We are looking for an ambitious and experienced person to join our UK Programme Development & Quality Team as Head of Quality, Learning & Improvement.  You will lead a team in sustaining excellence in Save The Children’s established programmes. The focus of the team’s work is on evaluation, implementation strategies, scaling up strategies, continuous quality improvement and learning, to optimise the effectiveness of our programmes. Our work centres on supporting children’s development in the early years, with a focus on initiatives to help parents to support their children’s learning and development, and ensuring children have access to high quality services.

Working in more than 120 countries, we do whatever it takes to create breakthroughs in the way the world treats children. Our UK and Global Programmes department delivers humanitarian and development programmes, builds partnerships with institutional donors – including governments, multi-nationals and trusts – and drives lasting change. Together, we save children’s lives, fight for their rights and help them fulfil their potential. In the UK, our strategy focuses on children in poverty and the early years.

As Head of Quality, Learning & Improvement you will work closely with our theme teams, national delivery teams and our policy teams to help to ensure our work has a tangible, sustainable and positive impact on children’s wellbeing in the UK and on the wider sector. You will provide strategic leadership to research, programme evaluation, continuous quality improvement, implementation strategies and approaches to scaling up.  You will also work to build a strong culture of experimentation, learning and evidence-informed decision-making. You will:

• Lead and build capacity in research and evaluation across a wide range of methods, and with both in-house and commissioned evaluations
• Ensure we have systematic and effective approaches in place for continuous quality improvement and programme adaptation and testing
• Ensure our approaches are based on learning from implementation science, with strong implementation strategies, robust models for scale up and sound business models
• Develop and support fundraising for research and evaluation
• Represent our work, building relationships with partners and ensuring we have a high profile

To be successful you will be driven by a desire to make a difference for children growing up in poverty. You will have extensive experience of management and leading high performing teams. Significant experience of leading quality improvement processes, programme evaluation, and using data and evidence for improvement are essential, and you will have a good understanding of implementation science. A credible leader, you will be solutions focused and able to manage competing priorities. You will be a natural collaborator, with excellent interpersonal and communication skills. In addition you will:

• Understand how poverty affects children, families and neighbourhoods – and ideally also have a good understanding of early years provision, needs and effective approaches
• Be a strong team player with an empowering and collaborative working style
• Have strong analytical skills including the ability to interpret complex and distil data
• Have a track record of securing funding from a range of funders
• Be able to travel frequently within the UK and to spend weekly time in London.

At Save the Children we are committed to the safeguarding and protection of children in our work. We will do everything possible to ensure that only those who are suitable to work with children are recruited to work for us. This post is subject to a range of vetting checks including a criminal records disclosure.

Our mission is to inspire breakthroughs in the way the world treats children and to achieve immediate and lasting change in their lives. If you share our mission, are passionate about making it happen and believe you can contribute, then join us - and we'll give you every opportunity to succeed. We look forward to hearing from you.

To apply please visit our website.

Closing date: noon on Friday, 27^th July 2018.