mobile and cloud software services and applications with a specific emphasis on data concepts. You should also be able to create data flow diagrams and understand privacy impact assessments.
• Excellent stakeholder management and communication skills. You are empathetic and seek to understand different perspectives, bring clarity to ambiguous or ill-defined needs, can negotiate diplomatically when there are competing interests, and influence across stakeholder groups to secure buy-in and alignment .
• Strong presentation and demo skills. We work across multiple sectors with a variety of stakeholders. Being able to tailor presentations to audiences of varying technical literacy levels, for a number of different use cases and workflows, is crucial. You are comfortable hosting virtual presentations as well as conducting in-person.
• Attention to detail. Global development work is complex and unpredictable. To proactively anticipate risks, assess implicit requirements on top of contractual deliverables, and successfully meet ever-changing needs, you need to be able to translate a high-level idea into concrete, detailed action steps and documentation.
• Time management. You are organised, process-oriented, and attentive to following through on planned tasks and activities. You know how to allocate and shift resources to provide support to team members as needed, ensuring that project deliverables are met on time and on budget.
• Permission to work: in Ethiopia

NICE-TO-HAVE REQUIREMENTS

• Knowledge and experience working with agile methodologies. You have worked in an organisation using agile principles and you are familiar with typical technical project management tools (e.g. Jira, Trello, etc.).
• An engineering mindset and passion for building technology solutions
• Interest in and/or experience in M&E or data analysis
• Working proficiency in other languages welcome

What we value



• Integrity. You have an unwavering commitment to ‘confronting the grey’ in all areas of your work, and encourage transparency in all your interactions.
• Intellect. You understand the importance of rigorously detailed data, and have a strong ability to synthesise complex and potentially competing requirements, and convert them into recommendations that drive business decisions.
• Problem-solving. You have distinctive problem solving skills and good business judgment. You work in collaboration with other team members to identify creative solutions to complex problems.
• Curiosity. You have a desire to think innovatively and explore and understand how different perspectives and complex data blend together to create the bigger picture and context.
• Learning. You love learning new things, are able to think on your feet, and can pick up new tools and methods quickly.
• Grit. You have a hands-on, can-do attitude and have the drive to dig deep into problems to discover pain points and features from multiple perspectives, and resilience to stay focused on a project to the end.
• Passion. If being part of a team that designs and deploys technology for global health sounds exciting, we want to meet you!