What you’ll do 

Lead Global Emergency Response Delivery

• Oversee implementation of Emergency Response programs from activation, program design, cash delivery, followup and closure.
• Collaborate with the rest of the Emergency Response product function to establish and continuously improve operational standards for field execution (e.g., targeting, verification, payments, M&E, etc).
• Manage multiple simultaneous deployments, ensuring delivery speed and recipient experience meet our program standards.
• Serve as the directly responsible individual (DRI) for cash delivery during active responses, coordinating across functions to unblock issues in real time.
• Ensure alignment with GD’s standards, including protection, data security, financial procedures and safeguarding.

Build and Manage the Emergency Response Delivery Team

• Recruit, train, and coach a high-performing team capable of repeatedly deploying on short notice.
• Develop clear career pathways, performance goals, and preparedness benchmarks.
• Create and maintain deployment rosters, surge pools, role profiles and equipment standards.

Drive Organizational Preparedness

• Lead the development and continuous improvement of delivery operational playbooks, SOPs, and readiness tools.
• Partner with Product, Tech and Global Support Services teams to ensure systems readiness and improvement by contributing to the prioritization of investments and solutions.
• Track and report on readiness metrics.
• Ensure a culture of learning and continuous improvement by leading regular lessons learned processes and supporting a prioritization of people, process and technology investments to improve Emergency Response speed and quality.

Ensure Safety and Risk Management

• Act as the global safety focal point for Emergency Response delivery operations.
• Oversee staff security and duty of care during deployments, in partnership with GD’s Safety & Security and People teams.
• Oversee risk assessments before and during field activations.
• Support after-action reviews and continuous improvement of safety protocols.

Represent GiveDirectly and Strengthen Partnerships

• Engage with external humanitarian partners, donors, and coordination clusters as a representative of GD’s operational delivery capabilities.
• Collaborate with internal stakeholders (Product, Legal, Finance, Partnerships) to ensure operational feasibility and compliance.
• Contribute to donor reporting, proposals, and communications by sharing operational insights and field impact stories.

What you’ll bring 

• Deep commitment to GiveDirectly’s values and belief in the dignity and autonomy of people living in poverty.
• 10+ years of experience in humanitarian programming, with significant time spent in field-based roles managing multi-country or large-scale operations. 
• Significant experience working in challenging humanitarian contexts and overseeing security and risk management frameworks.
• Excellent judgement in fast-paced crisis settings.
• Strong understanding of humanitarian systems, including coordination mechanisms (UN clusters, INGO networks), donor engagement, and response frameworks. 
• Proven experience designing and managing cash and voucher assistance (CVA) or similar direct aid programs. 
• Demonstrated leadership, problem solving, and critical thinking in high-pressure, uncertain environments.
• A willingness to reimagine humanitarian and emergency response assistance approaches and technologies.
• Excellent cross-cultural communication and ability to lead diverse, distributed teams. 
• Commitment to fostering inclusivity and equity, both internally and externally. 
• Fluency in English (required), additional languages such as French preferred.