Job Title:                          Country Technical Coordinator – Resilience & Durable Solutions - Somalia

Reports to:                       Programme Director  

Terms:                               18-month unaccompanied fixed term contract.  

Salary:                               GB6 - €46,822 - €52,024

Requirements:                Nairobi-based -50% Travel to project Locations (security permitting) in Somalia.

About Concern:               Established in 1968, Concern Worldwide is an international, humanitarian, non-governmental organisation dedicated to the elimination of extreme poverty and the reduction of human suffering, primarily in fragile countries. Our vision is a world where all people live in peace and prosperity and are treated equally, with dignity and respect. We work with people living in extreme poverty to achieve major improvements in their lives which last and spread without ongoing support from Concern.

To advance our mission and achieve quality and impact in all that we do, our work is guided by our core values and nurturing a culture of inclusion, compassion, and humanity. Built on the inspiration of our founders, and our long record of delivering effective programmes, our values reflect our history and our commitment to addressing extreme poverty in the most fragile countries.

Concern has operated in Somalia since 1986, consistently setting high standards for aid delivery. Its strong local leadership has fostered exceptional accountability, program quality, and staff retention. This locally grounded capacity has driven innovation, including developing groups of community responders into long-term local NGO partners, early adoption of mobile-money cash transfers, and rapid, effective responses to major national emergencies. Since 2012, Concern has made sustained investments in long-term, multi-sectoral programming to address chronic humanitarian needs. Flexible funding over more than a decade has enabled continuous learning, adaptation, and more effective approaches to resilience and durable solutions for displaced communities.

Role Purpose:                  This role will enable a high-performing, decentralised team to refresh its motivation and deliver innovative, context-appropriate solutions for crisis-affected populations. It will focus on coaching Concern’s and partners’ Resilience and Durable Solutions Teams—particularly their leadership—to adopt new mental models, challenge assumptions, and test locally led aid approaches that expand program outcomes. It also requires clearly communicating complex concepts (e.g., trade-offs, cost-benefit analysis, cognitive bias) to build shared understanding, alignment, and confidence. The role strengthens leadership capacity, promotes adaptive programming, and ensures learning and evidence guide decision-making and influence wider humanitarian practice

                                           The candidate we are imagining: An experienced organisational leader seeking to reconnect with a strong, field-based team, you are motivated to break from institutional mindsets and test practical, front-line team-building approaches. You believe aid can achieve more when staff recognise community strengths and know how to support them to adapt and thrive in changing environments.

Key Responsibilities:

Empower Concern's and Partners' Resilience and Durable Solutions Teams to:

Innovate and make good decisions:

• Propose realistic but innovative means for expanding the mandate and ability of front-line-staff to make strategic decisions and innovations.
• Support design of structures and incentives to make hard decisions and practice hyper-adaptation, including short- and long-term budgetary flexibility.

Contribute to transformational changes in resilience and extreme poverty:

• Design and implement high-impact, multi-sectoral programmes.
• Reach for innovative new levels of program impact.
• Challenge traditional notions of cost-effectiveness by demonstrating transformational impacts through locally-tailored, locally-led programming.
• Challenge traditional notions of the value of scale by supporting programs that spread decentralized approaches for unique interventions rather than scale specific interventions.

(Particular emphasis here will be on Concern's leading role in promoting Women's Self-Help Groups and other clusters of community groups, and in its application of Early Warning Early Action.)

Productively Communicate:

• Tell the story of their innovative approaches, results, learning and contributions in a way people can remember.
• Evolve ahead of a changing aid industry, to become an example and influence how others in the wider industry imagine their work in the future.

Elevate leadership from within — 2-year goals for the role:

• Concern staff have developed the team-leadership, adaptive-management, and organizational-change capabilities to take on senior roles like this one.
• The team has shifted its underlying mental models across the Thought Leadership areas described above and reinforced this shift through structural changes to Concern's operational and management structures.

Strategic Leadership and Programme Direction:

• Provide leadership to resilience and durable solutions programming, ensuring alignment with organisational priorities.
• Team Culture and leadership: Source, develop, and test better approaches to building and sustaining team culture and organizational change; lead by example and give others space to make pivotal decisions, build reputation, and grow as leaders.
• Systems thinking: Apply the Cynefin Framework as a foundation and draw on a diverse range of systems-thinking tools from there. Candidates may find it useful to be familiar with The 55 Minutes (James Stauch et al.), or with the dialectic approach.
• Hyper-Adaptive Programming: Articulate and design hyper-adaptive program and operational structures that enable decentralized, evidence-based decision-making and innovation at scale, and empower field teams to take ownership of programme delivery.
• Human Centred Design: Apply human centred design principles and approaches across all relevant work.
• Value for Money: Move beyond traditional and established mental models of return on investment and scaled impact; find or develop conceptual articulations and help programming demonstrate the VfM of:
  • Area-based program impact
  • Locally-tailored programming to contribute to new typologies of programme outcomes
  • Complex systems change
  • Mitigatory actions as a core humanitarian response in areas of recurrent crises

Advocacy, Influencing, and Representation:

• Represent Concern — in Nairobi, internationally, and in technical working groups, clusters, and coordination platforms; and grow the team’s capacities to do the same.
• Develop position papers, briefs, and messages to support strategic advocacy and influencing efforts.
• Plan strategic events and visits where Concern staff can demonstrate their approach to and learn from other stakeholders.
• Support visibility of programme impact to donors, partners and external stakeholders.

Donor Engagement and Resource Mobilisation:

• Identify and pursue new funding opportunities aligned with Concern’s strategic priorities.
• Build and maintain strategic relationships with key donors and partners.
• Lead or contribute to the development of high-quality funding proposals — sourcing technical content from the team and strategically structuring flexible budgets.
• Ensure effective donor reporting and compliance requirements are met.

Knowledge Management, Learning and Evidence:

• Lead documentation of programme learning, including case studies and briefs that exemplify the team's programmatic and operational innovations — including Value for Money.
• Promote the use of evidence and learning to inform programme design and strategic direction.
• Support research, evaluations, and learning initiatives that advance the team's longer-term vision for its work in Somalia.
• Facilitate internal knowledge sharing across programmes and teams, developing and/or adapting tools and materials to facilitate the process.

Coordination and Integration:

• Contribute actively to country programme leadership and strategic direction.
• Proactively support Programme Director efforts toward effective integration, collaboration and synergies across sectors and programme components.
• Support effective coordination with partners, consortia and external stakeholders.
• Promote approaches that strengthen local ownership and partner-led design and implementation.

Required:

• Minimum 5–7 years of relevant experience in aid or social impact.
• Proven experience in programme design, portfolio management, and managing multiple teams.
• Strong communication and facilitation skills across diverse audiences, and an ability to distil complex ideas into clear, authentic, memorable messages and to coach others in doing the same.
• Excellent emotional intelligence (EI/EQ), empathy, and respect for others — especially when things are not going to plan.
• Experienced in team culture- and leadership-building that is conducive to innovation, quality, and sustainable impact.
• Demonstrated experience in coaching, mentoring, or leadership development roles
• Experience supporting teams to improve performance and programme quality
• Able to clearly articulate each of the Thought Leadership concepts described above.
• Experience working on large donor-funded programmes — ideally with FCDO, EU, Irish Aid, World Bank, or UN agencies — and familiarity with general donor compliance concepts.
• Strong experience working with and strengthening local partners, including through remote management arrangements.
• Proven ability to work collaboratively with, and represent, an organisation to a variety of stakeholders including at senior levels — e.g. government, clusters, consortia, peer NGOs.
• Demonstrable understanding of and commitment to safety and security protocols in Somalia.

Desirable:

• Experience working in Somalia, the Horn of Africa, or a comparable context.
• Experience managing relationships across complex consortium and stakeholder structures.
• Experience clearly articulating resilience, early warning, and anticipatory action.

Competencies:               

As this is a key leadership position, potential candidates are expected to demonstrate significant ability in the following areas:

We encourage all eligible candidates, irrespective of gender, ethnicity or origin, disability, political beliefs, religious beliefs, sexual orientation, or socio-economic status to apply to become a part of the organisation. Concern is against all forms of discrimination and unequal power relations and is committed to promoting equality. 

If this role sounds right for you, please apply with your CV and cover letter. We will respond to every applicant. Please be aware we may offer positions before the closing date.

If you have any concerns about our recruitment process and need particular assistance - for example if you have a disability e.g. a hearing impairment - please let us know and we will do our best to respond to your needs.  

Important information:

Concern has an organisational Code of Conduct with three Associated Policies: The Programme Participant Protection Policy, the Child Safeguarding Policy, and the Anti-Trafficking in Persons Policy accessible here. These have been developed to ensure the maximum protection of programme participants from exploitation, and to clarify the responsibilities of Concern staff, consultants, visitors to the programme and partner organisations, and the standards of behaviour expected of them. In this context, staff have a responsibility to the organisation to strive for, and maintain, the highest standards in their work, in accordance with Concern’s core values and mission.

Any candidate offered a job with Concern Worldwide will be expected to sign the Concern Staff Code of Conduct and Associated Policies as an appendix to their contract of employment. By signing the Concern Code of Conduct, candidates acknowledge that they have understood the content of both the Concern Code of Conduct and the Associated Policies and agree to conduct themselves in accordance with the provisions of these policies. Additionally, Concern is committed to the safeguarding and protection of adults and children in our work.

We will do everything possible to ensure that only those who are suitable to work or volunteer with adults and children are recruited by us for such roles. Consequently, working or volunteering with Concern may be subject to a range of vetting checks, including criminal background checking. 

During this job application, you will provide Concern with your personal data. Concern takes its responsibilities towards this personal data very seriously and is committed to complying with all relevant data protection legislation.