JOB DESCRIPTION

The International Rescue Committee (IRC) responds to the world”s worst humanitarian crises, helping to restore health, safety, education, economic wellbeing, and power to people devastated by conflict and disaster. Founded in 1933 at the call of Albert Einstein, the IRC is one of the world”s largest international humanitarian non-governmental organizations (INGO), at work in more than 40 countries and 29 U.S. cities helping people to survive, reclaim control of their future and strengthen their communities. A force for humanity, IRC employees deliver lasting impact by restoring safety, dignity and hope to millions. If you”re a solutions-driven, passionate change-maker, come join us in positively impacting the lives of millions of people world-wide for a better future.

Background:

The International Rescue Committee (IRC) responds to the world”s worst humanitarian crises and helps people to survive, recover, and gain control of their future.

We aim to make our programs a model for the highest global standards and to cultivate power and lasting change not just for our clients but for all people affected by humanitarian crises. To achieve that vision, the IRC’s Technical Excellence (TE) group, located within the Crisis Response, Recovery and Development (CRRD) Department, provides technical assistance to IRC’s country program staff and shares what we learn to influence policy and practice.

IRC’s Technical Excellence team is comprised of five teams or sector “Units” which have deep expertise in their respective fields: Education, Economic Wellbeing, Governance, Health, and Violence Prevention and Response, as well as teams which provide measurement and finance/grant management support. Technical teams are also matrixed with a team that focuses on the quality and content of cross-sectoral programming in emergency responses.

IRC’s Technical Excellence teams offer five core services to IRC country programs and the wider organization:

• 1) Program Design: We support country and regional teams to design state of the art programming, incorporating the best available evidence, cost data, and expertise of what has worked elsewhere, with the knowledge that country teams, partner organizations and our clients bring to the table.
• 2) Quality Assurance: We partner with our measurement teams to design and drive the use of indicators to measure progress towards outcomes; we partner with regional and country teams to review program delivery progress and help address implementation challenges and adapt interventions to changed circumstances.
• 3) Business Development: We partner within and outside the IRC to design winning bids and identify winning consortia; we deploy technical expertise in public events and private meetings to position IRC as a partner of choice.
• 4) Research & Learning: We partner with our research lab to design cutting edge research to fill evidence gaps, and with country teams to learn from implementation such that we continuously improve our future design and delivery.
• 5) External Influence: We showcase the IRC’s programs, technical insights and learning to influence and improve the humanitarian sector’s policy and practice.

Health Unit:

IRC’s health programs comprise the largest proportion of its overall program budget and are essential to both IRC emergency response and long-term programming worldwide.

The Health Technical Unit is a dynamic team of more than 50 professionals in Primary Health Care, Sexual and Reproductive Health, Nutrition, Mental and Environmental Health. They provide IRC’s 30 plus country offices and emergency response team with world class technical expertise, capacity building and a cross country view of what works to achieve outcomes in terms of both evidence and practical experience. They also lead focused research agenda, influencing donor policy to support interventions and innovations proven cost effective to achieve positive change in people’s lives.

The IRC’s organizational strategy – Strategy 100 – emphasizes that the IRC can best serve our humanitarian mission by expanding the scale of our impact through our most effective programs, with three enabling goals related to our people, influence and funding. Phase 2 (2026-2028) of Strategy 100

Immunization is one of IRC’s four Impact at Scale strategies, IRC has set the goal of IRC currently supports childhood immunization in 18 countries and implements several strategic immunization projects, including the Reaching Every Child in Humanitarian Settings (REACH) project consortium, led by the IRC. REACH is a $57 Million investment form Gavi, the vaccine alliance that aims to ensure immunization of children in settings where national immunization programs cannot provide services. Our Impact at Scale efforts include leveraging lessons from strategic investments and accelerate progress towards our Immunization I@Scale goal of reaching 1.5 Million children by 2028 living in conflict and crisis affected settings with routine childhood immunization care.

Job Overview:

The Senior Immunization Lead sits within the Health Unit and acts as the organizational leader for Immunization for the Crisis Response, Recovery and Development (CRRD) department. They are responsible for devising and leading strategies to raise the quality, impact, and scale of IRC’s Immunization programming.

The Immunization Lead will ensure the scope, quality and relevance of global technical standards, including the generation and promotion of evidence in their technical area. The Immunization Lead will closely collaborate with Global Practice Lead for Primary Health Care, Regional Leads, PHC Technical Advisors, and Country Program’s Technical Coordinators in promoting technical best practice in CRRD programming. They will facilitate Technical Unit-led and high impact strategic business development by providing excellent technical insights and developing and maintaining strategic relationships and networks. In line with the Health Strategy and IRC’s Impact at Scale priorities, the Immunization Lead will lead strategic planning for the immunization programs. The Immunization Lead reports into the Global Practice Lead for Primary Healthcare and will oversee strategic TU-led and multi-regional projects to ensure successful implementation of these projects, draw on the lessons from projects and additional learning initiatives to generate global evidence and best practice and support countries to adopt those practices.

Major Responsibilities:

Strategy, Program Design and Business Development

• Act as the organizational leader for CRRD in immunization internally and externally
• Lead strategic direction and delivery planning for immunization in line with the organizational global strategy (both Strategy 100 and Health Strategy, and Immunization Impact @ Scale)
• Responsible for identifying global areas of programmatic risk in immunization and elevating issues to Regional Leads and Health Unit leadership.
• Collaborate with other leaders to promote integrated program designs within Health and across all IRC sectors that increase scale and deepen impact.
• Lead Technical Unit led global business development for immunization and support strategic project level proposals.
• Lead coordination with the awards management unit to drive fundraising from Public and Institutional donors and with other fundraising teams to drive fundraising from Private donors to meet Health Unit’s strategic priorities related to immunization.

Immunization within the Context of Conflict and Fragility Implementation Support

• Responsible for drawing on evidence-based best practice to provide technical oversight of IRC’s global technical standards, methodologies, and tools for immunization
• Provide strategic guidance on designing and adapting immunization approaches that effectively reach under-served populations in conflict, displacement, and other fragile contexts, ensuring that systems and delivery models are inclusive and resilient, and designed to reach under-served populations at scale.
• Accountable for the development of a limited number of high-value tools and methodologies to better the implementation of immunization activities in conflict and crisis affected areas, and locations where national immunization systems cannot operate.
• In collaboration with Health Unit’s Monitoring, Evaluation, Technology, Accountability and Learning (METAL) team, for ensure Technical Advisors and Technical Coordinators have the tools and resources that are needed to implement and measure progress on immunization.
• Oversee select Technical Unit-led strategic awards in immunization, working closely with regional Technical Advisors as applicable and the Grant Operations and Analytics Team
• Support Strategic Project leadership, Technical Advisors and Technical Coordinators with thorny technical problems and programmatic decisions, as appropriate

Research, Data, Knowledge Management, and Organizational Learning

• Accountable for establishing and maintaining an organization wide Immunization Working group to drive IRC’s impact at scale priorities for immunization, share updates and create and disseminate best practices on immunization
• Coordinate with Regional Leads, Technical Advisors, Airbel and others to lift program learning for cross-sharing and incorporation into global best practice.
• Guide research and evidence use efforts in immunization, working closely with colleagues and leaders in Airbel, the Health Unit, other technical units, and regional/country colleagues.
• Provide technical inputs to Immunization specific MEAL tools and methodologies, and support data interpretation in learning routines.
• Leverage data and learning to define and monitor pathways for scaling equitable immunization coverage, identifying which approaches effectively extend reach to under-immunized and zero-dose populations

External and Internal Influence, Relationships and Representation

• Act as a key strategic advisor to Policy & Advocacy, Research & Innovation, and External Relations teams on advocacy campaigns and priority policy and practice shifts related to immunization.
• Achieve impact through influence, and drive change within the organization through coordination and management multi-team groups and forums
• Ensure upward management and effective communication of senior leadership to drive organizational priorities and change in strategic actions related to immunization portfolio at the IRC
• Responsible for identification, development, and maintenance of strategic relationships and global partnerships with relevant stakeholders (e.g. donors, UN agencies, NGOs, research and educational institutions, private sector actors) in immunization.
• Represent IRC in external forums as relevant.

Key Working Relationships:

• Position Reports to: Global Practice Lead for Primary Healthcare in the Health Unit, CRRD;
• Additional working relationships include:
• Global practice leads and specialists across different technical areas
• Regional Health Leads in 5 regions, and regional Technical Advisors
• Policy Solutions, Advocacy Influence, and Systems Change Global Teams
• Technical Excellence and CRRD Senior Management Team and Leadership Group; Regional Leadership Teams
• Key External Relationships: INGO counterparts; UN Agencies, Public and Private Donors

Desired Experience and Skills:

• Established or growing recognition as an expert in immunization, at regional or global level, with a minimum of 10+ years of progressive experience of designing, leading and implementing programs with 5+ years in immunization
• Demonstrated experience leading programs in fragile/humanitarian settings and across the humanitarian development nexus.
• Strong track record of driving uptake of evidence-based practice.
• Demonstrated experience in sectoral strategy design and planning.
• Experience with sectoral policy and advocacy efforts and campaigns for change (as relevant)
• Experience with scaling innovation in immunization will be considered a plus.
• Excellent communication, influencing, and storytelling skills.
• Excellent management and leadership skills including coaching, mentoring, and performance management.
• Demonstrated ability to identify and convert business development opportunities for self and staff.
• Demonstrated ability to influence across a wide range of diverse stakeholders internally and externally.
• Demonstrated ability to shape the vision and agenda within the domain area they are working.
• Ability to work, manage, and meet deadlines in a fast-paced environment; outstanding business acumen, critical thinking, problem solving and decision-making skills required.
• Superb inter-personal, written and verbal communication skills with ability to collaborate across countries, cultures, and departments.
• Track record of scaled innovations preferred, ideally including experience working on both digital and analog solutions.
• Fluency in English required; Arabic, French and/or Spanish also strongly preferred.
• Ability to travel globally up to 30% of the time, occasionally on short notice.

Education: Master’s degree in public health and/or related fields or an equivalent professional experience background is required. Sound training on the use of data and research evidence for programmatic decisions and rigorous analytic skills are an advantage.

Compensation: Posted pay ranges apply to US-based candidates. Ranges are based on various factors including the labor market, job type, internal equity, and budget. Exact offers are calibrated by work location, individual candidate experience and skills relative to the defined job requirements.

• US Pay Range: $120K – $140K
• UK Pay Range: £73K – £83K
• Germany Pay Range: £85K – £93K

Standard of Professional Conduct: IRC and IRC workers must adhere to the values and principles outlined in the IRC Way – our Code of Conduct. These are Integrity, Service, Accountability and Equality. In accordance with these values, the IRC operates and enforces policies on Beneficiary Protection from Exploitation and Abuse, Child Safeguarding, Harassment-Free Workplace, Fiscal Integrity, Anti-Retaliation, Combating Trafficking in Persons and several others.

IRC is dedicated to reducing the gender gap in leadership roles and has implemented supportive measures like parental leave, gender-sensitive security protocols, and other benefits to create an inclusive environment for women.

Applicants with varied career paths are welcomed, recognizing that employment gaps don”t define potential. IRC values transferrable skills and is committed to investing in the growth and development of its team members.

The organization strives to offer competitive and equitable Compensation and Benefits programs to attract, motivate, and retain employees who adhere to the IRC Way Standards for Professional Conduct.

IRC is an equal opportunity employer, and we value diversity and inclusion. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, nationality, ethnicity or tribe, gender, age, religion, caste, sexual orientation, differently abled, geographic origin, marital status, veteran status and cultural background (or any other characteristic protected by law). We will ensure that individuals with disabilities are provided reasonable accommodation to participate in the job application or interview process, to perform essential job functions, and to receive other benefits and privileges of employment. Please contact us to request accommodation.

Standard of Professional Conduct: The IRC and the IRC workers must adhere to the values and principles outlined in the IRC Way – our Code of Conduct. These are Integrity, Service, Accountability, and Equality.

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Compensation: Posted pay ranges apply to US-based candidates. Ranges are based on various factors including the labor market, job type, internal equity, and budget. Exact offers are calibrated by work location, individual candidate experience and skills relative to the defined job requirements.

US Benefits: We offer a comprehensive and highly competitive set of benefits. In the US, these include: 10 sick days, 10 US holidays, 20-25 paid time off days depending on role and tenure, medical insurance starting at $143 per month, dental starting at $6.50 per month, and vision starting at $5 per month, FSA for healthcare and commuter costs, a 403b retirement savings plans with immediately vested matching, disability & life insurance, and an Employee Assistance Program which is available to our staff and their families to support counseling and care in times of crisis and mental health struggles.

Equal Opportunity Employer: IRC is an Equal Opportunity Employer. IRC considers all applicants on the basis of merit without regard to race, sex, color, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, disability or any other characteristic protected by applicable law.

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