Research Specialist

The Policy Innovation Centre (PIC) is the first national institutionalized behavioral initiative in Africa supporting government and stakeholders to make behaviorally informed decisions and generate evidence for impact-driven interventions in critical thematic areas (Governance, Health, Gender & Social Inclusion, Education, Digital & Financial Inclusion). The PIC is positioned to support the delivery of better policies and innovative solutions for high-impact interventions across Africa. The PIC is an initiative of the Nigeria Economic Summit Group (NESG), a leading think tank in Africa redefining evidence-based policy advocacy. 

The Policy Innovation Centre seeks to hire a highly motivated Research Specialist to support research projects at the PIC.

Responsibilities:

• Contribute to the vision and technical direction of PIC’s projects to ensure the donors’ project goals, objectives, and requirements are fulfilled.
• Work closely with the Executive Director, program/management staff, and study investigators and contribute to overseeing the operations of the PIC’s evaluation and research activities.
• Develop and nurture partnerships with donors, other collaborating implementation partners, and key stakeholders at national and state levels to ensure efficient project implementation and utilization of results. 
• Work closely with the projects’ technical team to synthesize and disseminate key results, programmatic lessons learned, and other project outputs.
•  Oversee the documentation and dissemination of the project’s findings, best practices, and learnings stemming from various project initiatives. 
• Mobilize national research networks and relevant assets within and across partners.
• Identify and promote cutting-edge SBC research, including quantitative and qualitative research and analysis.
• Ensure high-quality research by contributing to the design and execution of research protocols and overseeing the implementation of research studies.
• Develop innovative research approaches that strengthen the quality of proposals and position PIC as an innovative research organization.
• Develop new areas of research for PIC by expanding current portfolios to be responsive to evolving evidence and policy/practice gaps within the African context.

Qualifications/Job Requirements:

• Minimum of Master’s degree in Public Health, Social /Behavioral Sciences, Policy Research
• Minimum of 4 -7 years experience in quantitative, qualitative, and/or mixed methods research with evidence of leading   evaluation studies
• Qualitative analysis skills and proficiency in at least one of the following: NVIVO, Atlas Ti, and other qualitative data analysis software.
• Quantitative analysis skills and proficiency in at least one of the following: SPSS, Stata, Excel, and SAS. Knowledge of R, Python, and other quantitative software is desirable.
• Ability to synthesize information, conduct literature reviews, write high-quality technical and research reports, policy and learning briefs, and peer-reviewed articles.
• Experience supervising and leading research teams in all aspects of research implementation
• Ability to work efficiently and commitment to collaboration in achieving results
• Self-directing and able to use own initiative to make decisions and identify solutions to problems not previously experienced.

How To Apply:

Please send your CV of no more than 2 A4 pages (Minimum font size 10) AND an accompanying covering letter of no more than 2 pages (Minimum font size 10) answering the following questions to pic@nesgroup.org, with the Job Title as the Subject and the following:

• What is your motivation for wanting to join the PIC?
• What are the top three key attributes you would bring to the PIC?