Senior Technical Lead Health Employment

Amref Health Africa was founded in 1957 and has since grown to become the largest African-based international health development organisation; currently implementing more than 180 programs, reaching more than 40 million people across 35 African countries; and a staff complement of over 2,000. Headquartered in Nairobi, Kenya, Amref Health Africa has offices in ten countries in Africa – Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Guinea (Conakry), Kenya, Malawi, Senegal, South Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia. An additional eleven advocacy and fundraising offices are located in Europe and North America. 

Amref Health Africa is driven by its vision of ‘Lasting health change in Africa’ and its mission ‘To catalyze and drive community-led and people-centred health systems while addressing social determinants of health’. We believe that the power to transform Africa's health lies within its communities, and therefore strive to ensure that health systems are not only functional but that communities are empowered to hold these systems accountable for the delivery of quality and affordable health care.

ABOUT THE PROGRAMME

Africa’s population is growing rapidly, with young people forming an increasing share of the workforce. Yet job creation has not kept pace, leaving millions—particularly young women—without access to stable, dignified livelihoods due to barriers such as limited education, social norms, and unpaid care responsibilities.

At the same time, Africa’s health sector is expanding and presents a powerful opportunity to create sustainable livelihood pathways. This programme focuses on transforming community-based health work into respected, viable career pathways for young people, especially women. Starting in Kenya, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, and Malawi, the programme aims to professionalize community health workers, create dignified employment, and strengthen systems—contributing to both youth livelihoods and healthier communities.

POSITION SUMMARY

The Health Employment Lead provides strategic and operational leadership for the Health Employment pillar within the Community Health Workers (CHW) programme in Ethiopia. The role is responsible for advancing initiatives that strengthen health workforce development and expand dignified employment pathways within the community health sector.

Working closely with the country programme leadership, universities, government partners, and implementing partners, this role leads initiatives that strengthen pre-service and degree-level health workforce training, supports alignment between workforce education and labour market needs, and oversees operational systems that enable effective programme delivery. The role also ensures that partnerships with academic institutions and stakeholders contribute meaningfully to programme objectives and health system strengthening.

This role requires a collaborative and entrepreneurial leader who combines strong programme management capability with the ability to build partnerships across the education, health, and employment ecosystems. The successful candidate demonstrates initiative, practical problem-solving, and the ability to translate complex workforce development initiatives into coordinated programme action within dynamic implementation environments.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

1. Health Employment Project Leadership
   • Lead the implementation and coordination of the Health Employment pillar within the Community Health Programme in Ethiopia.
   • Translate programme strategy into operational plans, activities, and partnerships that strengthen health workforce development and employment pathways.
   • Ensure programme activities align with national health workforce priorities and programme objectives.
   • Coordinate all sub-grantees in the Health Employment programme and ensure disciplined execution while encouraging practical innovation, development of Proof of Concept(s), and refining delivery approaches for scalability.
   • Ensure programme documentation and activity tracking support effective oversight.
2. Stakeholder Engagement (Universities and Accredited Training Institutions)
   • Lead engagement with universities and higher education institutions involved in pre-service and degree-level health workforce training.
   • Provide oversight and support collaboration on curriculum strengthening, workforce development initiatives, and institutional partnerships.
   • Facilitate coordination between programme teams and academic partners to ensure alignment with programme objectives.
   • Strengthen CHW partnerships that support workforce training pathways and employment opportunities.

1. Change leadership & programme stewardship:
   • Exercise sound judgement in interpreting Health Employment programme strategy, donor intent and county context realities.
   • Anticipate and respond to shifts in the political, regulatory, and operating environment, making timely, evidence-based decisions that balance delivery ambition, risk, and long-term programme integrity.
   • Apply disciplined Health Employment programme adaptation within agreed governance frameworks, making informed trade-offs and escalating material risks or changes to the HQ Programme Director, with clear analysis, options and recommendations.
   • Provide guidance to programme teams on operational planning, activity coordination, and delivery.
2. Financial stewardship & resource optimization:
   • Oversee Health Employment work plans, budgets, and resource allocation in collaboration with the Finance and Grants teams, ensure strong financial discipline and value for money; exercise strong executive judgment over country programme investments; ensure compliance with donor financial requirements, programme policies, and local regulatory frameworks.
   • Support accurate financial reporting, audits, and resource optimization decisions within the Health Employment Pillar; balance innovation with accountability, ensure financial sustainability considerations are embedded in country programme design and decision-making.

1. People and Performance
   • Provide leadership and supervision to Health Employment pillar programme team.
   • Promote a collaborative and accountable working environment that supports effective programme delivery.
   • Support team coordination, mentoring, and professional development within the Health Employment pillar.
   • Ensure clear roles, priorities, and coordination mechanisms across the team.
   • Model Amref’s values and safeguarding commitments, contributing to a respectful, safe, and inclusive programme environment.

1. Monitoring, Learning and Adaptive Management:
   • Work closely with MEL colleagues to ensure high-quality data collection, analysis, and reporting for the Health Employment pillar.
   • Use evidence, learning, and contextual insight to inform decision-making and adaptive programme management.
   • Contribute Health Employment insights, innovations, and lessons learned to regional and organisational learning processes related to community health systems strengthening and workforce development.

1. Stakeholder, Partner & Ecosystem Leadership:
   • Build and sustain effective working relationships with senior government counterparts e.g. in the Ministry of Health, consortium and implementing partners, training institutions and other key stakeholders in the Health Employment ecosystem. 
   • Provide oversight and support partner performance management and capacity strengthening to enable aligned, high-quality delivery.
   • Represent the Health Employment programme in internal country-loevel coordination, learning, and review forums as required.
   • Work in collaboration with other country programme leaders including but not limited to: Population, Health and Environment (PHE), Disease Control Prevention and Management (DCPM) and other key ecosystems such  as WASH and Family & Reproductive Health.

1. Compliance and Safeguarding
   • Drive compliance with Amref’s safeguarding, compliance, and operational policies across programme activities.
   • Identify, assess, and manage programme, operational, and contextual risks at country level including health service delivery, safeguarding, and regulatory risks; ensure adherence to safeguarding, compliance, and risk management requirements.
   • Escalate critical issues to the Senior Programme Director with clear mitigation options.

KEY PERFORMANCE INDICATORS (SUCCESS MEASURES) – Building the right platform and creating lasting impact

1. Effective operational coordination
   • Health Employment programme activities are coordinated smoothly and delivered on schedule.
   • Programme documentation, schedules, and operational records are well maintained.
   • Programme teams experience reliable operational support.
2. Strong coordination with universities and partners
   • Engagement with universities and academic partners is organised and well-coordinated.
   • Communication between programme teams and institutions is timely and effective.
   • Academic partnerships contribute positively to programme objectives.
3. Cost efficient procurement and vendor management
   • Procurement processes are coordinated effectively and aligned with programme timelines.
   • Vendor onboarding and documentation are completed accurately.
   • Goods and services required for programme activities are obtained in a timely manner.
4. Operational efficiency
   • Workshops, consultations, and programme events are organised efficiently.
   • Administrative processes support effective programme implementation.
   • Programme teams and partners receive timely logistical support.
5. Programme Documentation and Information Management
   • Programme records and documentation are organised, accurate, and accessible.
   • Reporting inputs are provided on time and support programme oversight.
   • Operational insights contribute to programme learning and improvement.

JOB REQUIREMENTS

1. Seven (7) to nine (9) years of experience in public health, health profession education, international development, or mission-driven organisations supporting programme coordination, administration, or project operations within development, health, or education programmes, with at least five (5) years of Management experience.
2. Master’s degree in Health Science, Education, health profession education, Human Resource Management, Public Health, International Development, or related fields;
3. Demonstrable experience supporting programme reporting, logistics coordination, and administrative processes. Experience working with universities, training institutions, or health workforce development initiatives is desirable.
4. Programme or Project Management certification (PMP, PgMP, PRINCE2 Practitioner or equivalent). 
5. Proficiency in Microsoft Office applications including Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.
6. Exposure to gender-responsive or inclusive employment models in a multi-stakeholder programme environment.
7. Demonstrable experience translating programme strategy into executable models that deliver sustainable livelihood, health workforce or systems-change outcomes.
8. Proven experience building and managing high-value partnerships with key stakeholders, key national & regional stakeholders, private sector actors, consortium and implementing partners.
9. Exposure to gender-responsive or inclusive employment models. 
10. Must be an Ethiopian citizen, legal resident or possess work authorization documents.

CORE COMPETENCIES

1. Driving execution: Translates strategic priorities into operational reality; aligning communication, accountabilities, resources, capabilities, internal processes, and ongoing measurement systems to ensure that strategic priorities yield measurable and sustainable results. Interprets complex information, balances trade-offs, and makes sound, timely decisions within governance frameworks. Acts decisively with incomplete information, using evidence, experience and values.
2. Driving innovation and entrepreneurship: Open to new ideas and experiences; collaboratively creates and tests solutions and adapts quickly within a complex multi-country and multi-partner context; applies sound financial and operational judgment to balance an entrepreneurial mindset with accountability - enabling responsible risk-taking to support programme delivery.
3. Facilitating change: Encourages others to implement better approaches to address problems and opportunities; leads the implementation and acceptance of change within the workplace. Maintains effectiveness when experiencing major changes in work responsibilities or environment (e.g. people, processes, structures, programme priorities, or culture); adjusts effectively to change by exploring the benefits, trying new approaches, and collaborating with others to make change successful.
4. Driving for results: Setting high goals for personal and team accomplishment, uses measurement methods to monitor progress towards goals; tenaciously works to meet or exceed goals while deriving satisfaction from that achievement or continuous improvement. Takes initiative to accomplish work goals; takes action to achieve results beyond what is required; being proactive.
5. Creating an inclusive environment: Makes decisions and initiates action to ensure that programme policies leverage the capabilities and insights of individuals with diverse backgrounds, cultures, styles, abilities and motivation.
6. Delegation and empowerment: Identifies and leverages opportunities to accelerate results and build capability by assigning tasks to individuals or their own team with clear boundaries, expectations, support and follow-up, with the intent of involving others in agreement, for successful outcomes.
7. Innovative leadership: Creates a culture that inspires people to generate novel solutions with measurable impact for existing and potential stakeholders (internal and external); encourages experimentation with new ways to solve work problems and seize opportunities that result in unique and differential solutions.
8. Proactive Learner: Identifies own strengths and shortcomings that impact organizational and programme results; actively pursues development experiences that will enhance own impact on long-term organizational outcomes.

Your application should include a cover letter detailing why you are the best fit for this position and your CV with relevant skills and experience. Closing date will be on Thursday, 04 June 2026. 

Amref Health Africa does not require applicants to pay any money at whatever stage of the recruitment and selection process and has not retained any agent in connection with recruitment. Although Amref may use different job boards from time to time to further spread its reach for applicants, all open vacancies are published on our website under the Vacancies page and on our official social media pages. Kindly also note that official emails from Amref Health Africa will arrive from an @amref.org address.

Amref Health Africa is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children, young people and vulnerable adults and expects all staff to share this commitment. Amref Health Africa is is dedicated to diversity and is an equal-opportunity employer with a non-smoking environment policy.