Foreign Service Limited Position Multiple Opportunities within BHA/Office of Technical and Program Quality: Humanitarian Assistance Officer (Team Lead/DMEAL Division), FSL-0301-02

• Agency: U.S. Agency for International Development 
• Organization: Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance, Office of Technical and Program Quality (BHA/TPQ).
• Location of Position: Washington, DC. 
• Open Period:  01/16/2025 – 01/23/2025
• Appointment Type: This is an excepted service, time-limited appointment, not-to-exceed five years
• Salary: FSL-02.  FOREIGN SERVICE PAY SETTING MODE,  Foreign Service pay table, Washington locality. 
• Number of Vacancies: Multiple within the BHA/TPQ office. For further information on each team, please see the attachment.

Description of Organization: The Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance (BHA) provides global leadership and a strategic approach in humanitarian response, promoting human welfare, alleviating suffering, and providing the foundations for transformative change and self-reliance serving both national foreign policy interests and people in need of humanitarian assistance. BHA fulfills USAID’s role as the lead U.S. Government Agency for responding to emergencies and disasters overseas with both food and non-food emergency assistance, as well as providing a holistic approach to USAID’s programming across the spectrum of preparing for, responding to, mitigating, and preventing disasters.

The Office of Technical and Program Quality (TPQ) leads the Bureau's efforts to provide high quality programmatic and technical leadership, oversight, and guidance. In addition, TPQ leads the Bureau’s external engagement with academia and coordinates research to advance the effectiveness, efficiency, and impact of humanitarian and multi-year programming. 

The Strategic Planning and Activity Design (SPADe) Team in the Design, Monitoring, Evaluation, and Applied Learning (DMEAL) Division works to improve the quality of BHA programs by supporting strategic planning and activity design processes for cost-effective multi-year awards. The Team supports BHA, USAID, and implementing partners with making critical decisions related to geographic targeting, participant/beneficiary selection, goals, objectives, and programmatic principles through a range of analyses, studies, fieldwork, consultative processes, and engagements that are relevant to the context and needs of the design teams. The Team serves to align and evolve BHA strategic approaches, activity design, and programming with key Agency and Inter-Agency priorities and strategic processes including the guidance of USAID Office of Learning Evaluation and Research (LER), Mission CDCS’, USAID guidance on cost effective programs, USAID’s Resilience Policy, and the USG’s Global Food Security Strategy (GFSS). This engagement seeks to ensure that BHA investments are cost-effective and layers, sequences, and integrates with other USAID and USG programs and projects, policies, and investments in order to maximize efficiencies and programmatic outcomes for beneficiaries.

Commitment to Diversity and Inclusion: All employees are measured on how they foster a climate of respect in interactions with others, value differing perspectives, and treat others in a fair, equitable, and culturally sensitive manner. All employees are expected to adhere to equal employment opportunity (EEO) policies and value diversity and inclusion in performing everyday duties and responsibilities.

Description of Position: The Humanitarian Assistance Officer will:

• Lead the Strategic Planning and Activity Design Team in designing evidence based emergency and resilience projects and programs to sustainably reduce humanitarian caseloads; and assist teams, divisions, and offices to develop long range strategic plans to plan the investment and response portfolios. 
• Advises BHA, Agency leadership, and host-country governments on evidence-based activity design and planning,  new developments and effective approaches to humanitarian assistance; articulates the benefits of interventions to effectively reach specific target audiences.
• Provides technical liaison with USAID Missions, other USAID Bureaus, and Offices, USG Agencies, Congress, donors, multilateral banks, and PVOs to coordinate their efforts with USAID programs, policies, and approaches to humanitarian assistance.
• Responsible for the development of strategies, plans, activity design guidance, and capacities of BHA staff for evidence-based activity design and planning of humanitarian assistance and resilience programs.
• Maintains liaison with sources of information inside and outside BHA to assess and review new or unusual circumstances, variations in approach and incomplete or conflicting information.
• Informs stakeholders of changes in organizational programs and operations, conducting briefings on major program changes in particular those impacting humanitarian assistance programs and operations overseas.
• Sign-up for and serve on Washington-based Response Management Teams (RMTs), which provide services and support to Disaster Assistance Response Teams (DARTs) deployed in response to disasters. 

Future of Work Designation: This position has been designated as Telework Eligible. 

Qualifications:

• Must be a U.S. citizen. Please state U.S. citizenship in the application/resume (if citizenship is not stated, application will not be considered).
• Must have one year of specialized experience equivalent to the next lower grade level, FSL-03 or GS-13, of this position.
• Specialized experience must include: 
  • multi year development/resilience, and emergency cost-effective programs design;
  • development of long range (three to five years) strategic plans for an organization or a portfolio of programs in a country or region, or a thematic topic such as disaster risk reduction, or resilience.      
• Overseas experience working on monitoring, evaluation, emergency response, political complex crises assistance programs, is preferred.
• The Team Lead position requires a specific clearance level based on organizational location. Candidates must be able to obtain and maintain the security clearance level associated with the position for which they have been selected. 

Interested candidates should submit (in .pdf or Microsoft Word Format):

• Resume/CV;
• Cover letter (one page or less) must include potential team preferences and expressing a statement of interest, including one paragraph (250 words or less) that describes where in the resume the applicant meets the specialized experience qualifications; state whether you have veterans’ preference or if you have held or currently hold a political appointment (PA) within the last five years; (NOTE: current/former PA should submit their appropriate SF-50 which demonstrates their appointment);

• Three professional references with at least one current or former supervisor;

• Stated security clearance level, if applicable;
• Stated U.S. citizenship (if citizenship is not stated, application will not be considered).

Please submit your application package to  bha.ams.staffing@usaid.gov. Subject line must be as follows specific to the position and office being applied to; Applicants should submit separate applications for each office for which they would like to be considered. Subject lines must read:“FSL Application: Office of Technical and Program Quality-HAO-FSL-02-BHA.”  Application submissions are required by 11:59 p.m. EST on 01/23/2025. Packages not submitted by the deadline with the specified subject line—or incomplete packages—will not receive consideration. This notice may be used to fill additional similar vacancies, as the workforce needs of the Bureau may change.

EEO Policy Statement

Reasonable Accommodation Policy 

Any questions concerning this notice may be directed to:  bha.ams.staffing@usaid.gov