Operations Officer, BRAC Ultra-Poor Graduation Initiative

The BRAC Ultra-Poor Graduation Initiative (UPGI) seeks to hire an Operations Officer for a growing team that provides advisory services and technical assistance around the Graduation approach to various partners, ranging from governments, multilateral institutions, NGOs, and in-country technical team members.

Reporting to the Operations Manager, the Operations Officer will support all aspects of operations and administration processes to deliver the UPGI scale-up strategy. This position would require close work with staff in Africa and Asia. As a result, this is a global position and there is a preference for the person to be based in one of BRAC International’s hubs in Asia and Africa.

This role supports the Operations Manager with day-to-day project logistics, procurement, travel, and administrative operations.

Primary Responsibilities: The Operations Officer will primarily assist with all UPGI operations, admin tasks, and functions. The position will as part of the People and Operations team. The areas of responsibility for this role include:

Procurement:

• Assist supervisor in procurement activities, in collaboration with Operations and Program teams
• Assist with identification of suitable vendors, collection of price quotes, documentation of procurement process, and management of electronic and paper procurement files
• Responsible for circulating RFQs, preparing bid analysis, and issuing purchase orders
• Coordinate all logistical arrangements for project-related events, workshops, seminars, and other training activities
• Responsible for managing & preparing service level agreements for the smooth running of project activities
• Help manage and administer office resources, including office space, software, subscriptions, computers, hardware, and other related office systems and equipment.

Risk Management:

• Support the quarterly reporting to BRAC International’s Executive Risk Management Committee
• Serve as Risk Coordinator for UPGI
• Update risk register for UPGI programs and offices

Administration:

• Manage travel arrangements, including staff air tickets, transport, and boarding & lodging for business purposes
• Support the organization of team events (meetings, workshops, etc.).
• Maintains a central filing system for required documents and forms.
• Support the development and systematic management of internal policies and their implementation across the company’s operations
• Organize and process invoices, service orders, and other expense claims to ensure payments and expenditure reporting are up to date.
• Help conduct compliance checks, donor due diligence, and other regulatory responsibilities.
• Support preparation for board meetings, financial audits, advisories, and internal & external audiences
• Fulfill other administrative functions as required

Human Resource:

• Assist with long-term and short-term recruitment needs for UPGI
• Ensure all staff files are maintained
• Ensure all trackers and databases are up-to-date and readily available for management information.
• Assist with the identification, selection, recruitment, training, and orientation of new staff members

Safeguarding

• Ensure the safety of team members from any harm, abuse, neglect, harassment and exploitation to achieve the programme’s goals on safeguarding implementation. Act as a key source of support, guidance and expertise on safeguarding for establishing a safe working environment.
• Practice, promote and endorse the issues of safeguarding policy among team members and ensure the implementation of safeguarding standards in every course of action.
• Follow the safeguarding reporting procedure in case any reportable incident takes place, encourage others to do so.

Qualifications

Person Specification:

We are looking for an Operations Officer with proven leadership skills, the ability to see the big picture, a hands-on approach to getting things done, and a passion for supporting a global workforce to thrive in challenging environments.

You take pride in the quality of service; you are strategic and responsive; you are a powerful communicator and manage wide-ranging responsibilities. You are a team player, building relationships at all levels with people from different professional and cultural backgrounds. In addition, you demonstrate sound judgment, integrity, and sensitivity.

Required Skills and Abilities:

• Exceptional organizational skills
• Strong communications skills
• Excellent working knowledge of Google Workspace and Microsoft suite packages
• Good understanding of procurement policies

Education and Experience:

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent
• Minimum 2 years of experience in a similar role (e.g., project administrator, project manager, human resources coordinator, or similar positions); three years of experience preferred.
• Ability to make decisions under uncertainty and to assess potential institutional risks.
• Being proactive, assertive, and action-oriented; driven to work without supervision.
• Excellent organizational skills and attention to detail
• Working experience in rapidly growing organizations will be an added advantage.
• Previous knowledge or strong interest in global development.

About the Organization

About BRAC

BRAC is one of the world’s largest development organizations dedicated to empowering people living in poverty. Working across 12 countries in South Asia and Africa, BRAC touches the lives of more than 120 million people worldwide. BRAC takes a holistic approach to alleviate poverty with microfinance, education, healthcare, food security programs, and more.

About the Ultra-Poor Graduation Initiative

The Ultra-Poor Graduation Initiative (“UPGI”) is a global unit of BRAC that was founded in 2016 to build off of the success of BRAC’s Ultra-Poor Graduation program in Bangladesh. BRAC UPGI aims to position the Graduation approach as a critical driver to eradicating extreme poverty worldwide. It does this by:

• Advocating for uptake of the Graduation approach by policymakers, national governments, multilateral institutions, and non-governmental organizations; and
• Effective adaptation and implementation of the Graduation approach in countries worldwide, supported through technical assistance and capacity strengthening for external stakeholders.

In 2002, BRAC pioneered the Ultra-Poor Graduation (“Graduation”) approach in Bangladesh – a holistic intervention to help people lift themselves from extreme poverty – after recognizing that existing poverty alleviation programs were not reaching the poorest. By providing livelihood assets, cash transfers, and continued mentoring and training, the Graduation approach addresses participants’ multidimensional needs within the local context and ‘graduates’ people from extreme poverty into sustainable livelihoods.

Graduation is an evidence-based, scalable intervention proven to break the poverty trap in the long term. So far, BRAC’s flagship Graduation program has impacted over 2 million Bangladeshi households—totaling over 9 million people. To help eradicate extreme poverty, BRAC UPGI is working to scale globally by integrating Graduation into existing government programs and helping 21 million more people lift themselves from extreme poverty by 2026.

But BRAC UPGI cannot do it alone. This is beyond the means and capacity of a single organization- no matter how ambitious or innovative. Sustainability and scale demands change at the systems level with active government engagement. BRAC UPGI is committed to creating effective solutions that leverage the available resources and existing programming to achieve the long-term benefits demonstrated by Graduation. The organization is partnering with governments, multilateral institutions, NGOs, and civil society, in countries where BRAC UPGI thinks it can have maximum impact and drive greater uptake for Graduation.