Chief of Party (COP) at EnCompass Nigeria

EnCompass is a women-owned business headquartered in Rockville, Maryland. Our global and multicultural team of staff and consultants are passionate about supporting positive change in education, food security, gender equality and inclusive development, global health, and human rights.

We are recruiting to fill the position below:

Job Title: Chief of Party (COP) – USAID Nigeria MEL

Location: Abuja, FCT
Job title: Full-time

Position Descriptions

EnCompass LLC seeks Chief of Party (COP) candidates for an anticipated five-year United States Agency for International Development (USAID) monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL) program in Nigeria.
This anticipated 5 year project will provide USAID / Nigeria with a central platform for the procurement of support services that will strengthen, support, and facilitate USAID’s capacity for utilizing MEL approaches that will improve development outcomes and strengthen the capacity of USAID / Nigeria’s strategic partners.
The program will also provide support to USAID / Nigeria and implementing partners on performance monitoring, data verification, evaluations, organizational learning and capacity building, and knowledge management.
In addition to providing overall leadership, management, and technical direction, the COP will have experience working in performance management, organizational development, strategic decision-making, quality control, and project learning, preferably in the USAID context and with Collaboration, Learning and Adapting (CLA) practices.
We are looking for someone who can facilitate learning and build relationships, with high political acumen and strong conflict prevent and management skills.
S / he must be an inclusive leader, who can navigate change with flexibility and emotional resilience.
The ideal candidate will have demonstrated experience focusing on results and impact, with strong strategic vision and an understanding of systems approaches to programming.
S / he will understand how to foster a culture of continuous improvement and learning and will maintain high self-awareness and personal improvement skills.
The position will be full-time and be based in Abuja with travel throughout the country.

Position Duties and Responsibilities

The COP will lead the activity, providing technical guidance to and supervising both international and national staff and consultants.
The COP will be the primary point of contact with USAID staff, including the Contracting Officer and Contracting Officer’s Representation (CO / COR).

Essential functions include:

Serve as the main point of contact for the activity, providing vision, direction, leadership, and management for the project
Provide technical, operational, and managerial oversight to all aspects of the program to ensure all activities, and deliverables are executed with quality and timeliness
Establish and maintain highly collaborative working relationships with the Government of Nigeria, USAID / Nigeria and USAID / Washington as required, along with relevant in-country stakeholders; serve as the primary point of contact for USAID and as the principal liaison with USAID staff, institutions, and country partners to exchange information and develop professional relationships
Manage the country team, ensure technical capacity of staff; provide technical assistance and backstopping when required
Ensure that all activities are undertaken in full compliance with EnCompass’ standard operating procedures, USAID policies and regulations, and national policies and laws
Promote sustainability of project activities with effective networking, linkages to other programs, capacity building of project staff, and institutional strengthening in support of the journey to self-reliance
Ensure documentation and dissemination of findings, impact, innovations, and lessons learned
Engage fully as a member of the EnCompass staff team, including participating in staff meetings and other EnCompass
Ensure optimal use of human, financial, and physical resources to successfully meet project milestones, objectives, deliverables and targets
Other duties as assigned

Position Requirements

Qualifications:

A graduate degree in a Social Science, Economic, Development Studies or a related field
Minimum of ten (10) years of progressively increasing responsibility in managing large comprehensive contracts of similar nature, size and complexity, preferably in Nigeria or West Africa
Minimum of five (5) years of experience in monitoring and evaluation and/or capacity building preferred
Former supervisory experience is required

Experience and Skills:

Prior experience as a senior manager or COP working on complex USAID-funded projects strongly preferred
Strong experience with evaluation standards and practices required
Experience working in performance management, strategic decision-making, and project learning
Experience building monitoring, evaluation, and learning capacities of USAID staff, implementing partners, and government counterparts highly preferred
Experience managing complex relationships with a variety of stakeholders
Ability to work with host-country governments at different levels
Substantial experience in managing a team using mixed research methods of similar magnitude
Strong communication, supervision, and management skills required
Working knowledge of and experience with USG-funded program management, policies, regulations and procedures
Strong familiarity with USAID CLA practices
Familiarity with USAID / Nigeria Mission is preferred
Excellent communication, both verbal and written English skills