SmartStart is a social franchise transforming early childhood development across South Africa. For over a decade, we've worked to give every child the power to succeed, building a network of community-based early learning programmes that reach children in some of the country's most under-resourced areas. We believe that quality, consistency, and integrity across our value chain are what make this possible at scale.
We're looking for a Senior Manager to lead the design and quality assurance of our programme value chain, the systems, standards, and guardrails that ensure every child in a SmartStart programme receives a consistently high-quality early learning experience, no matter where they are.
This role sits at the heart of programme integrity. You'll be responsible for designing and refining the processes, quality assurance tools, and frontline support systems that hold our network together, from registration and subsidy integration through to coaching standards and field support. If you think in systems, care deeply about getting the details right at scale, and want your work to translate directly into better outcomes for children, this is built for you.
What You'll Be Doing
Value Chain Design:
- Reviewing and strengthening value chain processes to align with SmartStart's child outcome, safeguarding, and programme integrity priorities
- Developing and maintaining guardrails across registration, subsidy integration, incentives, and frontline delivery pathways
- Identifying gaps and inefficiencies and designing improvements that support scalability
- Collaborating with the Digital Transformation team to ensure systems and tools reflect programme intentions.
Quality Assurance & Frontline Support:
- Reviewing, refining, and developing SmartStart's PQA tools, processes, and quality standards
- Strengthening moderation and calibration processes
- Reviewing quality assurance systems for coaching, field support, and remote support functions
- Supporting the Coach & Field Officer Network Manager in refining coaching standards and induction.
Learning, Leadership & Collaboration:
- Co-developing training and support initiatives to equip frontline and remote staff
- Building structured feedback loops to surface emerging risks or quality concerns
- Line managing the Frontline QA Manager
- Driving structured experimentation and improvement initiatives
- Promoting cross-functional collaboration with the Network Support Team.
Requirements
- A Bachelor's degree in Education, Early Childhood Development, Public Administration, Project Management, Social Development, Organisational Development, or a related field is required; a Master's degree is an advantage.
- 7 to 10 years of relevant experience in programme design, quality assurance systems, service delivery optimisation, or value chain/system design, ideally within early learning (ECCE) or social development programmes.
- A systems thinker who can design coherent, scalable processes; strong strategic judgement and the ability to navigate complexity and ambiguity; an experienced project leader comfortable driving change and managing people; someone who instinctively builds in guardrails for programme integrity and child safety; strong analytical and facilitation skills.
- A valid South African driver's licence, fluency in at least one African language in addition to English, and willingness to travel and to comply with SmartStart's child safeguarding requirements are all required for this role.
