Program Officer, Partnerships

Program Officer, Partnerships — Program Strategy & Innovation

Role Overview

This role keeps CARE USA's global partnership portfolio moving, from the first scoping conversation through signed agreements and into active delivery. Day to day, you hold the master pipeline, chase the outstanding decisions and signatures that stall deals, and give the Director of Partnerships and the AVP, Program Strategy & Partnerships the visibility they need to steer corporate foundations, development finance institutions, social impact investors, and private-sector alliances. Because partnership work at this scale depends on dozens of handoffs between legal, compliance, technical, and resource-mobilisation colleagues, your coordination is what turns scattered activity into a portfolio the organisation can actually manage.

Key Responsibilities

• Own CARE's global partnership tracker as your primary focus, keeping every active track current on status, outstanding actions, and accountable owner, and holding a consolidated view across partner type, stage of engagement, and alignment to PSI signature programs.
• Carry that same discipline into the wider Program Strategy & Partnerships function, running the bid pipeline management tracker, the IPO/PSI tracker, and any additional tracking systems that arise.
• Deliver a weekly pipeline summary to the Director of Partnerships and the AVP that surfaces risks, bottlenecks, and items needing escalation before they become problems.
• Drive the MOU, partnership framework, and agreement process end to end — monitoring status, pursuing missing legal or signature items, and raising anything unresolved with the Director within 24 hours; work alongside Legal and Compliance colleagues on due diligence by assembling required documentation, compiling submissions, and keeping review timelines on schedule.
• Run review cycles for partnership concept notes and proposals: gather and consolidate input from PSI technical leads, hold the timeline, and get documents finalised ahead of agreed deadlines, while maintaining a coordination log of outstanding decisions, approvals, and next steps for every live concept note, proposal, and agreement; support related budget development and MEL framework work by tracking inputs and consolidating versions through approval.
• Coordinate follow-up actions, meeting logistics, and documentation across all active tracks, and prepare pre-meeting briefings and post-meeting action logs for every engagement involving the Director or AVP.
• Steer partnership-facing materials — pitch decks, one-pagers, briefing notes, talking points — through review and internal routing so final versions reach stakeholders at least 48 hours before a partner meeting or event; draft partner communications, progress reports, proposal narratives, and contribute case studies and success stories for internal and external audiences.
• Establish a Partnership Learning Hub that organises tools, templates, best practices, and lessons learned for PSI and key stakeholders including Resource Development and Advocacy; design partnership tools that build technical teams' capacity to engage strategic partners, present findings at internal forums and communities of practice, conduct targeted desk research on partner identification and opportunity assessment, and analyse portfolio data to surface patterns that inform adaptive management.

Requirements & Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in international development, business, public policy, or a related discipline, or an equivalent combination of education and work experience.
• Five to seven years of experience in partnership coordination, program management, or external relations within the international development or social impact sector.
• Demonstrated success managing complex multi-stakeholder workflows and deliverables across several concurrent workstreams.
• Experience coordinating legal or compliance review processes, including MOUs, partnership frameworks, or grant agreements.
• Strong working proficiency with partnership or project tracking systems, document management platforms, and productivity tools (for example Salesforce, Asana, or SharePoint).
• Excellent written communication, with a track record of producing high-quality materials for external audiences such as briefings, one-pagers, and proposals.
• Ability to build and sustain relationships with a diverse range of actors across the international development sector.
• Proven prioritisation and time management across multiple projects under competing time and resource constraints, with minimal supervision.

Preferred qualifications

• Master's degree in a relevant field.
• Familiarity with CARE's technical focus areas, such as gender equality, climate, food systems, and women's economic empowerment.
• Experience supporting fundraising, proposal development, or resource mobilisation.
• Knowledge of blended finance, ESG-aligned partnerships, or private-sector engagement models.
• Experience maintaining workflow or tracking systems on behalf of a broader team or function, beyond a single portfolio.
• French and/or Spanish language skills.