Technical Services Manager at Seefar Nigeria

Seefar Nigeria - We are a social enterprise with a mission to work with vulnerable people to build a better future. We specialise in justice, migration and social inclusion. Our expertise is in strategic communications, counselling, consulting, monitoring and evaluation, and research. We work in East Asia, South Asia, the Middle East, East Africa, North Africa, the Sahel and Europe.

We are recruiting to fill the position below:

Job Title: Technical Services Manager

Location: Nigeria
Employment Type: Full-time

Job Description

• We are a social enterprise with a mission to work with vulnerable people to build a better future. We work in East Asia, South Asia, the Middle East, East Africa, North Africa, the Sahel and Europe.
• We are a team that delivers projects responsively but takes a long-term view of improving capabilities.
• The ideal candidate will enjoy supporting projects in challenging locations while developing the capacities of their team.

The Technical Services Manager has four broad areas of operation:

• Provide research, evaluation and communications support to project delivery teams.
• Identify and develop improvements to our systems of delivering technical services.
• Supervise, coach and develop other Technical Services personnel.
• Provide organisational leadership as a member of the Senior Management Team.
• See below under "Responsibilities" for more information on each of the above areas of operation.
• We do not expect you to have deep specialist expertise in every area of our technical services. You will need specialist expertise in at least one area and you will need to demonstrate a capacity to develop the expertise necessary to supervise people in the other areas.

The following are illustrations of the kinds of strategic objectives that the Technical Services Manager may own:

• Ensure delivery of high-quality services to Seefar’s beneficiaries with a focus on increasing knowledge and transferring new skills.
• Improve our systems’ collection of data on service quality and impact.
• Design and implement experiments that assess the impact of social media on Seefar’s beneficiaries
• Decrease the cost of service delivery to ensure a better return on investment
• Complete a study on Seefar’s influence on legislation, policies or programmes

Responsibilities
The following are the primary responsibilities of the role, with estimated allocations of time and attention.

Deliver - Project and Mission Implementation:

Approximately 60% of your time and attention:

• Deliver research, monitoring and evaluation, and strategic communications advice to project teams. This will include in some cases delivering technical inputs yourself, such as:
  • Monitoring and evaluation frameworks.
  • Data analysis tools.
  • Research questionnaires.
  • Analysing data from social media.
• Participate in project team meetings and project coordination mechanisms.
• Collect lessons learned and make recommendations to improve projects.
• Lead reporting on the technical services components of projects.
• Provide technical services inputs to the fundraising team. Maintain and develop networks with technical experts outside Seefar, including among donors.

Develop - Capabilities:
Approximately 30% of your time and attention:

• Analyse the performance of Technical Services and identify opportunities to improve.
• Lead the Technical Services team to strengthen existing processes, tools and systems. This part of your job requires an interest and capacity for detailing business processes, prototyping and testing. Convert plans into detailed business processes, for example to specify new SOPs or to detail requirements for IT, then oversee change in these processes.
• Develop the skills, experience and capabilities of personnel in the Technical Services team.
• Identify recruitment needs in the Technical Services team, then work with the Operations Team to attract excellent new personnel.
• Strengthen Seefar’s reputation and brand recognition for effectiveness in technical services.

Direct - Global Management:
In addition to consistently demonstrating the Enterprise’s values, you will spend approximately 10% of your time and attention on global management as a member of the Senior Management Team:

• Design, implement and assess global strategy and organisational structure across the entire Enterprise, and set priorities for the overall Enterprise.
• Cooperate with other areas of the Enterprise to communicate substantive and administrative information that supports corporate management overall.

Your role will require you to travel. These examples are drawn from someone at your level over the course of a year in Seefar:

• A meeting of global personnel in Jordan in February and in Portugal in September.
• Two team meetings in the UK.
• Presenting at a conference in Austria.
• Visiting projects and donors in the Balkans, Jordan and Nigeria.

Requirements
This role will require someone who is smart, intrinsically motivated, worldly, interested in hard challenges, highly flexible and adaptable. It is likely that you have a combination of:

• 7 - 10 years of experience in technical services roles.
  • The most relevant specialties in Seefar’s current operations are research, monitoring and evaluation, and strategic communications.
• Fluency in written and spoken English.
• An excellent track record of leading others.
• Experience working remotely.
• Proficiency with flexible data management tools, such as Google Spreadsheets.
• Experience developing new systems relevant to technical services.

Working with Seefar
Current and former personnel have noted the points below as positive features of Seefar's work environment and culture:

• The Enterprise combines entrepreneurialism with a focus on social impact.
• You work with highly diverse people and across a diversity of contexts.
• There is a high level of trust that supports you to work autonomously.
• The people in the Enterprise encourage innovation and experimentation.
• Achieving results is prioritised over rigid structures and workflows.
• You are never bored and always challenged.

Current and former personnel have noted the points below as negative features of Seefar’s work environment and culture:

• Collaborating with geographically dispersed teams requires flexibility and patience.
• Working remotely can make you feel isolated and so requires you to invest time in communication.
• Travel schedules can sometimes be heavy.
• It can be fast paced so you need to be productive and able to prioritise effectively.

How to Apply
Interested and qualified candidates should:
Click here to apply

Note
Before you start, you should do the following:

• Prepare a CV in Word or PDF format. You will upload this in our online application form.
• In Word or PDF format, prepare an introductory letter that includes only the points below. You will upload this in our online application form:
• 1-2 paragraphs explaining an example in which you coordinated a team to improve a process involving project management. What was the context? What was your role? What was the result?

Application Deadline 6th August, 2023.