Research Manager
Job Description
OVERVIEW
Building Tomorrow, an international nonprofit dedicated to providing literacy and numeracy for all children, is seeking a dynamic, creative, and committed Research Manager to strengthen and expand its research portfolio. Reporting to the Chief Education Officer, the Research Manager will combine strong project management skills with expertise in quantitative and qualitative research, enabling them to work across teams and deliver high-impact insights.
THE ORGANIZATION
Started in 2006, Building Tomorrow supports community-powered learning in rural areas. Through over 650 Building Tomorrow Fellows and over 20,000 Community Education Volunteers, Building Tomorrow has enrolled over 216,000 out-of-school children and reached more than 850,000 learners with our signature Roots to Rise (R2R) literacy and numeracy camps. Between offices in the USA, Uganda, and Rwanda, Building Tomorrow has a full-time staff of over 350, just eight of whom work outside East Africa. Building Tomorrow has received funding and recognition for its innovative work from Echoing Green, Big Bang Philanthropy, Clinton Global Initiative, US Library of Congress and Forbes Magazine. More information can be found online at: www.buildingtomorrow.org.
POSITION HIGHLIGHTS
The Research Manager will work closely with the MEL and Pedagogy teams to coordinate, support, and grow a robust portfolio of research at Building Tomorrow. This role will also collaborate with the Programs Team to address research questions and ensure evidence informs decision-making.
The Research Manager will:
- Serve as the coordinator and lead for research teams assembled around specific projects (e.g., literacy pilots, program evaluations). In this capacity, they will supervise and support staff members assigned to research projects, ensuring tasks are organized and capacity is built across teams.
- Take on research-related responsibilities such as questionnaire design, training enumerators, field monitoring, and data analysis.
- Collaborate with external research teams and when needed, liaison with external enumerators.
- Be well-versed in quantitative and qualitative methods, implementation research, and able to present findings to diverse audiences including academics, practitioners, and policymakers.
This position is full-time and candidates should be located in East Africa. This position will require up to 50% international and domestic (Uganda/Rwanda) travel. This position reports to the Chief Education Officer.
KEY RESPONSIBILITIES OF THE POSITION INCLUDE
Research Strategy and Partnerships
- Contribute to setting the organizational research agenda, ensuring alignment with BT’s priorities and sector needs
- Partner with Strategic Partnerships team to identify research opportunities and develop proposals
- Collaborate across teams to generate research ideas based on global evidence, leadership priorities, and implementation questions
- Digest, synthesize and share key external research findings and emerging best practices from the broader education research sector, supporting the BT team to reflect on growth areas. As well as supporting the Strategic Partnerships team to cite quality data about the challenges we face and how we address those solutions.
- In partnership with the External Relations Team, help identify and lead collaborative research projects with government, research, and implementation partners
Project Management
- Develop and implement general research protocols, in collaboration with the Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning team (MEL) and external partners where appropriate
- Develop budgets for internal and external research projects in partnership with the Finance Team
- Coordinate and monitor research projects to ensure accountability across all stages
- Design and apply project management frameworks and guidelines
- Ensure ethical and legal compliance
- Develop tools needed for monitoring and data collection of research
- Serve as project manager on selected research grants, overseeing field reporting, grant reporting, and project dissemination
Data Analysis, Presentation, and Quality Control
- Cleaning, analysis, interpretation, and visualization of research data
- Lead conversations with internal teams on using research findings for decision-making
- Ensure compliance with research protocols, data collection standards, and quality assurance across all research projects.
- Conduct further analysis of existing research datasets to generate new insights and/or recommendations for further study, collaborating with the MEL team as needed.
- Develop templates and training for internal reports and presentations
Capacity Building and Technical Work
- In collaboration with MEL and the Training Manager, co-design and deliver internal research training (e.g., supporting external research teams, analyzing and interpreting data, leading internal research queries) that complement existing MEL-led capacity-building efforts.
- Mentor and support ad-hoc research teams, typically composed of MEL, Pedagogy, and field staff to strengthen research design, implementation, and learning.
- Collaborate with MEL to support program teams in interpreting data to identify potential areas of study
- Collaborate with the Innovation Team to design and support simple research on BT’s internal systems and processes
- Guide the selection of appropriate research methodologies for internal studies and build team capacity on emerging approaches (e.g., difference-in-difference, positive/negative deviance), while aligning with external requirements when methodologies are grant-driven.
- Work with field teams and MEL to help determine the best ways to share research findings with teachers, school leaders and local government.
- Leverage data and insights generated by MEL and Programs (e.g., summary sheets from camps/schools) to identify research opportunities and inform future studies.
Dissemination of Findings, Stakeholder Engagement, and Partnership Building
- Facilitate cross-team communication to ensure that findings from research are shared, their implications understood, and adaptations tracked
- Prepare reports and presentations on research to be shared internally so that Building Tomorrow can make better data informed decisions
- Seek opportunities for Building Tomorrow to share findings externally– conferences, publications, communities of practice, etc.
- Lead the dissemination of research findings through conferences, publications, communities of practice, and other external platforms, ensuring Building Tomorrow’s research contributes to the broader education sector.
- Support team members who have received invitations to share findings externally to prepare and practice their presentations
- Work with the Strategic Partnerships Team to help develop materials to be shared with external partners, in grant reports and applications
- Connect Building Tomorrow with opportunities to be a part of or cited in publications or policy decisions
- Work with Government and External Relations team to be part of meetings and co-design with central and local government
- Build relationship through the Research and Implementation Advisory Group, as well as intentionally seeking local opportunities, such universities and implementing organisations
MUST HAVES
- Master’s or PhD in Economics, Statistics, Education, Public Policy, Sociology, or another relevant field.
- At least 5 years of experience in research and project management, ideally in the context of Sub-Saharan Africa
- Demonstrated experience in publishing and presenting research
- Experience with research using causal inference methods and also large-scale data analysis.
- Proficiency with at least one data analysis (e.g., Stata, R, SPSS, Python) and one visualization tool (e.g., Tableau, Power BI).
- Fluency in the relevance and use of empirical evidence to know what works best to achieve meaningful literacy, numeracy, and social and emotional learning results.
- Strong leadership, interpersonal and organizational skills
- The ability to work across teams, country offices and with external academic and technical partners
- Willingness and ability to travel significantly in sub-Saharan Africa, and occasionally outside the continent.
- Experience working with foundational learning and/or NGOs preferred.
- First-rate communication skills (in English), both oral and written, with a keen attention to detail, including the ability to communicate complex ideas in a clear and compelling manner.
- Applicants should speak additional languages that are used in Uganda and Rwanda, such as Kinyarwanda or Luganda
WE WANT YOU TO APPLY IF…
- Have an unshakeable passion for education equality, believing access to an inclusive, quality education is a basic human right.
- Possess creative ingenuity, being progressive in your thinking and approaching challenges old and new. You are intrapreneurial and unafraid to pilot new ideas.
- Be relentlessly determined, refusing to accept the status quo, persistently striving to create new opportunities to reach more children, allowing them to reach their maximum potential.
- Believe in collaborative engagement. You believe more can be achieved together than alone, believe in the power of cultivating relationships, and see everyone as an equal partner.
WHAT WE OFFER
The compensation package includes benefits and will be commensurate with experience.
If someone referred you to apply for this position, please provide his or her name in your cover letter.
Applications will be accepted on a rolling basis until the position is filled.
Building Tomorrow is an Equal Employment Opportunity employer. Building Tomorrow maintains a dedication to promoting gender equity, diversity, multiculturalism, and inclusion, and recruits, employs, trains, compensates, and promotes regardless of protected characteristics. Building Tomorrow will not tolerate illegal discrimination or harassment under any applicable law in any jurisdiction where it operates.
