Livelihoods Subject Matter Expert

Integrated Business & Technical Consultants, Inc. (IBTCI), a U.S.-based international development consulting company established in 1987, has worked in over 100 countries and implemented over 300 projects. IBTCI serves government agencies, private-sector companies, and donor organizations. IBTCI specializes in monitoring, evaluation, research, and learning (MERL) and institutional support across sectors including conflict and crisis, democracy and governance, agriculture, economic growth, food security, education, environment, and global health.

Assignment Title: Livelihoods Subject Matter Expert

Department/Location: Remote, with potential travel to Ethiopia, Ukraine, Haiti, the Philippines, and/or Türkiye

Technical Point of Contact: Team Leader

Type: Consultant, Short-term / Intermittent

Classification: Consultancy

Overview: IBTCI is seeking a senior Livelihoods Subject Matter Expert to support development and testing of a standardized livelihoods MEAL framework and evaluations of 13 diverse projects. The portfolio includes household production and farming, producer groups and value-add enterprises, market linkages and enterprise development, women's livelihoods, food systems, and mixed livelihoods-nutrition interventions. The expert will ensure that the Theory of Change, project logic models, indicators, instruments, analyses, and recommendations reflect sound sector practice and the realities of varied country and implementation contexts.

Essential Duties/Tasks and Responsibilities:

• Provide sectoral leadership across agriculture, household production, food security and resilience, producer organizations, value chains, market access, entrepreneurship, employment, women's economic empowerment, and related livelihoods programming.
• Contribute to stakeholder interviews and lead the technical articulation of livelihood pathways, assumptions, risks, contextual factors, and intended short- and long-term outcomes in the portfolio Theory of Change.
• Support development of a project-level logic-model framework that can be applied consistently across diverse livelihoods projects without obscuring important sector and context differences.
• Identify and define common core livelihood outcomes and indicators, plus optional indicator modules suitable for different project types and levels of maturity.
• Contribute to the pre-project vetting toolset, including assessment of needs analysis, target-population definition, implementer positioning, intervention logic, prerequisites, service design, and feasibility.
• Contribute to a monitoring checklist that enables to verify target reach, implementation fidelity, activities, outputs, service delivery, support functions, and operational risks.
• Design and review sector-specific content for short- and long-term outcome surveys, interview and focus-group guides, site observation tools, and project scorecards.
• Review project documents, implementing-organization monitoring systems, theories of change, results frameworks, and technical data for plausibility and alignment with recognized livelihoods practice.
• Support interpretation of findings, contribution and attribution analysis, cross-project comparison, identification of unintended outcomes, and formulation of feasible recommendations.
• Provide outcome and beneficiary-value inputs to cost-effectiveness and value-for-money analysis.
• Draft and review technical sections of evaluation plans, scorecards, evaluation reports, learning and executive-summary slide decks, and presentations.
• Participate in stakeholder validation and learning sessions and explain sector findings clearly to technical and nontechnical audiences.

Minimum Qualifications:

• At least 10 years of professional experience in livelihoods, economic strengthening, agriculture, food security, resilience, market systems, enterprise development, employment, or related humanitarian/development programming.
• Demonstrated experience designing or reviewing livelihoods projects, Theories of Change, logic models, results frameworks, indicators, and monitoring or evaluation systems.
• Experience contributing to evaluations, assessments, applied research, or learning exercises, including design of data-collection instruments and interpretation of qualitative and quantitative evidence.
• Strong understanding of livelihood pathways for household production, producer groups, value-add enterprises, market linkage, income generation, and women's economic empowerment.
• Experience working with international NGOs, local organizations, governments, producer organizations, and communities.
• Regional or country experience relevant to at least one target context, or substantial comparable experience in humanitarian, fragile, conflict-affected, or climate-vulnerable settings.
• Ability to synthesize complex sector evidence into clear, actionable findings and recommendations.
• Excellent written and oral communication skills in English.

Education: Master's degree or higher in agricultural economics, economics, international development, food security, rural development, business or enterprise development, public policy, social sciences, or another relevant field.

Work environment: This position is primarily remote and requires collaboration with multidisciplinary and country teams across time zones.

Physical Requirements: This position requires the ability to speak, hear, see, use a computer or mobile device, and lift small objects up to 20 lbs. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable qualified individuals with disabilities to perform essential functions.

Supervisory Responsibility: This position does not have supervisory responsibility.

Travel: International travel may be required.

Please note this job description is not designed to cover or contain a comprehensive listing of activities, duties, or responsibilities required for this assignment. Duties, responsibilities, and activities may change at any time with or without notice.