Background

SoCha is seeking a Principal Evaluator to provide technical and managerial leadership for evaluations, assessments, and studies in the SoCha home office. The Principal Evaluator will design and lead evaluations, assessments, and studies from inception to final delivery, including developing research questions, methods, and protocols in addition to scoping, planning, and implementing data collection. The Principal Evaluator will also lead trainings, quality assurance, quality control for teams collecting quantitative and qualitative data in the field, data analysis, writing reports on study findings, and presenting findings to USAID and related audiences.

Scope of Work

The Principal Evaluator will be responsible for:

• Leading proposal development for evaluations and other strategic opportunities through capture, partnering, technical proposal writing, and developing proposal budgets.
• Building partnerships and client relationships necessary for winning new business.
• Actively contributing to SoCha’s methodological innovations.
• Executing evaluations directly as team leader or in a supervisory role overseeing evaluation teams, depending on the assignment.
• Delivering projects according to contract requirements and budget parameters in a timely manner, and in coordination with support staff and finance.
• Implementing mixed qualitative and quantitative designs for performance and impact evaluations, including experimental, quasi-experimental, and non-experimental designs.
• Supervising short-term consultants, SoCha project staff, and home office staff assigned to evaluations.
• Serving as the technical backstop for evaluations and assessments providing supervision and quality control for local project teams and consultants on SoCha’s mission support platform contracts.
• Managing data collection teams, including consultants and subcontractors, to ensure that data collected in the field is valid, accurate, comprehensive, and high quality.
• Providing capacity building for local teams, developing tools and training materials specific to each evaluation, assessment, and study, in addition to training data collectors using these materials.
• Overall quality assurance and control of evaluation and assessment deliverables and building, maintaining, and continuously improving systems for quality assurance and quality control.
• Analyzing data collected in the field to provide robust answers to evaluation and research questions.
• Preparing high quality reports and deliverables for clients and presenting results in workshops and meetings.
• Ensuring that lessons learned and best practices are captured, synthesized, reported, and disseminated using a collaborating, learning & adapting (CLA) framework.
• Supporting clients on institutionalizing a CLA approach to programming, fostering a learning culture, and facilitating evidence-based decision making and innovation.
• Advising clients on how to achieve maximum impact from programs, policies, and interventions using CLA practices to facilitate regular review of evidence to inform programming.
• Building and maintaining relationships and communications with clients, partners, subcontractors, and consultants.
• Other duties as assigned.

Minimum Qualifications and Experience

• Advanced degree (Master’s or Ph.D.) in social sciences, evaluation, international development, or other similar field.
• Minimum of ten (10) years of progressively responsible experience.
• Experience as an evaluation Team Leader responsible for final delivery of an evaluation of at least one USAID activity.
• Expertise designing and implementing evaluation research methodologies using mixed qualitative and quantitative methods.
• Excellent English writing ability (native or highly fluent) a must.
• Fluency in French and willingness to move to Mauritius are an advantage.

Location

Mauritius or full-time remote.