Monitoring, Evaluation & Learning (ME&L) Specialist

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About Suvita

Suvita is a startup nonprofit working to increase uptake of routine childhood immunisations in India. We are impact-focused and currently deliver two evidence-based programmes to boost attendance at vaccination appointments:

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1. Identifying natural community influencers and supporting them to act as immunisation ambassadors. 

2. Sending SMS reminders directly to new parents and caregivers, to help them remember when their child is due for a vaccination.

 

To date we have reached roughly half a million users. We have been incubated by Charity Entrepreneurship and by The/Nudge Foundation, and our funders include Mulago Foundation, Schmidt Futures and Founders Pledge.​

 

The role

Do you love digging into data to inform decision-making? Are you excited to use this skill to have a major impact on access to health?

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We are looking for a Monitoring, Evaluation & Learning (ME&L) specialist to lead our use of data to learn about and improve our programmes. You will focus on asking and answering impact-relevant questions to feed into our programme design. This will include a variety of workflows such as:

• Working with Co-founders and Programme Managers to come up with research questions and hypotheses which we should test with the aim of increasing our programmes’ impact at scale. Testing these hypotheses (including with inputs/advice from our network of partners where useful) and deciding which changes we should make to our programming as a result.

• Using administrative data from our government partners to conduct impact evaluations of our programmes (most likely using Difference in Difference, but also exploring the strengths and limitations of the data for conducting randomised evaluations).

• Defining priority programme metrics which will be suitable indicators of impact as our programmes scale, then setting up systems to monitor them.

• Conducting quantitative and qualitative MEL activities to increase our clarity around the mechanism of impact of our programmes.

• Identifying and using suitable data sources to inform our scaling strategy - e.g. liaising with state government partners to identify the best data source to investigate district-level and block-level heterogeneity in immunisation rates to help decide whether our scaling should be targeted or universal.

 

The role will involve working with a range of senior colleagues including Co-Founders, Programme Managers and Head of Tech, as well as engaging with our partners and advisors (such as academics and research institutions).

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Why it's awesome​

• Your work will save lives.

• You’ll get to nerd out on in-depth MEL work whilst also contributing across a range of connected areas (e.g. strategy, programme delivery, operations, tech). Your work will actively feed into organisational decision-making.

• You’ll have lots of autonomy, contributing to decisions about which areas of investigation we should prioritise, with high flexibility about how/when/where you work.

• You’ll be exploring interesting questions which nobody knows the answer to yet.

• You’ll be part of a mission-driven, impact-focused organisation with strong values, delivering programmes grounded in evidence.

• It’s a high-leverage role in a young organisation. We are aiming for huge growth of our programmes and impact in the coming years, so there are plenty of opportunities for outsized personal impact.

 

Who we're looking for

• You’re highly motivated by the impact of the role, and this will guide your day-to-day decision-making. You want to see your work having a clear impact in the real world, not just sitting in a journal.

• You have a degree or equivalent experience in economics, development economics, public health, public policy, statistics or a related field. Ideally, you’ll have both a master’s degree and some experience working in India on health/development projects, but these are not hard requirements. We are more interested in how fast you grow than where you start from.

• You’re interested in sceptical truth-seeking to really understand what’s going on.

• You are high-agency - you will be proactive about exploring questions, identifying considered ways that we could make our work more impactful, and making them happen.

• You excel at both focused, independent, self-driven work and collaborative projects requiring coordination and teamwork.

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Other details

• Full time - the role will start as a fixed 1-year contract but we hope to make it a long-term position subject to performance and org plans and budgets.

• Salary will be competitive with other nonprofit salaries, and in line with the experience and responsibilities of the selected candidate.

• Benefits include:

  • 30 days’ paid holiday leave per year plus 12 days’ sick leave at full pay.

  • Reimbursement towards an annual health insurance policy for all India-based team members.

• We would prefer you to be based in India, but this is not an absolute requirement. We have team members based in Pune, Patna and London but are open to fully remote or hybrid work models.

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Next steps

If this all sounds exciting, please fill out this form to confirm your interest in the role. You will then be automatically emailed a link to the application form, which is due by 28th August. We look forward to hearing from you :)