Johannesburg: Senior Learning and Experiments Manager (CPT or JHB) posted by DataFin Recruitment

ENVIRONMENT:

LEAD the design and implementation of developmental evaluations and rapid experiments to enhance programme effectiveness and responsiveness as the next Senior Learning and Experiments Manager sought by a Community Upliftment Programme. You will synthesise insights to support leadership and staff in sense-making and decision-making and foster a culture of continuous learning and innovation across the programme and its network. You will also be responsible for designing and facilitating reflective practices, learning loops, and adaptive management processes to drive programme improvements and strategic coherence. Applicants must possess a Masters Degree or equivalent in Monitoring & Evaluation, Social Sciences, Public Policy, or a related field with 5 years experience in Monitoring, Evaluation, Research and Learning (MERL), developmental evaluation, and/or adaptive management in complex organisational contexts.

DUTIES:

Design and lead rapid experiments & nimble evaluations

• Together with the SDI Team Head, drive the design and execution of developmental evaluations and nimble experiments to improve effectiveness and responsiveness.
• Develop and implement fit-for-purpose monitoring and evaluation frameworks that align with strategic goals and learning priorities.
• Establish and refine key performance indicators (KPIs) and feedback mechanisms to track programme progress and impact.
• Support teams to design and implement rapid cycle learning and experimentation processes to test and adapt programme models.
• Ensure that evaluation findings and experimental insights are synthesised into actionable recommendations.

Strengthen monitoring and performance measurement

• Together with the SDI Team Head, drive the development and management of monitoring frameworks and tools to track programme performance and network-wide impact.
• Enhance the use of data dashboards and performance reports to support real-time decision-making.
• Enable data collection, analysis, and interpretation across the network.
• Build capacity across teams to engage with performance data, identify gaps, and take corrective action.
• Facilitate alignment between MERL frameworks and funder expectations, reporting needs, and organisational strategy.

Support systems thinking and strategic coherence

• Synthesise data and insights to support leadership in sense-making, decision-making, and action-taking.
• Enable teams to apply systems thinking approaches to understand complex programme dynamics and improve strategic alignment.
• Promote coherence and alignment between monitoring, evaluation, learning, and strategy, seeking to ensure that theory of change is embedded into how decisions are made.

Enhance data-driven decision-making

• Collaborate with the Data, Sense-Making, and Insights Team to strengthen data governance, integrity, and accessibility.
• Support the development of data feedback loops that enable real-time learning and adaptation.
• Build team and partner capacity to engage with and interpret data for programme improvement and strategic decision-making.
• Ensure that MERL data is integrated into organisational decision-making and strategy development.

Support network-wide adaptive learning and innovation

• Co-create the conditions for network-wide rapid learning, iterative experimentation, and collective intelligence.
• Drive the use of insights from MERL activities to inform programme design, scaling decisions, and innovation.
• Develop feedback mechanisms to ensure that insights from experiments and evaluations are used to improve programme models.
• Foster a culture of disciplined innovation and structured experimentation across the network.
• Develop and implement mechanisms for capturing and sharing lessons learned across the organisation and network.
• Facilitate learning exchanges and peer-to-peer knowledge-sharing to build collective intelligence.

Collaboration

• Work closely with the Innovation & Learning Portfolio, Programme Teams, and Development & Partnerships to align MERL activities with strategic priorities.
• Capacity Building: Develop and deliver training on MERL methodologies, adaptive management, and data interpretation.
• Ethics and Integrity: Ensure that MERL activities adhere to data governance, ethical standards, and regulatory requirements.
• Change Management: Support teams and partners in adopting MERL tools, frameworks, and practices.

REQUIREMENTS:

Qualifications

• Minimum Masters Degree or equivalent in Monitoring & Evaluation, Social Sciences, Public Policy, or a related field.

Experience/Skills

• At least 5 years of experience in MERL, developmental evaluation, and/or adaptive management in complex organisational contexts.
• Experience conducting experiments/studies/evaluations (e.g. developmental evaluations, rapid-cycle experiments, etc.)
• Excellent English writing skills, with a proven ability to synthesise complex data into actionable insights for strategic decision-making.
• Experience working with social impact organisations, programmes, or networks.
• Expertise in developmental evaluation, adaptive management, and rapid-cycle learning.
• Strong analytical and synthesis skills, with the ability to generate insights from complex data.
• Knowledge of Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEL) frameworks and tools.
• Capacity to design and facilitate reflective practices, learning loops, and adaptive strategies.
• Familiarity with systems thinking and strategic coherence approaches.
• Strong stakeholder engagement and capacity-building skills.
• Advantageous: Proficiency with data analysis and visualisation tools (e.g., Power BI) and Microsoft Dynamics 365 and/or similar CRM software.

Advantageous

• Fluency in one or more African languages.
• Experience in, or familiarity with, Early Learning, ECD, Education, Public Health, etc.

ATTRIBUTES:

Behaving & Learning

• Behaving trustworthily: being reliable, accepting, open, congruent (i.e. integrity).
• Learning curiously, incl. learning how by doing differently –
• Clear curiosity (asking questions, questioning assumptions, doing differently, trying things)
• Track record of learning
• Openness to & appetite for feedback
• Familiarity with and curiosity about –
• Societal scale
• Systems doing-and-thinking
• Design thinking & iterative designing
• Driving to succeed

Relating & Adapting –

• Building trusting relationships.
• Playing role(s)-across-contexts adaptively.
• Creating the conditions for and facilitating peoples thinking diversely and doing good work together.
• Co-building & communicating coherence unendingly.
• Reprioritising continually.

Developing Self –

• Acknowledging ones own relative strengths (& weaknesses).
• Seeing & navigating rhetoric vs reality.
• Navigating ambiguity.
• Coping with stress caused by the above.

Developing Systems Doing-and-Thinking.

Seeing, synthesising, sense-making and influencing –

• The big picture / story, incl. emergent phenomena.
• The relations between wholes & parts.
• Patterns across space and over time.
• Feedback loops (circular causation).
• Boundaries and working across them appropriately.

Sophisticated problem-solving, incl. distinguishing complicated from complex problems & contexts –

• Scan and synthesise disparate sources of information.
• If complicated: sense-analyse-respond.
• If complex: probe-sense-respond.