Senior Outcomes Specialist

World Bank Group•Washington, DC

9d•Onsite

About The Position

The World Bank Group is a unique global partnership of five institutions dedicated to ending extreme poverty and promoting shared prosperity. The Delivery Unit translates corporate priorities and outcome commitments into management routines that support implementation, problem-solving, accountability, and course correction. Its work connects targets, portfolio intelligence, operational evidence, delivery constraints, and leadership decisions. Core instruments include sector and regional stocktakes, target monitoring, delivery analytics, and AI-enabled tools that help teams move from storing data to steering performance. The Senior Economist / Senior Outcomes Specialist will lead major elements of this agenda. The position will devote approximately 50 percent of time to sector-focused stocktakes, 30 percent to managing the substantive work of the High-Level Council on Jobs, and 20 percent to the development, testing, evaluation, and research of AI-enabled outcomes tools. The role requires a combination of development economics, delivery-unit practice, advanced quantitative analysis, technology and product fluency, behavioral science, and senior stakeholder management.

Requirements

Advanced degree, preferably Master's or PhD, in economics, behavioral economics, public policy, public administration, international development, data science, statistics, political economy, business administration, or a related field.
Minimum of 8 years of relevant professional experience in development economics, delivery-unit practice, sector or portfolio analytics, institutional performance, results and outcomes, jobs, technology-enabled delivery, or multilateral advisory work.
Demonstrated experience working with or advising a government delivery unit, center-of-government function, corporate delivery office, implementation unit, or comparable performance-management structure, including the use of routines for problem-solving, escalation, accountability, and course correction.
Strong economist or outcomes-specialist profile, with the ability to connect sector strategy, financing, portfolio composition, implementation, institutional incentives, and measurable outcomes.
Advanced quantitative skills, including demonstrated experience with statistical and econometric analysis, forecasting, scenario analysis, benchmarking, data validation, and the integration of large administrative or operational datasets. Proficiency in at least one analytical language or environment such as Python, R, Stata, or SQL is highly desirable.
Strong technology and product fluency, including experience with AI or machine learning, large language models, natural language processing, predictive analytics, data visualization, digital platforms, product development, user testing, or technology evaluation.
Demonstrated ability to assess the validity and operational usefulness of analytical or AI-enabled tools, including accuracy, error patterns, uncertainty, data provenance, human oversight, responsible AI, and adoption in real workflows.
Knowledge of behavioral science and behavioral economics, including the ability to diagnose how incentives, norms, cognitive biases, attention, trust, risk perception, defaults, friction, and choice architecture shape implementation and decision-making. Experience applying behavioral insights, experimentation, or user-centered research to public policy, institutional reform, or technology adoption is highly desirable.
Demonstrated experience designing or supporting senior-level stocktakes, delivery reviews, portfolio reviews, strategy reviews, or comparable management processes and translating findings into actions, owners, milestones, and follow-up.
Substantive understanding of the jobs agenda and experience supporting high-level councils, commissions, advisory groups, boards, or complex multi-stakeholder initiatives.
Strong understanding of the multilateral development system and the WBG operating model, including country and sector engagement, public- and private-sector instruments, corporate priorities, and development effectiveness debates.
Exceptional writing, synthesis, presentation, facilitation, and stakeholder-management skills, with demonstrated ability to communicate complex analytical and technical issues to senior decision-makers and build alignment across disciplines and institutions.
Demonstrated ability to manage multiple high-visibility workstreams, influence without formal authority, exercise sound judgment, and deliver high-quality work under tight timelines.
Fluency in English required; additional languages are desirable.

Nice To Haves

Proficiency in at least one analytical language or environment such as Python, R, Stata, or SQL is highly desirable.
Experience applying behavioral insights, experimentation, or user-centered research to public policy, institutional reform, or technology adoption is highly desirable.
Additional languages are desirable.

Responsibilities

Lead sector-focused stocktakes and delivery reviews (approximately 50 percent)
Design and manage a systematic program of sector-focused stocktakes that enables senior management to assess whether strategies, portfolios, and implementation pathways are on track to deliver agreed outcomes.
Establish the analytical architecture for each stocktake, including outcome questions, indicators, targets, baselines, benchmarks, portfolio cuts, trajectories, scenarios, and evidence standards.
Integrate operational, financial, portfolio, country, sector, evaluative, and external data to identify performance trends, delivery gaps, implementation bottlenecks, concentration risks, and opportunities to improve impact, scale, additionality, and value for money.
Apply delivery-unit methods to convert evidence into a small number of management choices, agreed actions, accountable owners, milestones, escalation points, and follow-up routines; track whether actions are implemented and whether they change performance.
Diagnose the institutional and behavioral drivers of delivery, including incentives, decision rights, coordination failures, attention constraints, risk perceptions, cognitive biases, and the routines that shape day-to-day implementation choices.
Facilitate structured problem-solving sessions with sector, regional, country, IFC, MIGA, and corporate counterparts; challenge assumptions constructively and build ownership of corrective action.
Prepare concise, decision-oriented briefs, dashboards, presentations, speaking points, decision records, and action trackers for senior management reviews.
Strengthen the stocktake methodology and its links to sector strategies, country programs, the WBG Scorecard, corporate outcome targets, Target Map, results narratives, and other institutional performance systems.
Synthesize cross-sector and cross-regional findings into operational guidance, management recommendations, and reusable institutional knowledge.
Deliver advanced economic, quantitative, and portfolio analytics
Apply economic, econometric, statistical, and mixed-methods analysis to understand the drivers of outcomes and distinguish implementation constraints from design, measurement, or reporting issues.
Develop and interpret benchmarks, progress-to-maturity curves, forecasts, counterfactuals where feasible, scenarios, sensitivity analyses, and risk models that enable management to judge whether delivery is on track.
Use reproducible analytical workflows to clean, link, validate, and analyze large administrative and operational datasets; document assumptions, uncertainty, limitations, and data-quality risks transparently.
Translate complex quantitative findings into clear operational implications and targeted actions for non-technical decision-makers.
Manage the High-Level Council on Jobs (approximately 30 percent)
Manage the Council's work program, translating strategic direction from the Chair, WBG leadership, and members into a focused analytical agenda, sequenced deliverables, and disciplined follow-through.
Coordinate substantive engagement with Council members and their offices, including consultations, agenda development, briefings, meeting preparation, records of discussion, action tracking, and implementation follow-up.
Lead preparation of analytical notes, evidence syntheses, policy options, presentations, speeches, and knowledge products on the quantity and quality of jobs and the pathways through which development interventions support them.
Connect the Council's work to WBG country and sector strategies, private-sector development, the More and Better-Paid Jobs framework, jobs measurement, corporate targets, and operational delivery.
Coordinate contributions across WBG units and external partners, reconcile different institutional perspectives, surface unresolved choices, and sustain momentum between high-level engagements.
Use behavioral insights to strengthen coalition-building, framing, uptake, and follow-through, recognizing how incentives, norms, identity, trust, and decision context influence collective action.
Advance AI-enabled outcomes tools, evaluation, and research (approximately 20 percent)
Support the end-to-end product cycle for AI-enabled outcomes and delivery tools: problem definition, user research, requirements, data and model design, prototyping, testing, evaluation, deployment, adoption, monitoring, and iteration.
Translate operational workflows into well-defined use cases, user stories, technical specifications, evaluation questions, acceptance criteria, and prioritized product backlogs.
Design and conduct structured user testing and product analytics with operational teams and decision-makers, assessing accuracy, usability, relevance, decision usefulness, trust, adoption, workflow integration, equity, and scalability.
Contribute to rigorous validation and evaluation, including benchmark datasets, error analysis, human-in-the-loop protocols, experiments or quasi-experimental approaches where appropriate, and comparisons against existing practice.
Apply behavioral science to product design and adoption by testing how defaults, salience, feedback, friction, choice architecture, and social norms affect use and decision quality.
Work with economists, data scientists, software and product teams, evaluators, operational specialists, and academic partners to refine methods and translate research into usable tools.
Ensure appropriate human oversight and transparency concerning data provenance, uncertainty, limitations, privacy, security, fairness, bias, and responsible AI risks.
Strengthen institutional learning and partnerships
Build working relationships across Global Practices, Regions, IFC, MIGA, OPCS, IEG, ITS, DEC, the Department for Outcomes, and external partners.
Develop methodological notes, case studies, evaluation products, executive briefs, and operational learning materials connecting stocktake findings, delivery practice, the jobs agenda, behavioral insights, and AI-enabled analytics.
Represent the work in technical discussions and selected senior-level engagements, exercising sound judgment and escalating strategic, political, reputational, data, technology, and quality risks as appropriate.