Senior Manager, Investigations

About this role

GiveDirectly is looking for an experienced investigator who can establish a function, not just run cases. Concerns and allegations reach us from every program and every country we work in. Each one needs to be triaged and assessed objectively, and to end in appropriate findings and recommendations.

You will manage the newly created Central Intake and Investigations Hub. It is a standalone, independent function that works across the whole organisation. The Hub investigates a range of investigations itself, and supports colleagues elsewhere who handle the rest. You will lead the team and take the most complex investigations yourself.

The bigger initial task is to establish the Hub across the organisation. How it works has been designed and agreed. What it does not yet have is standing. People need to know it exists, bring things to it early, and trust what it concludes. This matters now because GiveDirectly is growing fast. Delivery volume and headcount are both rising, and the way staff concerns are handled needs to grow with them.

Reports to: Director of Safeguarding and Investigations

Manages: Future roles including a Program Manager, Investigations and Program Manager, Intake and Reporting to be recruited once the Senior Manager role has been filled. 

Level: Senior Manager 

Location: Remote, with a requirement to overlap with an East Africa timezone by at least 3 hours, and meaningful overlap with US Eastern hours. We can only employ people in certain places at the moment, so it's worth checking our current list of eligible countries to see if yours is included. If you're based elsewhere, it's not an automatic no, but do flag it early with your recruiter. We are unable to sponsor or take over sponsorship of employment visas in the U.S. or U.K. at this time.

Travel: Occasional. Team meetings and co-locations, plus travel to a country of operation where an investigation requires it. This is not frequent, but it is not predictable either.

What you'll do

• Establish a Central Intake and Investigations Hub across the organisation: Take an agreed design and make it something people use. Build the relationships with the People team, Internal Audit, Safeguarding, HR Managers and Country Directors to ensure concerns are managed effectively. Refine how intake, triage and allocation work in practice as you learn what holds up.
• Lead the most complex investigations yourself. Establish the facts, produce the findings report and make recommendations.
• Set the investigation standard and hold other people to it: Define what a good investigation looks like at GiveDirectly. Provide oversight and support where Internal Audit or Safeguarding lead a staff related matter, and quality assure what comes out of it. Decide what training the organisation needs and set its direction.
• Own the record and what it tells the organisation: Create and hold the system of record for staff matters. Make sure findings and documentation are captured centrally, whoever led the case. Run regular reporting and calibration with the People team, Internal Audit, Safeguarding, Country Directors and ExCo. Sign off on relevant internal and external reporting. 
• Make the function work at scale through the responsible use of technology and data: Shape the design of the case management system and its controls, so that staff investigation records sit only where they should. Find the practical places where automation and AI reduce manual work in triage, documentation and reporting. Build the hub so that growth in concern volume does not simply mean a bigger team.
• Set up and lead the team: Recruit for, manage and develop a Program Manager, Investigations and the Program Manager, Intake and Reporting. Set their priorities, review their work and build their capability.

What success looks like in 12 to 18 months

• Concerns reach the hub as a matter of course, from every country and function.
• People come to the hub early and while a matter is still manageable, because they have found it useful rather than because they were told to.
• Investigations are handled consistently, whoever leads them, and findings reports hold up when they are challenged.
• The hub is understood across the organisation as an independent central resource.
• Internal and External reporting tells its audience something they did not already know about patterns, themes and where risk is concentrating.
• The People team, Internal Audit, Safeguarding and country leadership treat the hub as a resource they rely on rather than a process they comply with.
• Additional hires for the hub are capable, developing, and the function runs day to day without you in the room.

Why this role

• You build it. This is a new function with a mandate and a set of agreed boundaries. How it actually works is largely what you make it.
• Genuine independence. The hub is designed to be objective and to handle complex matters.
• Breadth. You will work across every function and every country GiveDirectly operates in.
• It matters. Getting this right protects staff and recipients, and protects the trust that lets GiveDirectly move a great deal of money to people who need it.

What we are looking for:

How you work matters as much as your investigation skills.

• Trusted by the people you also hold to account. You can tell someone that the handling of a matter was wrong, and still have a strong working relationship with them the following week. People Managers, Internal Audit, Safeguarding and country leadership should want to call you early rather than after things have gone wrong.
• You motivate and influence people who don't report to you. The Hub has no direct line management over Internal Audit, Safeguarding, the People team or country leadership, and it needs all of them to do the work well. You build the relationships and shape best practice.
• Impartial, and visibly so. People may try to influence you. You will be told the answer before you have found it. You hold to process and evidence without turning it into a fight, and you record what you could not establish as carefully as what you could.
• You build what isn't there yet. This function is being shaped by you. You are comfortable where the priorities are clear, but the road to them is not. You would rather design a solution rather than wait to be handed one.
• You work alongside people. Some of the investigative work is done by other teams, and your expertise is what lifts its quality. You get into the detail with colleagues, you are clear about what good looks like and what still needs doing, and you see it through with them.
• Steady with difficult material. You work with content of abuse and misconduct without losing sight of the people involved, and without carrying it in ways that wear you down.

On experience, we are looking for:

• Exceptional alignment with GiveDirectly Values and active demonstration of our core competencies: emotional intelligence, problem solving, project management, follow-through, and fostering inclusivity. 
• 5-7 years of experience leading workplace (misconduct) investigations, including matters involving senior staff and allegations of sexual misconduct. You have run these end to end, from terms of reference to findings report.
• Experience in setting investigation standards and quality assuring other people's work, not only conducting investigations yourself.
• A working understanding of employee relations and of where an investigation ends and an employment decision begins. You have worked alongside other teams without blurring the lines of responsibility.
• Experience across multiple countries and legal contexts, including where local law shapes how we may investigate and how staff must be treated.
• Trauma-informed and survivor-centred practice in how you plan interviews, handle disclosures and support the people involved.
• Has made technology work for investigative teams. You have set up or improved investigative system, built reporting from case data, or introduced tools that changed how a team worked. You have used AI in professional work and can say where it helped, where it did not, and how you handled confidentiality.
• Language Requirement: Professional fluency in English, plus professional working proficiency in one of French, Swahili or Portuguese. Investigative interviews are often confidential and conducted in these languages.

Why work at GiveDirectly?

At GiveDirectly, we work to ensure that you have everything you need to excel in your role and on your team, including:

• A positive and supportive team with opportunities for advancement 
• A demonstrated commitment to helping all staff develop and grow
• A competitive salary, including bonus
• A robust health benefits plan (exact details will vary by country)
• Unlimited PTO (that we encourage staff to take!)

Read more about our ongoing diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts here and about our decision to move our central support teams to remote first here.

Compensation

At GiveDirectly, we strive to pay our employees generously and equitably. We use an accredited third party salary aggregator to calculate what we believe to be competitive pay based on role, location, and cost of living. We also have a no negotiation policy to ensure we are paying staff equitably across roles. Read more about our compensation philosophy here.

Unless otherwise noted, the benefits stipend may be used to cover benefits or taken as additional taxable income.

United States

• Base Salary: $114,660
• Bonus at Target Performance: 10% of base salary
• Annual Benefits Stipend: $21,393

United Kingdom

• Base Salary: £77,600
• Bonus at Target Performance: 10% of base salary
• Annual Benefits Stipend: £2,760

Kenya

• Base Salary: $83,820
• Bonus at Target Performance: 10% of base salary
• Annual Benefits Stipend: $8,454

This role is fully remote, so if you are not based in the US, UK or Kenya, we will share an estimated salary benchmark for the country you are based in during the hiring process. 

 #LI-REMOTE