Senior Associate- Food Systems, Agriculture and Climate Resilience Management

Role Overview

This Senior Associate position sits within a behavioral science unit dedicated to improving how food systems, smallholder agriculture, and climate resilience programs are designed and delivered across the Global South. You will spend your days translating messy, real-world problems—such as low adoption of climate-smart practices or weak market linkages for smallholders—into structured research engagements, leading fieldwork, and turning evidence into advice that donors, ministries, and agribusinesses can actually act on. The work matters because decisions about food security and climate adaptation are too often made without a clear understanding of the human behaviors driving outcomes; your role closes that gap.

You are expected to be both a hands-on researcher and a credible client-facing leader. That means designing and running qualitative studies, synthesizing findings under tight deadlines, mentoring junior team members, and holding direct conversations with senior policymakers and development partners. This is not a role for someone who prefers to stay behind the scenes: you will own deliverables, manage stakeholder expectations, and represent the team in rooms where behavioral insights need to compete with economic and political considerations.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead end-to-end delivery of research and advisory engagements focused on food systems, agricultural value chains, and climate resilience, from initial scoping and work planning through fieldwork, analysis, and final dissemination.
• Act as the primary point of contact for clients, including donor agencies, government ministries, NGOs, and private sector partners; anticipate their needs, flag emerging risks, and manage scope changes thoughtfully rather than reactively.
• Design and implement qualitative research instruments such as in-depth interview guides, focus group discussion protocols, ethnographic observation frameworks, and participatory rural appraisal exercises adapted to low-literacy and low-resource contexts.
• Apply behavioral science concepts—including capabilities, opportunities, and motivations (COM-B), habit formation, loss aversion, and social norms—to diagnose barriers to technology adoption, climate adaptation, and market participation among smallholders.
• Integrate qualitative insights with quantitative workstreams by defining research questions for survey teams, interpreting statistical findings, and ensuring that mixed-method designs tell a coherent story rather than two parallel ones.
• Draft and deliver high-impact outputs: policy briefs, donor reports, client presentations, academic-style case narratives, and workshop materials that translate behavioral evidence into practical program or investment recommendations.
• Manage project budgets, timelines, and staffing plans for a portfolio of engagements, identifying dependencies and escalating issues early to senior leadership.
• Supervise Analysts and Project Leads assigned to your engagements, providing structured feedback on research quality, writing clarity, and client communication, while also helping onboard new joiners to the team’s methods and standards.
• Support business development by contributing to proposals, concept notes, and technical presentations that showcase the team’s approach to behaviorally informed agriculture and climate work.

Requirements & Qualifications

• 5–8 years of work experience in research, advisory, program design, or evaluation roles, with a substantial portion dedicated to agriculture, food security, climate adaptation, or rural development in Sub-Saharan Africa or comparable settings.
• Demonstrated, hands-on expertise in qualitative methods—deep interviewing, focus group facilitation, participatory observation, thematic coding, and narrative synthesis—including experience conducting fieldwork in remote, low-resource environments with translation and cultural sensitivity.
• Proven ability to lead senior client relationships and facilitate difficult conversations, including pushing back on poorly framed research questions and renegotiating scope when initial assumptions no longer hold.
• A track record of delivering complex, multi-stakeholder projects on time and on budget, with clear evidence of problem-solving when field conditions change (e.g., insecurity, weather, or logistical constraints).
• Strong analytical writing skills in English, with the ability to produce crisp, defensible arguments from contradictory or incomplete qualitative evidence for audiences ranging from permanent secretaries to smallholder farmer cooperatives.
• Expertise in applying at least one behavioral science framework to a real-world intervention or policy question, either as a formal behavioral design practitioner or through rigorous academic or advisory work.
• A bachelor's degree in social sciences, development studies, agricultural economics, public policy, or a related discipline is required.
• Strongly preferred: a master's degree in a relevant discipline; working familiarity with quantitative tools such as Stata, R, or Python; experience collaborating on randomized controlled trials or quasi-experimental designs; and existing professional relationships within East or West African food systems, agricultural research, or climate finance networks.
• High comfort with ambiguity and a track record of working autonomously while knowing when to escalate complex political or technical issues to senior leadership.