Senior Monitoring, Evaluation, Research and Learning Manager
Position Circumstances
- Career Category: Exec. / Management, Social Work, Monitoring & Evaluation, Research / Development
- Schedule:Full-time
- Salary: Negotiable
Project or Division: iDE Cambodia
Location: Based in Phnom Penh with regular trips to provinces where iDE operates
Report to: Country Director
Duration: 1 year with a high likelihood of extension based on a combination of performance and project extension
WORKING RELATIONSHIPS
The Senior MERL Manager reports directly to the Country Director and manages a small team of MERL specialists across various offices. The role involves working closely with all iDE Cambodia program managers to address their MERL needs and serving as the primary liaison with the iDE Global MERL team for strategy, standards, and cross-country learning.
Duties & Responsibilities:
- LEADERSHIP AND MANAGEMENT RESPONSIBILITIES
- Team Leadership and Development
- Lead, manage, and develop the centralized MERL team, including setting priorities, managing workload, and supporting the professional growth of all direct reports through reviews and addressing skills gaps.
- Foster a team culture of intellectual curiosity, psychological safety, and openness to learning, ensuring the team operates as a responsive service to program managers.
- Portfolio-Wide MERL Oversight
- Design, implement, and manage MERL frameworks, plans, tools, and systems across all iDE Cambodia programs.
- Serve as the primary point of coordination with program managers to maintain a clear picture of MERL needs, allocate team capacity, and troubleshoot issues.
- Oversee the quality and timeliness of MERL contributions to program reporting.
- Oversee the quality and coherence of MERL frameworks, systems, and practices.
- MERL Strategy and Organizational Learning
- Lead the development and continuous improvement of iDE Cambodia's overall MERL strategy, ensuring alignment with iDE Global standards and country office priorities.
- Champion a culture of organizational learning by ensuring MERL evidence actively feeds into adaptive management and strategic decision-making.
- Lead iDE Cambodia's engagement with the iDE Global MERL team, contributing country-level insights and participating in cross-country learning initiatives.
- Organizational Representation and Stakeholder Engagement
- Engage with the iDE Global MERL team on strategy, standards, tools, and cross-country learning, ensuring the country office benefits from global knowledge.
- Build and maintain relationships with M&E focal points at partner organizations and engage with external MERL communities to stay current and bring in new thinking.
- PROJECT MERL RESPONSIBILITIES
- The Senior MERL Manager will directly support two projects within iDE Cambodia’s portfolio.
- Transforming Lives Through Nutrition (TLTN)
- Design, implement, manage, and continuously improve comprehensive MERL frameworks, plans, processes, and tools for LDSC-funded projects, ensuring alignment with institutional standards and industry best practices.
- Provide strategic MERL guidance, including collecting, analyzing, organizing, and communicating high-quality quantitative and qualitative data to assess program effectiveness, impact, outcome tracking, and target setting.
- Implement Data Quality Assurance measures to ensure data integrity, and facilitate the integration of learning, reflection, and feedback to support adaptive management throughout the program lifecycle.
- Contribute to donor reporting (including narrative and financial reports) and support knowledge management and documentation of lessons learned, best practices, and program evidence.
- Growing Transformative Horticulture (GROWTH)
- Design, implement, and manage comprehensive MERL frameworks, plans, and tools for the GROWTH project, with a strong focus on horticulture market systems development. This includes leading the measurement and analysis of market systems outcomes such as market linkages, MSME performance, and profitability gains.
- Develop and implement indicators and methodologies to assess farmers' transition to collective action models (ex: producer groups) and measure the adoption and outcomes of Climate-Smart Agriculture practices, including changes in productivity, resilience, and sustainability at both the farmer and system levels.
- Ensure data quality assurance, effective data management, and documentation of learning, lessons learned, and best practices related to market systems change and agricultural transformation. Support project teams in using MERL data for adaptive management and contribute to required donor reporting and learning products for the GROWTH project.
Expected Profile of Candidates
Qualifications:
- Master's Degree in in a relevant field (M&E, Statistics, Data Science, etc.)
Skills & Knowledge:
General & Technical Skills
- 5 years of full-cycle project MERL experience and at least 3 years in a team leadership or management role.
- Proven experience designing and managing MERL systems (indicators, data collection, quality assurance, and learning processes), with strong skills in data analysis, visualization, and translating data into actionable insights.
- Experience working with multi-donor funded projects (including reporting and accountability), and a proven ability to build productive working relationships with program managers to translate their needs into actionable MERL support.
- Experience engaging with global or regional teams and iDE’s core technical areas (agriculture, WASH, nutrition, etc.) is an asset.
- Excellent written and spoken Khmer and English are required.
- Strong people management skills to develop, motivate, and hold accountable a diverse team, while being comfortable with delegation.
- Sound organizational judgment to prioritize across competing demands and make pragmatic decisions under uncertainty.
- Strong communication and facilitation skills across diverse audiences (field staff to senior leadership), with the ability to navigate organizational complexity and build buy-in for new team models.
Soft Skills
- Creativity, impact orientation, and an entrepreneurial spirit, paired with a high level of commitment to iDE’s mission, vision, culture, and values.
- Curious and actively nurtures a culture of learning (including openness about failure), and is excited by and open to new ideas and innovative ways of working.
- Collaborative, thrives in a team environment, works effectively in a multicultural team, and high levels of empathy, care, respect, and patience.
- Demonstrates honesty, integrity, and a strong work ethic, effective time management, and an ability to work under pressure, with a willingness to take on additional relevant responsibilities.
