Manager, New Program Development

Evidence Action•Washington, DC

2d•Hybrid

About The Position

Evidence Action is seeking a Manager for its New Program Development team. This role will lead the development of new health programs within the organization's Accelerator, which functions as a venture-style pipeline for identifying and scaling promising health interventions. The Manager will be responsible for driving interventions from research insights to proven, fundable programs ready for scale, or making decisions to discontinue them. The ideal candidate will possess strong analytical skills to critically assess evidence and model impact, combined with the drive to build partnerships and translate ideas into real-world programs. This position offers the opportunity to work flexibly with purpose on a team dedicated to delivering measurable change in global health.

Requirements

5+ years of experience in quantitative social science, program management, international development, or global health in a cross-country setting.
Ability to critically read primary research and study design, synthesize large and conflicting evidence bases, and form an honest view of what the evidence supports.
Experience building or rigorously interpreting cost-effectiveness, epidemiological, or statistical models, and reasoning clearly about assumptions, sensitivity, and uncertainty.
Ability to design lean learning activities that target uncertainty blocking a decision and deliver them on a timeline.
Proven ability to move things forward amid uncertainty, building, prototyping, and unblocking rather than waiting for perfect information.
Skill in building trust and aligning internal teams and external partners (researchers, implementers, government, and donors) across cultures and sectors.
Capacity to make complex technical findings clear and decision-useful for non-technical audiences, in writing and live.
Ability to manage multiple workstreams simultaneously, sequence tasks effectively, and make defensible decisions about resource allocation.
A proactive approach to identifying potential flaws in ideas and welcoming scrutiny of one's own work.

Responsibilities

Own a portfolio of pipeline interventions from beginning to end.
Drive promising candidate programs through the Accelerator's stage-gate process, making decisions on advancement, reshaping, or exiting.
Critically assess the evidence base for each intervention, including effect sizes, quality, external validity, variability, negative findings, and gaps.
Build and pressure-test cost-effectiveness analyses (CEAs) in partnership with the Cost-Effectiveness team, explicitly considering assumptions, sensitivity, and uncertainty.
Design and execute lean, rigorous field activities such as scoping and formative research, in collaboration with the MLE team, to inform decisions.
Craft compelling, evidence-grounded investment cases and align stakeholders, including researchers, implementers, governments, and donors.
Collaborate with internal teams such as Growth, Program, and Country Teams to build resourcing, funding, and manage partnerships.
Represent Evidence Action in external conversations with partners, sourcing new ideas and partnerships.
Strengthen the Accelerator's methods and quality bar, and mentor analysts and interns.