JSI is dedicated to improving people’s lives around the world through greater health, education, and socioeconomic equity for individuals and communities, and to providing an environment where people of passion can pursue this cause. JSI is currently recruiting for a Project Director to lead the Asia Resilient Cities (ARC) Project.

ARC is a five-year cooperative agreement funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and implemented by JSI with partners DevTech Systems, Inc., BRAC, and ICF. Over the course of five years, ARC will address cross-cutting urban development challenges in select cities in Asia by promoting sustainable urban growth; supporting resilient, low-carbon urban infrastructure; and integrating climate change and environmentally-conscious approaches.

The ARC Project Director (PD) will be responsible for providing overall project oversight and management, making financial and personnel decisions, providing leadership on how to connect ARC’s work across urban resilience activities, as well as ensuring the quality of technical deliverables on the project. They will maintain close communication with the USAID Agreement Officer’s Representative team and all USAID stakeholders, and directly supervise the four ARC team directors. The PD will work closely with the ARC team directors to ensure consistent, coordinated implementation of the project’s technical activities and achievement of ARC’s goals and objectives. This position also provides direct oversight of ARC contracts, sub-agreements, and memorandum of understanding with implementing partners to ensure alignment of spending on staffing and support with completion of technical activities. This position is full-time.

The ARC PD is responsible for the overall leadership, technical quality, management, and operations of the project. They ensure that the project leverages JSI and other partners' deep technical and programmatic skills, and that implementation meets JSI’s high quality standards. This position directly supervises the ARC team directors (Communications, Finance & Operations, MERL, and Country Support), as well as ARC technical advisors.

Specific responsibilities include:

Program Planning and Management

• Provides overall leadership and direction to the project team and partners on implementing ARC activities to ensure the achievement of project outcomes and sustainability of its activities.
• Directly supervises the ARC team directors, ensuring good practices flow down to their teams.
• ARC’s senior program representative to USAID, project country governments, international and national nongovernmental organizations, donors, and other stakeholders.
• Manages competing demands across ARC funding streams, and is responsible for complying with all reporting requirements.
• Ensures the project is meeting goals and objectives.
• Sets expectations for producing final work plans for each city and the global project that will meet USAID and local stakeholder (municipal government, citizen, and civil society) expectations.
• Ensures implementing partners are meeting all project obligations, including meeting cost share obligations and overall commitments to the cities to support urban development challenges.
• Sets standards for staff performance, oversight, mentoring, and hiring. Ensures team directors are carrying out these standards.
• Supervises all institutional agreements executed under the prime agreement.
• Ensures compliance with USAID rules and regulations, JSI policies, and technical and programmatic standards.
• Creates a project structure to ensure all USAID goals and expectations are met.

Technical Oversight

• Provides direct supervision for ARC advisors and consultants relating to implementation (not including MERL or communications). This includes monitoring workload, quality of work, providing feedback, and mentorship to ensure high performance.
• Coordinates closely with the ARC Directors of Country Support and Monitoring, Evaluation, Research, and Learning (MERL) to ensure consistent, coordinated implementation of the project’s technical activities across the country portfolio, in alignment with city work plans.
• In collaboration with the MERL team, fosters innovative implementation approaches for ARC goals and objectives, particularly with an eye to cross-sectoral, systems level activities and solutions.
• In collaboration with the communications and MERL teams, identifies promising practices, innovations, and lessons learned that can be shared widely for multiple audiences.
• Connects with, supports, and contributes to JSI’s corporate technical thought leadership and global business development as needed.
• Travel is estimated to be 20 percent or less per year.

• Master’s degree or higher in a field related to management, urban planning, resilience, or similar is required.
• Minimum of 15 years of experience in implementing and/or managing complex projects in/for low and middle income countries, preferably involving coordination with multiple implementing partners or institutions in the Asia region.
• At least 10 years of experience working with USAID supported projects and developing and implementing activity work plans; facilitating good USAID Mission relations; and knowledge of USAID financial rules and regulations at a senior level is required.
• Strong interpersonal and managerial skills, with experience working in cross-cultural settings.
• Must be detail oriented and be able to manage workflow processes under time sensitive project deadlines.
• The ability to negotiate and manage a diverse set of reporting requirements is required.
• Experience working on systems change or systems thinking projects desired but not required.
• Fluency in English is required, and a second language (Hindi, Gujarati, Bangla, Russian, Kyrgyz, and/or Mongolian) is an advantage.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills required.
• Must be proficient in Google Suite (Docs, Sheets, Slides, Forms).