Manager, Impact Systems & Quality
Food For Education
Nairobi | Full Time | NGO / Non-Profit Associations
Closing in 1 week from now
About the Role
As Food4Education scales toward serving 1 million learners in Kenya by 2027 and 3 million across Africa by 2030, our Impact team handles four integrated workstreams: Measurement Systems & Data Quality; Field Data Collection & Quality; Research & Evaluation; and Insights, Reporting & Learning. The Manager, Impact Systems & Quality is a new coordination and quality-oversight role created to close the gap between strategy and execution as we scale.
The Manager owns the day-to-day rhythm of the Impact team — leading workflow management, planning, and delivery across all four workstreams, and providing the first layer of technical and quality review before outputs reach senior leadership. The role ensures associates are well-supported, workplans are realistic and visible, dependencies are surfaced early, and OKRs are tracked transparently.
The Manager combines strong M&E methodological judgment with the operational discipline and strategic planning needed to run multiple concurrent workstreams, juggling the ebbs and flows of the school calendar, building strong cross-departmental relationships to understand when field and customer service teams have bandwidth to collect data, choreographing tools and timelines so peak-activity weeks run smoothly, and routing analysis, documentation, and design work into the slower windows between collection cycles and during school closures.
Key Responsibilities
Cross-workstream coordination & delivery management
- Run end-to-end project management across the four Impact workstreams Measurement Systems & Data Quality, Field Data Collection & Quality, Research & Evaluation, Insights, Reporting & Learning, using Gantt charts, sprint/scrum-style cycles, and Notion-based workplans to sequence dependencies, manage capacity, and keep delivery on track.
- Maintain a single source of truth for priorities, milestones, risks, and capacity across the team — and provide leadership with concise weekly/monthly updates on where each workstream stands, what is at risk, and what decisions are needed.
- Lead the team’s OKR cycle: translate strategic objectives into measurable team and individual key results, run regular check-ins, track progress, and flag drift early so course-corrections happen in-cycle rather than at quarter-end.
- Support associates to develop and maintain workplans, timelines, and operating routines stand-ups, sprint reviews, retrospectives that keep work predictable and visible.
Quality oversight & technical review
- Serve as the first layer of quality review for all outputs produced by associates — indicators and frameworks, data collection tools, monitoring datasets, evaluation protocols, dashboards, and reports — before they move to the Senior Manager or Head of Impact.
- Apply M&E methodological rigor to flag errors, methodological weaknesses, sampling issues, indicator misalignment with the Theory of Change, and data quality risks; provide structured, actionable feedback that strengthens both the output and the associate’s capability.
- Partner with the Senior Associate – Data Systems, Quality & Analysis to ensure indicator definitions, QA protocols, and data collection tools are standardized across all operational sites and aligned with BI/data warehouse requirements.
People management & capability building
- Directly manage the Impact associate team across workstreams, including weekly 1:1s, performance management, coaching, and career development.
- Hold associates accountable for delivery commitments and updates, while creating the structures — templates, peer review, documentation standards — that make consistent quality the default.
- Coach associates to grow — strengthening their M&E methods, analytical depth, and delivery skills through structured feedback, stretch assignments, and access to relevant training, so every review cycle is also a learning moment.
Stakeholder & systems alignment
- Coordinate closely with Operations, BI/Tech, Legal, and Development teams to align Impact deliverables with field realities, data infrastructure, ethics requirements, and donor commitments.
- Translate strategy from the Head of Impact and Senior Manager into executable work plans and ensure progress, blockers, and decisions flow back up cleanly.
Minimum Requirements
Education
Bachelor’s degree in Statistics, Economics, Public Health, Development Studies, Social Sciences, Data Science, or a related field. A Master’s degree in M&E, Public Policy, Development Economics, Statistics, or a related discipline is strongly preferred.
Experience
- Minimum 6–8 years of progressive experience in monitoring, evaluation, accountability, research and learning MEARL, with at least 2–3 years managing people and multi-stream workplans in a fast-scaling organization.
- Demonstrated experience designing and managing M&E systems end-to-end — from indicator design and Theory of Change articulation through tool development, data collection, QA, analysis, and reporting.
- Track record of running structured project management cadences sprints/scrum, Gantt-based planning, OKR cycles across multiple concurrent workstreams and reporting clearly to senior leadership.
- Hands-on experience reviewing the technical work of more junior staff — catching methodological errors, sampling issues, indicator misalignment, and data quality problems — and giving feedback that improves both the output and the team member.
- Experience working with cross-functional teams Operations, BI/Data, Programs, Development to align measurement with operational realities and donor reporting requirements.
Never miss a chance!
Subscribe to get latest job listings, career insights and guidance in your inbox