Programme Development Manager

Role Overview

This role sits at the point where Saferworld's country strategies become funded programmes. Working alongside three or four country teams — the exact portfolio is agreed with the successful candidate based on their experience and interests — the post-holder designs programmes together with local partners, then turns those shared ideas into concept notes and proposals that donors will back. Because peace, security and justice work depends on long-term, flexible funding and on partners setting the agenda, this position directly determines whether locally led approaches can be delivered at scale rather than only described.

Key Responsibilities

• Facilitate participatory co-design with country teams, partners and other stakeholders, and help teams reach clear go/no-go decisions on calls for proposals and invitations to apply.
• Draft and refine funding applications, including narratives, theories of change, MEL frameworks, risk matrices and budgets, coordinating inputs from colleagues working remotely across different regions and time zones.
• Shape design processes so that partners lead rather than merely contribute — participatory budgeting, fair and transparent splitting of resources, and clear communication of what donors require — avoiding approaches that extract value from partners or reproduce hierarchies.
• Ensure gender analysis and conflict analysis are built into design and proposals, grounded in partners' own contextual knowledge rather than external assumptions.
• Strengthen the capacity of country teams and partners on donor policies, strategies and funding opportunities through coaching, joint drafting and shared reflection.
• Build and sustain donor relationships, monitor donor priorities and emerging opportunities, and make the case for more flexible, less top-down funding that reaches local partners and civil society directly.
• Support country teams and partners to develop, monitor and learn from resource mobilisation plans, tracking proposal success rates and drawing lessons on the quality and effectiveness of co-design and partnership practice.
• Represent Saferworld at donor conferences, seminars and fundraising events, engage with the wider NGO and fundraising community, and contribute to due diligence and donor negotiations alongside colleagues in the funding, finance and programme support teams.

Requirements & Qualifications

Essential experience

• A demonstrated track record of designing and delivering international development programmes, ideally in conflict-affected settings, that produce community-led change and influence policy or practice.
• Experience leading collaborative design alongside civil society partners, with a clear understanding of what partner-led programme design means in practice.
• Proven success in writing funding applications, including developing theories of change, MEL frameworks, risk matrices and complex budgets.
• Financial design skills covering programme budgeting and the writing of budget narratives.
• Experience running proposal development processes end to end: facilitating design workshops, drawing together contributions from multiple stakeholders, and managing remote relationships with country offices and local partners.
• Ability to build and maintain donor relationships, with knowledge of donor requirements — particularly Global Affairs Canada, the UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, the European Union, UN agencies and Sida.
• Experience working with teams and partners in ways that reflect power-sharing, solidarity and accompaniment.
• Experience integrating gender sensitivity, responsiveness or transformation into programme design and proposals.
• Excellent written and spoken English; a second language such as Russian, Arabic or Swahili is desirable.
• Strong participatory workshop facilitation skills, the ability to develop strategy and translate it into practice, effective communication across cultures and with diverse audiences, and the capacity to handle tight deadlines and competing priorities while working independently.

Desirable

• Knowledge of political, development and humanitarian trends in Saferworld's focus countries and regions, or direct experience of working in them.
• Experience designing peacebuilding, security and justice, and/or conflict prevention programmes.
• Background in programme management or programme support — planning, coordinating and monitoring projects — that informs stronger programme design.
• Experience raising funds from trusts, foundations and non-traditional donors, with an emphasis on flexible, long-term funding suited to locally led ways of working.

Personal qualities

• Self-motivated and persistent when faced with complex challenges.
• Able to hold several complicated priorities at once and organise work to deliver against objectives.
• Personable and empathetic, building strong working relationships with colleagues around the world.
• Committed to gender equality, to respecting and valuing equality and diversity in your own area of work, and to Saferworld's safeguarding principles and organisational values.
• Willing to travel, subject to security assessments and project funding, in line with the organisation's aim of reducing environmental impact and working differently.

Why Join

This is a role for someone who wants funding practice itself to change, not just funding secured. You would work across regions with country teams, partners, programme support, finance, policy and fundraising colleagues, influencing how donors are approached and how resources are shared, while advocating for greater flexibility and more funding flowing directly to local actors. The position offers room to shape strategy rather than only respond to it, and the portfolio is matched to your own experience and interests.