Technical Advisor II – Emergency Response and Recovery Surge Support, East and Southern Africa (ESARO)

Role Overview

The Technical Advisor II – Emergency Response and Recovery Surge Support for East and Southern Africa (ESARO) is a field-oriented emergency response generalist who provides rapid deployment program quality, management, and leadership surge support to CRS country programs within ESARO during sudden-onset and protracted emergencies. The role is embedded in HRD’s Emergency Program Response Team (EPRT) and reports to the Regional Focal Point for Emergency Response for ESARO, contributing to high-quality emergency response and recovery programming in line with CRS program quality principles, donor requirements, and humanitarian best practices.

Key Responsibilities

• Surge Support: Provide rapid deployment surge support to ESARO country programs during humanitarian responses, delivering practical program quality and management accompaniment.
• Emergency Management: Work with the country programs to provide acting emergency program management/leadership roles and support set-up/management of emergency field offices, teams, and relief operations as requested during deployments.
• Technical Solutions: Provide technical solutions to country teams (remote and onsite) for emergency program planning, start-up, implementation, and close-out, ensuring alignment with CRS program quality principles/standards, donor guidelines, and good practices.
• Project Design: Lead high-quality project design incorporating project management standards and MEAL methods, appropriate to scope, context, and technical requirements of projects.
• Strategy Development: Contribute to the development and implementation of regional/CP strategies, standards, tools, and best practices in Emergency Response and Recovery that effectively engage partners, donors, and governments. Help ensure a cross-sectoral approach integrating gender, safe and dignified programming, and disaster risk reduction.
• Knowledge Sharing & Learning: Contribute to regional knowledge sharing by documenting lessons learned, promising practices, and response innovations from deployments and sharing with the RFP and relevant HRD and regional stakeholders. Contribute to knowledge management and learning through collecting and analyzing program data, evaluating strategic projects, assisting with measuring program impact, capturing and sharing lessons learned, and conducting research.
• Capacity Strengthening: Support country programs to apply program design and implementation standards, partnership principles, and MEAL approaches to ensure high-quality implementation. Contribute to capacity strengthening initiatives in Emergency Response and Recovery programming for staff and partners through mentoring, coaching, and developing training strategies and curricula.
• Representation: Represent CRS and partners at cluster, donor, and coordination meetings in the field as requested.

Qualifications and Experience

Basic Requirements

• Education: Bachelor’s degree in international development, Disaster Response, or a related field is required.
• Experience: Minimum of eight years of relevant international working experience in an advisory or management role with progressive responsibilities, ideally with an international NGO. This must include a minimum of three years working for programming interventions in Emergency Response and Recovery program management.
• Technical Writing & Proposals: Previous experience providing technical assistance and developing successful proposals for external donor funding is required. Experience in business development, project design, and proposal development in emergency response, including technical writing.
• M&E Experience: Experience with program monitoring and evaluation, including applying data collection tools and methodologies, data analysis, and data presentation.

Preferred Requirements

• Master’s degree in international development, disaster response, or a related field is an advantage.
• Experience in complex/conflict-affected contexts in East and Southern Africa.
• Knowledge of Humanitarian principles, standards, and systems, with specific knowledge of CRS and Caritas Internationalis emergency programming and standards a plus.
• Experience with and enthusiasm for coaching, mentoring, and on-the-job training.
• Practical knowledge/skills in Information and Community Technology (ICT) and Information Management.

Travel Requirements

Must be willing and able to travel up to 50% (i.e., 6 months out of the year); duration of a deployment will generally be from 2 to 8 weeks, depending on the needs of the country program. Should have the capacity to live and work in difficult/stressful environments and serve wherever agency needs dictate.