Associate Research & Policy Manager at Innovation for Poverty Action (IPA)

Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) is a research and policy nonprofit that discovers and promotes effective solutions to global poverty problems. IPA brings together researchers and decision-makers to design, rigorously evaluate, and refine these solutions and their applications, ensuring that the evidence created is used to improve the lives of the world’s poor. In recent decades, trillions of dollars have been spent on programs designed to reduce global poverty, but clear evidence of which programs succeed is rare, and when evidence does exist, decision-makers often do not know about it. IPA exists to bring together leading researchers and these decision-makers to ensure that the evidence we create leads to a tangible impact on the world. Since its founding in 2002, IPA has worked with over 600 leading academics to conduct over 900 evaluations in 52 countries. This research has informed hundreds of successful programs that now impact millions of individuals worldwide.

We are recruiting suitable candidates to fill the position below:

Job Title: Associate Research & Policy Manager

Requisition ID: 1725
Location: Abuja
Employment Type: Full-time
Reports to: Senior Policy & Embedded Lab Manager

Job Summary

• We are seeking an Associate Research & Policy Manager to collaborate closely with our partner (a telecommunication regulator) to strengthen its capacity to use evidence to improve its consumer protection programs and policies. 
• We are working to set up an “Embedded Lab” to enable the government partner to use data and rigorous research to design, test, and scale evidence-based programs and policies. 
• The Associate Research & Policy Manager will be embedded within the partner’s office and take a leading role in driving the Lab’s engagement with regulatory partners.
• They will focus specifically on identifying research and policy opportunities, designing the lab’s strategies to influence national-level policy processes, provide support in strengthening Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEL) capacity development, and working with sector counterparts to build buy-in for a culture of evidence generation and use.
• The Associate & Research & Policy Manager will have a strong policy background and ideally experience working with partners to use evidence to inform policy and programming. 
• This role will also require advanced data analytics skills, from handling administrative datasets to generating rigorous, evidence-based insights. 
• We particularly encourage Nigerian nationals to apply. 
• The Associate Research & Policy Manager will report to the Senior Manager, Policy and Consumer Protection Embedded Lab, with dotted line oversight from the Global Policy team and the Financial Inclusion Program (FIP).

Responsibilities
Workplan management and reporting 10%:

• Collaborate with the partner’s team to develop a shared work plan, ensuring alignment with project goals and effective implementation.
• Support with other project management tasks, including progress tracking, financial oversight , and internal and donor reporting.

Stakeholder management 20%:

• Cultivate relationships with key local top-level decision-makers and ensure the project has their sustained buy-in and input.
• Coordinate project activities alongside technical staff from the partner in a learning-by-doing approach, fostering active engagement throughout the process.
• Promote engagement to raise awareness of the lab and encourage collaborative efforts for collective impact.

Generating relevant evidence 30%:

• Lead the co-creation of a policy-driven research agenda for the lab, and facilitate the development of research projects to respond to the agenda
• Facilitate engagement with local and international academics to provide input into the lab’ s policy-driven research agenda
• Develop opportunities to leverage administrative data for research, connecting local and international researchers to pursue these openings.
• Manage research projects end to end: define research objectives and questions, develop protocols, supervise data collection and analysis, and ensure quality control at all stages.
• Provide hands-on support to collect, clean, structure, and analyze large-scale administrative or survey data.
• Design and deliver hands-on workshops covering data processing (e.g., merging, cleaning, wrangling) and analysis (e.g., descriptive statistics, dashboards, advanced techniques), using tools like Excel, Stata, R, or Python.
• Establish standard operating procedures and documentation protocols so partner staff can independently maintain and update data processes over time.

Sharing evidence to inform program design and delivery 20%:

• Share existing evidence to inform partner’s program design and delivery. 
• Develop user-friendly data dashboards, visualizations, or summaries for top-level decision-makers, ensuring that complex results are accessible and directly inform program design.
• Produce policy briefs on key policy questions.
• Work together with the partner , the project team, sector team, global policy and communications teams to lead and/or participate in strategic events for policy purposes, including but not limited to summits, conferences, workshops, technical working groups, and round tables.
• In collaboration with researchers and in support of the country director, represent IPA locally in policy conversations and at events.

 Exploring program institutionalization 20%:

• Engage with the partner’s leadership to explore opportunities to institutionalize the lab for sustainability.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s or Master’s Degree in international public policy, social science, economics, statistics, or related fields and 3-7 years of relevant work experience. Exceptions may be made for excellent candidates who do not meet this criterion.
• Proficiency in statistical software (Stata, R, or Python) for data cleaning, analysis, and visualization.
• Experience working with large administrative datasets, building dashboards, or automating data pipelines
• Hands-on experience supporting Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning systems.
• Proven experience managing multiple research projects simultaneously, including timelines, deliverables, and budgets, preferably in a development or policy context.
• Robust understanding of both quantitative and qualitative research methods.
• Demonstrated ability to coach and train others in statistics, data analysis or MEL methodologies.
• Excellent written and oral communication skills, including the ability to present information in a structured, non-technical, and insightful way.
• Experience working in the telecommunications sector, ideally in close interaction with government stakeholders.
• Superior analytical, quantitative, and conceptual thinking skills.
• Willingness to be a team player and identify connections between work streams.
• Cultural and political sensitivity and demonstrated ability to work successfully with diverse constituencies.
• Passion for making data-driven decision-making a reality in the development sector.

 Preferred 

• Experience working with government.

Application Closing Date
31st March, 2025.

How to Apply
Interested and qualified candidates should:
Click here to apply online