GiveDirectly (GD) aims to reshape international giving – and millions of lives – by providing cash grants directly to the world’s poorest. The Brookings Institution estimates that $70B of cash transfers would be required to eliminate the poverty gap; the aid sector currently spends $135B each year, much of it on evidence-free interventions. GiveDirectly wants to change that, establishing cash transfers as a benchmark for foreign aid – as the index fund is a benchmark for the financial industry – and in the process accelerating the end of extreme poverty.
Job Description
Lead Global Emergency Response Delivery
- Oversee implementation of Emergency Response programs from activation, program design, cash delivery, followup and closure.
- Collaborate with the rest of the Emergency Response product function to establish and continuously improve operational standards for field execution (e.g., targeting, verification, payments, M&E, etc).
- Manage multiple simultaneous deployments, ensuring delivery speed and recipient experience meet our program standards.
- Serve as the directly responsible individual (DRI) for cash delivery during active responses, coordinating across functions to unblock issues in real time.
- Ensure alignment with GD’s standards, including protection, data security, financial procedures and safeguarding.
Build and Manage the Emergency Response Delivery Team
- Recruit, train, and coach a high-performing team capable of repeatedly deploying on short notice.
- Develop clear career pathways, performance goals, and preparedness benchmarks.
- Create and maintain deployment rosters, surge pools, role profiles and equipment standards.
Drive Organizational Preparedness
- Lead the development and continuous improvement of delivery operational playbooks, SOPs, and readiness tools.
- Partner with Product, Tech and Global Support Services teams to ensure systems readiness and improvement by contributing to the prioritization of investments and solutions.
- Track and report on readiness metrics.
- Ensure a culture of learning and continuous improvement by leading regular lessons learned processes and supporting a prioritization of people, process and technology investments to improve Emergency Response speed and quality.
Ensure Safety and Risk Management
- Act as the global safety focal point for Emergency Response delivery operations.
- Oversee staff security and duty of care during deployments, in partnership with GD’s Safety & Security and People teams.
- Oversee risk assessments before and during field activations.
- Support after-action reviews and continuous improvement of safety protocols.
Represent GiveDirectly and Strengthen Partnerships
- Engage with external humanitarian partners, donors, and coordination clusters as a representative of GD’s operational delivery capabilities.
- Collaborate with internal stakeholders (Product, Legal, Finance, Partnerships) to ensure operational feasibility and compliance.
- Contribute to donor reporting, proposals, and communications by sharing operational insights and field impact stories.
Job Requirement
- Deep commitment to GiveDirectly’s values and belief in the dignity and autonomy of people living in poverty.
- 10+ years of experience in humanitarian programming, with significant time spent in field-based roles managing multi-country or large-scale operations.
- Significant experience working in challenging humanitarian contexts and overseeing security and risk management frameworks.
- Excellent judgement in fast-paced crisis settings.
- Strong understanding of humanitarian systems, including coordination mechanisms (UN clusters, INGO networks), donor engagement, and response frameworks.
- Proven experience designing and managing cash and voucher assistance (CVA) or similar direct aid programs.
- Demonstrated leadership, problem solving, and critical thinking in high-pressure, uncertain environments.
- A willingness to reimagine humanitarian and emergency response assistance approaches and technologies.
- Excellent cross-cultural communication and ability to lead diverse, distributed teams.
- Commitment to fostering inclusivity and equity, both internally and externally.
- Fluency in English (required), additional languages such as French preferred
Method of Application
Meet the Qualifications? Apply now at GiveDirectly on job-boards.greenhouse.io