The Role
We are seeking a Manager, Operations Innovation to play a pivotal role in scaling and optimizing the India Safe Water (ISW) program s operations. This position will focus on enhancing internal processes, systems, and team capabilities to drive operational excellence and achieve program goals across the state.
The role involves overseeing state-level operations, managing field teams, and ensuring impactful learning outcomes through a data-driven, collaborative approach. You will work closely with national, state, and local stakeholders to align resources, support implementation, and foster a motivated and coordinated team.
As part of your responsibilities, you will develop and implement strategies to strengthen team learning, manage operational challenges, and improve the overall effectiveness of interventions. This role offers the opportunity to lead impactful initiatives and contribute to the broader success of ISW.
Operations and Team Management (40%)
- Lead, supervise and guide field team members to ensure alignment with learning objectives, program goals, and performance
- Oversee and build state-level workplans state-level work plans in collaboration with the national team to enable timely and high-quality intervention implementation
- Facilitate regular reviews with Field Team Members to track progress, address challenges, and drive accountability for deliverables.
- Coordinate with national LMT and other workstream owners to advance learning agendas, ensuring clear role allocation, and aligning resources to priority activities within the state.
- Manage and support field teams in gathering insights, troubleshooting issues, and adapting program implementation based on on-ground realities.
- Work closely with the India Safe Water (ISW) leadership for designing and implementing Small scale technical Pilots and trials (eg Device Refinement) that ensure team members can iterate on different program aspects while maintaining performance.
- Ensure that Objective and goals of Pilots/Trials are effectively met and collaborate with ISW Strategy and Operations teams to embed those insights into implementation work plans.
- Support in identifying needs and gaps across different workstreams and regions, such as technology improvement, community engagement, market shaping, and procurement.
- Contribute to the development and adaptation of learning materials, tools, and methodologies for effective knowledge transfer and capacity building. You will also provide technical and insightful observations to improve the Programme.
Collaboration with Stakeholders (20%)
- Serve as the primary representative of the Innovations Team at the state level in interactions with government departments, external stakeholders, and community representatives.
- Facilitate collaboration between the implementation team and government bodies (e.g., Water Department, Gram Panchayat) for smooth program execution.
- Work closely with the National Office to communicate state-level insights, challenges, and recommendations.
- Coordinate with the PC team to align the SWN team s learning strategies to the overall learning and development strategy of Evidence Action.
- Build strong partnerships with academic institutions, experts, knowledge partners and community stakeholders to foster continuous learning and collaboration.
Requirements
- Bachelor s degree in Engineering (Civil, Mechanical, Chemical, Environmental), or in a related field relevant to program implementation and operations management.
- Minimum 8 years of experience in managing technical projects (with a focus on program operations) including leading teams across diverse geographic areas
- Exposure to leading teams across dispersed geographic areas at the state level is highly desirable
- Excellent spoken and written English. Ability to synthesize information clearly and produce good quality written documents keeping to tight deadlines
- Strong analytical and data-driven decision-making skills to guide continuous improvement.
- Proven leadership skills with the ability to inspire, motivate, and collaborate effectively with teams at all levels
- Openness to domestic travel (up to 40%) to support program activities and team coordination
- Excellent interpersonal skills to engage with both internal and external stakeholders, locally and globally
- Ability to work independently with minimal supervision, while keeping leadership informed of progress and any challenges that require attention or support
