Programme Officer

The job of a Save the Children UK’s Programme Officer is busy and varied.

• Do you have strong organisation and administration skills with the ability to plan and prioritise a varied workload?
• Do you have strong numeracy skills with experience and the ability to monitor and manage financial information and budgets?
• Are you motivated by our vision of creating a world where every child doesn’t just survive, but thrives, and can go on to change the world?

If the answers to these questions are yes, we would love to hear from you!

About Us

The number of children requiring humanitarian assistance is rising as the climate crisis, entrenched conflict, and fragility, forced migration and infectious diseases all lead to an increase in the frequency, duration, and severity of catastrophic events. With needs continuing to grow and rapidly outpacing available resources, humanitarians around the world are once more forced to do more with less. Recognising the changing humanitarian risk landscape, the need to stay relevant, and to step up for greater impact, Save the Children has adopted a bold vision for the future of its humanitarian work and as part of this, there is an important role for SCUK to play in identifying and supporting next-generation collaborative initiatives that will ultimately deliver impact for disaster-affected children and their families.

The Humanitarian Leadership Academy (HLA) as part of SCUK’s humanitarian department provides high-quality humanitarian capacity strengthening for the movement, as well as the wider sector, as part of our shifting the power agenda. The HLA’s mission, as a team within the humanitarian department, is to enable people around the world to prepare for and respond to crises in their own countries, by providing quality learning opportunities. The HLA’s approach spans from focused needs-based learning in countries hit by crises to the huge international reach of our learning platform, Kaya. They are a global team that has a full suite of in-house skills to provide and develop the offer; technical and learning experts, platform specialists, a digital and design studio, communications support and more. The HLA enables SCUK to offer the most effective and impactful humanitarian capacity strengthening resource for both the Save the Children movement, the wider humanitarian sector and beyond.

Job Purpose

The purpose of this role is to enable high levels of operational and programmatic efficiency with regards to Save the Children capacity strengthening response to the Ukraine crisis. The role requires excellent financial and administrative management, effective decision making and responsiveness to stakeholder needs. You will provide direct support to the Deputy Director for Transformational Humanitarian Response as well as the HLA Regional Centre in Eastern Europe.

Main Accountabilities

The Programme Officer’s key duties will be to:

• Work closely with the Deputy Director for Transformational Response and the Regional Lead for Eastern Europe to support the development and delivery of humanitarian initiatives as necessary
• Cross team coordination
• Implement effective processes and systems for financial and operational insight and decision making
• Introduce effective processes and systems for stakeholder relationship management
• Contribute to supporting strong ways of working across the teams, as well as taking individual responsibility for building an inclusive and supportive team culture.
• Documentation management (storage & management of contracts / / finance information)
• Operate the day-to-day business/programme management of the work with the teams and partners delivering on the Engine 2 with a focus on compliance, due diligence and risk management, ensuring the awards and trading management information systems are up to date and that awards and trading contracts are donor compliant and audit ready
• •Provide administration and coordination support to internal relationships with team such as finance, legal and HR to ensure quality service provision and appropriate allocation of resources and in line with agreements
• Ensure that award management information systems are up-to-date and global and internal processes are followed.
• Coordinate and participate in multi-function task force and any relevant working groups that benefit areas of mutual benefit such as operations, programmes, members, advocacy etc
• Establish and manage effective relationships with key stakeholders and partners within the learning sector to provide cutting edge solutions to demand
• Oversee multiple award-specific budgets in order to effectively implement the learning projects or programmes, including staff recharge, logistics, procurement, consultancies, etc., ensuring the relevant information management is aligned to SCI and donor specific compliance criteria, working with the Awards and Contract Specialist as required
• Support the ongoing management and monitoring of contracts throughout the project/contract cycle,

Performance management.

• Support effective arrangements for internal and external reporting, tracking monthly progress against financial modelling, plans, budgets, and key performance indicators

People management

• Support the implementation of a High Performing Team Strategy designed to mobilise, invest in, enable, and empower the Academy’s staff around the world, to ensure that the Academy is effectively coordinated and collaborative

Change management

• Support strategic change initiatives for the HLA’s operating model and operations

Person Profile

The ideal candidate will demonstrate appropriate judgment in balancing the need for maintaining to a high standard, necessary operations day-to-day tasks (e.g. generating new contracts, recoding finance transactions, etc.), with supporting operations to update our current operating model. Accordingly, you must be able to manage a high number of competing priorities for time critical operations activities, whilst keeping perspective of how we may achieve higher efficiency and effectiveness across our financial and operational processes and systems. You will be able to critically apply ongoing lessons learnt from this role, for the greater purpose of improving HLA operational excellence.

Essential Criteria

• Passion and energy to work in pursuit of transforming humanitarian response globally
• Numerate with the ability to monitor and manage financial information.
• Familiarity with funding budgets, financial reporting including construction and monitoring of budgets.
• Highly computer literate and confident with MS Office, especially Excel.
• Analytical skills with the ability to identify key points from complex material or information.
• Proven attention for detail and ability to effectively manage a high volume of data and
• information
• A high degree of flexibility and adaptability to respond to changing needs and priorities
• Strong interpersonal and communication skills (verbal and written), with an ability to work with people from a range of backgrounds and cultures
• Strong team skills, with the ability to develop and maintain effective working relationships and collaborate both within and outside the team.
• Strong problem-solving skills, with ability to propose solutions for translating a variety of funding information into Save the Children system formats.
• Ability to work within a network of working groups and teams, and through a matrix management structure, both of which require very strong coordination and cooperation skills and behaviour.
• Ability to manage a varied workload, to organise and prioritise multiple tasks efficiently, manage reactive and proactive work, and deliver tasks to tight deadlines
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills and ability to deal tactfully and sensitively with a wide range of people in a large and complex organisation, often at a distance.
• Fluent written and spoken English

Ways of Working:

Remote First – The majority of our roles can be performed remotely, however you may work from the office as often as you wish. Whilst you will be predominantly working from home, we may require you to come to your contracted office up to 2-4 days per month or 6-8 days per quarter (Note: This will be agreed with your Line Manager and team) This is intended to be time spent on collaborating with colleagues and relationship building.

On-site – There are certain roles that cannot be performed remotely and so your role will be based in an office location and you may occasionally be able to work from home.

Flexible Working – We are happy to discuss flexible working options at interview**.**