Senior Technical Advisor (STA) – Horizon-1000

Role Overview

This position holds operational ownership of the Horizon1000 Kenya programme, a multi-year effort to bring ethically designed, contextually grounded artificial intelligence — including clinical decision support — into public primary health care. Reporting to the Senior Programme Manager at Amref Health Africa, the Senior Technical Advisor turns programme strategy into county-level delivery, keeping workplans, budgets, risks, partners, and government relationships moving in step rather than in parallel. The role matters because AI tools only earn their place in a health system when frontline clinicians trust them and government structures absorb them; the STA is accountable for making that transition real across participating counties.

Key Responsibilities

• Drive implementation delivery: Build and execute annual and quarterly workplans across participating counties, holding scope, milestones, budgets, and donor commitments in line with Ministry of Health priorities, county health plans, and national digital health strategy.
• Keep the workstreams aligned: Coordinate AI use-case identification, solution deployment, responsible AI governance, implementation science, monitoring and evaluation, capacity strengthening, and sustainability planning, while leading the project implementation team and working alongside other Amref programmes contributing to H1000.
• Manage delivery realities: Track progress against agreed deliverables, surface bottlenecks early, trigger timely corrective action, and provide the Senior Programme Manager and governance structures with regular implementation updates, risk assessments, and strategic recommendations.
• Move solutions from rollout to routine use: Oversee readiness assessments, phased deployment, onboarding, user training, mentorship, and post-deployment support so that tools are genuinely adopted, correctly used, and refined against user feedback and operational evidence.
• Steer human-centred design work: Commission and guide user research, workflow assessment, and use-case prioritisation with county governments, technology partners, and frontline health workers so that design reflects how care is actually delivered.
• Act as the operational government interface: Serve as primary focal point with the Ministry of Health, the Digital Health Agency, county governments, regulatory institutions, County Implementation Teams, facility leadership, professional associations, and implementing partners, and convene technical working groups, programme reviews, co-creation workshops, and governance forums.
• Safeguard ethics, safety, and compliance: Embed ethical safeguards and patient-safety considerations throughout implementation, follow through on recommendations from the Responsible AI and Ethics Committee and the Technical and Scientific Advisory Group, and ensure adherence to the Digital Health Act, the Data Protection Act, the National AI Strategy, and Ministry of Health guidance.
• Protect quality, evidence, and long-term fit: Hold delivery to consistent technical and donor standards, ensure concerns raised by frontline users are documented, escalated, and resolved, integrate solutions into the Digital Health Superhighway and existing government systems rather than parallel structures, and capture learning that supports policy dialogue and future scale-up.

Requirements & Qualifications

Experience

• Either a Master's degree plus five or more years of progressively responsible experience managing multi-stakeholder programmes in digital health, health systems strengthening, artificial intelligence, or international development, including at least two years of supervisory or project leadership responsibility; or a Bachelor's degree plus eight or more years of comparable experience, including at least three years supervising staff or leading projects.
• A demonstrated record of leading large donor-funded programmes that involve government institutions, development partners, and multidisciplinary technical teams.
• Proven experience running implementation through both national and county government structures in Kenya, or within a comparable devolved health system.
• Experience managing implementation partnerships spanning government, academia, technology partners, and development organisations.
• Experience supporting evidence generation, implementation research, monitoring and evaluation, and knowledge management for health systems programmes.
• Highly desirable: direct experience deploying digital health tools, health information systems, artificial intelligence, clinical decision support, or comparable health technology programmes; applying implementation science, change management, human-centred design, or quality improvement methods to drive adoption; working with national digital health strategies, interoperability initiatives, or digital transformation efforts; and supporting primary health care, universal health coverage, or health workforce strengthening programmes.

Education

• Master's or Bachelor's degree in public health, digital health, health systems management, project management, health policy, computer science, artificial intelligence, or another relevant discipline. A background that combines health systems knowledge with digital or technology training is particularly valued.
• Required: training or certification in AI in healthcare, responsible AI, data protection, information security, or digital health governance.
• An added advantage: certification in monitoring and evaluation, change management (such as PROSCI or CCMP), health informatics, digital health, data governance, artificial intelligence, or implementation science.

Knowledge, Skills and Competencies

• Solid grasp of Kenya's primary health care system, devolved government structures, health systems strengthening, the Social Health Authority, the Digital Health Agency, and universal health coverage.
• Working understanding of artificial intelligence in health settings, data governance, interoperability, and the ethical and regulatory expectations attached to deploying AI in public-sector care.
• Ability to lead complex, multi-stakeholder initiatives in fast-moving environments, pairing strategic and systems thinking with disciplined project management.
• Credible government engagement and facilitation skills, including the ability to build ownership among public-sector counterparts and run technical working groups, planning sessions, and governance forums.
• Strong analytical, written, and verbal communication skills for reporting to donors, advising leadership, and translating implementation evidence into practical recommendations.
• Comfort operating at the intersection of clinical service delivery, digital technology, and programme management, with the judgement to balance innovation against operational reliability.