Role Overview
Precision Development (PxD) is seeking a Director/Associate Director, Research-Informed Delivery to serve as the technical bridge between PxD's Research Professional Group and country/regional program teams. This role ensures that research rigor, evidence standards, and methodological quality are consistently embedded in program design and delivery.
The Director/Associate Director works closely with the Chief Economist and Director of Research to operationalize PxD's research strategy within program teams, and liaises directly with Program Managers, Country Directors, and Researchers to translate research priorities into practical, high-quality program implementation. This includes supporting program and country teams in using evidence and rigorous methodologies when scaling interventions, and determining where additional evidence is needed before scale-up decisions are made.
This is a role suited to someone with a strong background in econometrics and randomized evaluation design, applied to real-world program delivery, who can move fluidly between technical rigor and operational reality, and who brings significant people management experience to lead and develop a growing technical team.
Periodic travel is required, including for organizational meetings, events, and field visits.
About PxD
PxD is a rapidly scaling global non-profit that harnesses the power of technology, data science, and behavioral economics to provide targeted information to farmers in low- and middle-income countries. Providing the right information to the right people, in the right way and at the right time, increases incomes, protects the environment, and improves well-being. We are evidence-based: we test our interventions with randomized controlled trials to prove our impact and cost-effectiveness, to simultaneously learn from and improve our service, and to demonstrate our value to funders and partners. There are few programmes in international development that are as demonstrably cost-effective as ours.
Responsibilities
Evidence-based Program Design
- Serve as the technical bridge between PxD's Research Professional Group and the country/regional program teams.
- Liaise closely with Program Managers, Country Directors, Researchers, and other technical staff to translate research priorities and evidence into practical program implementation.
- Work with the Chief Economist and Director of Research to articulate and operationalize PxD's research strategy and action plans within program teams.
- Represent the research function in conversations with external partners (e.g., implementers, government counterparts, funders, academic partners), ensuring collaboration principles, research standards, and evidence commitments are clearly communicated.
Technical Oversight & Quality Assurance
- Work with senior leadership and technical staff across the organization to support the use of evidence and rigorous methodologies when scaling interventions, and determining where additional evidence is needed before scale-up.
- Provide technical oversight and quality assurance on program-level data collection, survey design, and M&E systems, ensuring these meet PxD's standards for rigor and are fit for research and evidence-generation purposes.
- Identify technical gaps or risks in program delivery that could compromise program impact, research validity or data quality, and work with program and research teams to resolve them.
- Support programs in the design and implementation of research-informed iterations, ensuring evidence from ongoing and completed studies is incorporated into program decision-making.
Team Leadership & Line Management
- Take on significant line management responsibility, leading and developing a team of technical/program liaison staff.
- Set clear performance expectations, provide regular coaching, and build team capacity.
- Provide mentorship and technical guidance, including direct supervision and professional development, to program technical staff on research literacy, evidence use, and data quality practices.
Innovation & Learning
- Support the Research Professional Group in scoping new research and innovation opportunities embedded within program operations, including feasibility assessments and identification of settings suitable for learning.
- Contribute to the development of program-facing tools, guidance, and protocols (e.g., data quality checklists, survey standards, research ethics compliance) that connect research standards to day-to-day program operations, and maintain and update living documentation of program-level technical protocols and standards, ensuring continuity independent of any single team member.
Organizational Contributions
Contribute to and support:
- Research funding proposals and program reports through technical input on program-research integration.
- Internal communications and knowledge-sharing between the Research Professional Group and program teams.
- Institutional knowledge management and internal learning efforts.
Requirements & Qualifications
Note: The seniority level of this hire - Director or Associate Director - will be determined based on how closely a candidate's experience and background match the criteria below.
- Master's degree in economics, agricultural economics, public policy, statistics, or a closely related field (PhD-level training is a plus).
- Significant, demonstrated experience (10+ years) working at the intersection of research and program implementation, ideally within international development or a similar research-driven organization.
- Significant people management experience, including direct supervision of technical or program staff, with a demonstrated ability to build and develop team capacity.
- Strong understanding of economics, econometrics, and randomized evaluations, and how research design translates into program operations.
- Demonstrated experience translating technical research requirements (e.g., sampling, survey design, data quality protocols) into practical guidance for non-technical program staff.
- Confident, clear communicator, able to engage credibly with both researchers and program/country teams, and to mediate between technical rigor and operational constraints.
- Experience with data management and analysis tools (e.g., Stata, R, SurveyCTO or similar) sufficient to assess and troubleshoot data quality issues.
- Strong project management skills, with the ability to manage multiple cross-functional workstreams simultaneously and relationships with external research or implementation partners, including academic collaborators, research institutions, and government agencies.
- Understanding and application of research ethics for human subjects in the social sciences.
- Experience working with country program teams in LMIC contexts, including navigating operational and logistical constraints.
- Ability to coordinate with cross-functional teams - research, program, and country leadership - at a variety of levels.
- Excellent organizational skills, detail-oriented, and able to work both independently and collaboratively.
- Fluency in English. Demonstrated strong oral and written communication skills.
- Ability to work under tight timelines and solve problems creatively.
- Willingness to travel internationally as needed.
