Regional Senior Research Officer - East and Southeast Africa

About the role

IMPACT is looking for a Regional Senior Research Officer for East and Southeast Africa, based in Kampala. The role supports research quality and standards across the region's country teams, acts as the focal point for the HQ RQA Unit, and provides technical guidance on research planning and methodology. It is described as a pilot position, so its exact scope and collaboration mechanisms may evolve over time.

Key responsibilities

• Support implementation of research standards, including quality control processes and technical backstopping for country teams, using the IMPACT Research Toolkit
• Act as the HQ RQA Unit focal point for the region, advising country teams and documenting key outputs
• Help move quality assurance to more streamlined, decentralised processes, including reviewer tools, training and capacity building
• Provide technical guidance on research planning and methodology, mainly quantitative research
• Support peer review of research design, quantitative data processing and analysis, and narrative products
• Flag risks with the Unit Manager and provide temporary in-country deployments (up to 25% of working time)
• Strengthen research standards through learning processes such as guidance notes, online courses, webinars and training
• Contribute to lessons learned, quality monitoring and improvements to research processes and guidelines
• Support research implementation in other regions or countries as directed by the Unit Manager

Required profile

• At least 3 years of experience designing and implementing primary research programmes, preferably in humanitarian or international development contexts in East or Southeast Africa
• Master's degree or equivalent in a relevant discipline (e.g. social research, economics, data science, statistics, anthropology, international development)
• Fluency in English
• Resilience, flexibility and adaptability, as the role is a pilot

Required skills

• Quantitative methodology design, including indicators, sampling and analysis strategies
• Quantitative data processing and management, with attention to data quality
• Data privacy and ethics in data collection and analysis
• Statistics applied across the research cycle
• Programming with Python or R for data processing, cleaning, analysis and visualisation
• Overseeing research quality against minimum standards