Science Director, MEL Core

Child Mind Institute•New York, NY

13d•Hybrid

About The Position

We're dedicated to transforming the lives of children and families struggling with mental health and learning disorders by giving them the help they need. We've become the leading independent nonprofit in children's mental health by providing gold-standard evidence-based care, delivering educational resources to millions of families each year, training educators in underserved communities, and developing tomorrow's breakthrough treatments. As part of the Research team, you will report to Director, Strategic Data Initiatives. You will serve as the Scientific Lead for the Monitoring, Evaluation & Learning (MEL) Core, a service and infrastructure core that supports monitoring, evaluation, analytic specification, and data-collection excellence across all CMI programs, including Science, Clinical, Education, School & Community Partnerships, Global programs and product/tool development efforts (HMTK, PPTK, and NGDT assets). You will ensure that MEL delivers institution-wide methodological rigor, maintains shared measurement standards, and provides evaluation support for programs and products without functioning as an independent research lab. MEL exists to allow other groups to succeed by providing frameworks, validation, quality control, and analytic oversight. This is an exempt, full-time, hybrid position located in our NYC headquarters. This position requires a minimum of four (4) days per week in the office, on a schedule determined by your supervisor. The in-office requirement and schedule are subject to change based on the needs of the program and the organization.

Requirements

PhD in psychology, neuroscience, measurement science, public health, evaluation science, or related field.
6+ years of experience in program evaluation, measurement development, or data/analytic oversight.
Demonstrated ability to work across multiple program types (clinical, community, digital, educational).
Strong methodological skills in evaluation design, outcomes measurement, and applied statistics.
Excellent communication skills and comfort working with diverse partners.

Responsibilities

Lead the MEL core as a centralized service unit providing measurement, evaluation, and analytic infrastructure across the Child Mind Institute.
Establish institution-wide standards for measurement validity, reliability, fidelity, and data-use quality.
Ensure MEL Core's services align with needs spanning Science, Clinical Programs, School and Community Partnerships, Global Programs and Product/Engineering teams.
Design and support evaluation plans for school-based, community-based, digital, and clinical programs, including implementation quality, feasibility, and outcome measurement.
Guide product-evaluation frameworks for tools such as HMTK, PPTK, Curious, Mirror, and Kandoo.
Partner with program leadership to identify measurement gaps and build tailored evaluation workflows.
Oversee development of shared measurement instruments and data-collection workflows used throughout the Child Mind Institute.
Work with engineering and data teams to ensure MEL's data infrastructure supports, interoperable, and scalable program evaluation.
Maintain SOPs, documentation, and training to support implementation.
Specify analytic approaches, outcome frameworks, and statistical requirements for diverse program evaluations.
Ensure credible interpretation of findings, consistency of analytic methods, and alignment with the Child Mind Institute standards.
Build templated evaluation packages, dashboards, and reporting structures for repeated institutional use.
Be a scientific and methodological partner to clinical teams, educational program leads, product managers, School & Community staff, and R&E teams.
Collaborate with external partners (schools, community organizations, researchers, agencies) to maintain reasonable evaluation standards.
Mentor MEL staff, including analysts, evaluation specialists, and project managers.
Produce clear, clear written and oral summaries of evaluation outputs for leadership, funders, and program partners.
Contribute to external presentations and publications.
Translate complex evaluation data into actionable guidance for non-technical audiences.