Senior Learning and Experiments Manager

Purpose

The Senior Learning and Experiments Manager will play a critical role in strengthening SmartStart’s capacity for learning, adaptive management, and programme improvement. This role will lead the design and implementation of developmental evaluations and rapid experiments to enhance programme effectiveness and responsiveness. The Senior Learning and Experiments Manager will synthesise insights to support leadership and staff in sense-making and decision-making and foster a culture of continuous learning and innovation across SmartStart and its network.

The Senior Learning and Experiments Manager is responsible for designing and facilitating reflective practices, learning loops, and adaptive management processes to drive programme improvements and strategic coherence. This role will enable SmartStart to become a more adaptive, data-informed organisation, co-creating the conditions for network-wide rapid learning and collective intelligence.

·        Together with the SDI team head, drive the design and execution of developmental evaluations and nimble experiments to improve effectiveness and responsiveness.

·        Develop and implement fit-for-purpose monitoring and evaluation frameworks that align with SmartStart’s strategic goals and learning priorities.

·        Establish and refine key performance indicators (KPIs) and feedback mechanisms to track programme progress and impact.

·        Support teams to design and implement rapid-cycle learning and experimentation processes to test and adapt programme models.

·        Ensure that evaluation findings and experimental insights are synthesised into actionable recommendations.

·        Together with the SDI team head, drive the development and management of monitoring frameworks and tools to track programme performance and network-wide impact.

·        Enhance the use of data dashboards and performance reports to support real-time decision-making.

·        Enable data collection, analysis, and interpretation across SmartStart’s network. 

·        Build capacity across teams to engage with performance data, identify gaps, and take corrective action.

·        Facilitate alignment between MERL frameworks and funder expectations, reporting needs, and organizational strategy.

·        Synthesise data and insights to support leadership in sense-making, decision-making, and action-taking.

·        Enable teams to apply systems thinking approaches to understand complex programme dynamics and improve strategic alignment.

·        Promote coherence and alignment between monitoring, evaluation, learning, and strategy, seeking to ensure that SmartStarts theory of change is embedded into how decisions are made.

·        Collaborate with the Data, Sense-Making, and Insights Team to strengthen data governance, integrity, and accessibility.

·        Support the development of data feedback loops that enable real-time learning and adaptation.

·        Build team and partner capacity to engage with and interpret data for programme improvement and strategic decision-making.

·        Ensure that MERL data is integrated into organizational decision-making and strategy development.

·        Co-create the conditions for network-wide rapid learning, iterative experimentation, and collective intelligence.

·        Drive the use of insights from MERL activities to inform programme design, scaling decisions, and innovation.

·        Develop feedback mechanisms to ensure that insights from experiments and evaluations are used to improve programme models.

·        Foster a culture of disciplined innovation and structured experimentation across the network.

·        Develop and implement mechanisms for capturing and sharing lessons learned across the organization and network.

·        Facilitate learning exchanges and peer-to-peer knowledge-sharing to build collective intelligence.

·        Collaboration: Work closely with the Innovation & Learning Portfolio, Programme Teams, and Development & Partnerships to align MERL activities with strategic priorities.

·        Capacity Building: Develop and deliver training on MERL methodologies, adaptive management, and data interpretation.

·        Ethics and Integrity: Ensure that MERL activities adhere to data governance, ethical standards, and regulatory requirements.

·        Change Management: Support teams and partners in adopting MERL tools, frameworks, and practices.

TBD over time, broad areas would include -

·        Improved Evaluation and Learning: Increased use of evaluation findings and rapid experiment results to inform decision-making, strategy and successful adoption of programme innovations.

·        Enhanced Organizational Learning: Greater engagement in reflective practices, learning loops, and adaptive management.

·        Strategic Decision-Making: Higher integration of data-driven insights into programme adaptation and strategic planning.

·        Stronger Network Learning: Increased peer-to-peer learning, knowledge-sharing, and collective problem-solving across the network.

Qualifications and Experience

·        Minimum master’s degree or equivalent in Monitoring & Evaluation, Social Sciences, Public Policy, or a related field.

·        At least 5 years of experience in MERL, developmental evaluation, and/or adaptive management in complex organizational contexts.

·        Experience conducting experiments/studies/evaluations (e.g. developmental evaluations, rapid-cycle experiments etc.)

·        Excellent English writing skills, with a proven ability to synthesise complex data into actionable insights for strategic decision-making.

·        Experience working with social impact organisations, programmes, or networks.

·        Advantageous: Fluency in one or more African languages.

Specific Knowledge and Skills

·        Expertise in developmental evaluation, adaptive management, and rapid-cycle learning.

·        Strong analytical and synthesis skills, with the ability to generate insights from complex data.

·        Knowledge of monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL) frameworks and tools.

·        Capacity to design and facilitate reflective practices, learning loops, and adaptive strategies.

·        Familiarity with systems thinking and strategic coherence approaches.

·        Strong stakeholder engagement and capacity-building skills.

·        Advantageous: Proficiency with data analysis and visualization tools (e.g., Power BI) and Microsoft Dynamics 365 and/or similar CRM software.

General Knowledge & Understanding and/or Skills & Abilities 

Behaving & Learning 

• Behaving trustworthily: being reliable, accepting, open, congruent (i.e.. integrity) 
  

• Learning curiously, incl. learning how by doing differently 
  

o   Clear curiosity (asking questions, questioning assumptions, doing differently, trying things) 

o   Track record of learning 

o   Openness to & appetite for feedback 

• Familiarity with and curiosity about 
  

o   Societal scale 

o   Systems doing-and-thinking 

o   Design thinking & iterative designing 

o   Driving to succeed 

• Commitment to SmartStart’s purpose and social justice internationally 
  

• Advantageous: experience in, or familiarity with, early learning, ECD, education, public health, etc. 
  

Relating & Adapting 

• Building trusting relationships 
  

• Playing role(s)-across-contexts adaptively 
  

• Creating the conditions for and facilitating people’s thinking diversely and doing good work together 
  

• Co-building & communicating coherence unendingly 
  

• Reprioritizing continually 
  

Developing Self