Senior Research Officer

Job Description

The International Rescue Committee (IRC), one of the world’s largest humanitarian agencies, provides relief, rehabilitation, and post-conflict reconstruction support to victims of natural disaster, oppression, and violent conflict in 42 countries. Since 1992, the IRC has provided life-saving services to refugees and vulnerable local communities in Kenya. In Kenya, the IRC implements programs in the areas of integrated primary health care (including nutrition and HIV/AIDS); economic recovery and livelihoods; protection of rights; and women’s protection and empowerment in refugees’ camps as well as northern Kenya and Nairobi.

Through its Economic Recovery and Development (ERD) unit, the IRC is helping vulnerable refugees and host community members in Nairobi build their income and assets.

The Re:Build program is funded by the IKEA Foundation and will be implemented in Kampala and Nairobi. The IRC is the Lead Partner and will coordinate a consortium of local and international partners to deliver the program. Re:Build seeks for urban refugees and vulnerable host residents to achieve economic self-reliance and benefit from strengthened urban economic, regulatory, and social environments. Re:Build will aim to enable change at varying levels, from better access to livelihood opportunities and inclusive services within communities to improved refugee-related policies and more targeted and effective service delivery from national, regional, and global actors. Key features of Re:Build’s approach include flexible funding, adaptive design and knowledge, and evidence generation.

Job Overview/Summary:

The Re:Build Senior Research Officer in coordination with the Re:Build Researcher will play a critical role in the Re:Build project. The Re:Build Senior Research Officer will be specifically responsible for: (i) ensuring administrative and logistical aspects of the Re:Build research program are carried out successfully; and (2) supporting the Re:Build Researcher in ensuring the studies adhere to IRC research quality standards. The Snr. Research Officer position will be responsible for leading the implementation of the research pilots, RCT and will work closely with the Re:Build Kenya program team, the M&E staff and the Principal Investigators heading the research team. This position requires strong project/research management/coordination skills, excellent interpersonal and communication skills and prior experience working with quantitative and qualitative data.

Major Responsibilities:

- Responsible for all in-country activities to ensure that research activities under Re:Build run smoothly. - Work closely with research and program teams at headquarters and in field programs to coordinate logistics and administration of research studies under the direction of the Re:Build Researcher. - Work closely with the Business Training officers to support mentorship linkage and follow up to ensure Micro-enterprise clients receive services, and that their data is captured accurately in the Re:Build database. - Assist in data collection training, piloting, and implementation as needed, including possible programming of quantitative software for data collection. - Provide coordination support for dissemination events & publications. - Adhere to research standards, including ethical approval protocols and other IRC research standards. - Ability to take initiative to implement administrative and logistical tasks needed within research projects with oversight from Re:Build researcher. - Under direction of the Re:Build researcher and investigators, support the implementation of quantitative and qualitative fieldwork, often with refugees and selected host or vulnerable people, in different locations and contexts across the selected neighborhoods in Nairobi. This includes identification of clients. - Carrying out desktop research, using a range of methods and sources of data on livelihoods, social cohesion, and other topics related to the Re:Build research focus. - Making sure our work is participatory and supporting coordination with many stakeholders, clients, government agencies as well as development partners including working with peer researchers. - Work closely with program implementation team to map implementation activities and coordinate research timeline and work plan with the program implementation timeline and work plan - Review research instruments and tools and provide feedback. Secure input and approval on research instruments from all meaningful stakeholders in the IRC Kenya office - Support in preparing and following up on applications for research ethics permits/approvals - Responsible for leading research instrument translation and supporting necessary pre-testing of the instrument - Responsible for reviewing research outputs and providing feedback and securing input from all meaningful stakeholders in the IRC Kenya office. - Working closely with the M&E Officer to export necessary data from the M&E system and share with various research partners as needed for the different projects - Responsible for sharing weekly internal progress reports with the project management and research teams on the various research projects and flagging any challenges with research activities. Provide support on the ground to troubleshoot and resolve research related challenges and bringing up issues to the research team, as necessary - Responsible for providing input into donor reports, as needed - Provide support to Re:Build implementation team, as necessary, to facilitate research activities - Work closely with the ERD,grants and finance teams to ensure that the client payments and budgets are well monitored - Manage research assistants, who support Rebuild research activities.

Qualifications

- University degree and post graduate training in Statistics, Social Sciences, Economics, or related field is required. - Min five years of research project experience at a field research management or analyst position. - Experience supporting coordination of data collection and analysis, including experience with at least two survey programming languages. - Experience with conducting qualitative research especially with minority or disadvantaged persons. - Strong written communication skills. - Excellent command of English, both spoken and written. - Excellent management and organizational skills, including attention to detail. - Demonstrated ability to coordinate work effectively over email and phone. - Flexible, self-motivating and team player. - Demonstrated ability to manage relationships with stakeholders (Principal Investigators and partner organizations) - Demonstrated commitment to IRC’s high standards of data quality.

Standards of Professional Conduct: The IRC and IRC workers must adhere to the values and principles outlined in the IRC Way – Code of Conduct. These are Integrity, Service, Accountability and Equality. In accordance with these values, the IRC operates and enforces policies on Beneficiary Protection from Exploitation and Abuse, Child Safeguarding, Harassment-Free Workplace, Fiscal Integrity, Anti-Retaliation, Combating Trafficking in Persons and several others.

Gender Equality: IRC is committed to narrowing the gender gap in leadership positions. We offer benefits that provide an enabling environment for women to participate in our workforce including parental leave, gender-sensitive security protocols and other supportive benefits and allowance.

Kenyan nationals are encouraged to apply. International allowances are not available for this position. Salary and employee benefits are compliant to the Kenyan NGO Sector.

IRC is an Equal Opportunity Employer and considers all applicants on the basis of merit without regard to race, sex, color, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status or disability.

Disclaimer:

Please take note that International Rescue Committee (IRC) does not ask for any fees in connection with its recruitment processes.