The Technical Advisor Nutrition for MENAU and Asia will provide expert, high-quality technical assistance to country programs across the Middle East, North Africa, Ukraine, and Asia regions. This role supports both ongoing and new nutrition initiatives, ensuring programs are evidence-based, contextually appropriate, and aligned with the International Rescue Committee’s (IRC) standards, policies, and core values.
What You'll Do
- Advise on and/or provide hands-on support on assessments, including application and contextualization of technical standards.
- Substantially contribute to the design/development of theories of change and results frameworks, and other proposal technical content.
- Support the in-country technical lead(s) in analyzing relevant information, including available M&E and client feedback data, to prepare for design meetings/conversations.
- Participate in project design meetings for all relevant proposals.
- Advise on program modalities and strategic partnership development based on evidence, scale considerations, and how we can best support, complement, and reinforce local systems.
- Review and validate design meeting decisions around technical design quality, including alignment of narratives, log-frames, and budgets to IRC standards and outcomes.
- Promote and support design collaboration with partners and clients and integration of safe, inclusive, and transformative programming approaches.
- Review proposals before submission to the donor (as required in certain circumstances, play a larger role in proposal technical narrative writing).
- Participate in technical discussions with potential donors and partners as needed/requested.
- Ensure alignment of proposals with global nutrition evidence and frameworks (WHO, UNICEF, SUN, etc.) and support innovative and digital nutrition interventions where feasible.
- Contribute regional reflections in Nutrition Global Practice Area strategic framing, including global priority setting and malnutrition Impact Scale planning, based on in-depth knowledge of regional strengths and needs.
- Participate in and contribute technical input Country Program Strategy Action Plans and related country-level health strategies, ensuring Nutrition components are of high technical quality and well-integrated into broader strategic priorities.
- Lead and/or contribute to regional partnerships with key regional stakeholders as appropriate, helping to shape regional strategic opportunities.
- Contribute to and/or lead global and regional Concept Note development and prepare regional technical portfolio snapshots for internal planning and external communication.
- Collaborate with Global Practice Team Leads and specialists to develop global health tools, concepts, and resources based on professional interest and subject matter expertise.
- Support knowledge sharing and thought leadership by contributing to technical publications, policy briefs, and presentations on regional nutrition innovations, challenges, and best practices where appropriate.
- Contribute to the delivery of broader Health TU strategic priorities.
- Represent IRC in key regional and/or global technical meetings as necessary.
- Support country programs with the recruitment, onboarding, and training of technical coordinators and other key nutrition program staff or consultants.
- Assess and provide feedback on program quality to inform improvements, adaptations, and critical learning, providing follow up support to country programs as needed.
- Work with Health TU teams to develop systems for monitoring progress on quality improvement and quality of care and support monitoring and compliance with global standards and IRC guidelines.
- Collaborate with country program colleagues to monitor and analyze key indicators to inform periodic review, program adaptation, and course-correction as needed.
- Provide technical capacity strengthening through ongoing mentoring, coaching, and trainings with country program focal points.
- Review and share nutrition program-specific tools/resources/curricula.
- Participate in joint regional TA meetings and share updates on nutrition programming in the relevant countries and global initiatives.
- Collaborate with other TAs within the region to promote integrated programming leadership, within the Health TU, with other sectors (VPR, ERD, Education) and with multi-country project management units.
- Support countries/regions to document and share key program learnings.
- Coordinate with Nutrition TAs in other regions to strengthen cross-country and cross-regional learning and peer exchange on identified technical topics.
- Plan and lead/coordinate delivery of group capacity building in the regions, identify asynchronous and synchronous learning opportunities for Health Unit and country program technical staff.
- Collaborate with the Quality in Emergencies team and Emergencies Management Unit (EMU) counterparts during emergency classifications to support country programs to assess, design and implement high quality programming in acute emergency situations.
- Contribute to global learning and evidence agenda and refresh the sectoral evidence base in collaboration with global and regional staff to influence approaches.
- Maintain currency with sectoral best practices through continual learning and development.
- Contribute to publications and peer-reviewed articles documenting technical and research findings from IRC’s nutrition implementation.
- Facilitate regional /cross regional nutrition learning networks/forums, and as needed collaborate with the Global Practice team in designing context-specific capacity building materials/activities.
What We're Looking For
- Minimum of 6-8 years of relevant experience in implementing and/or managing health programs with strong experience/background in Nutrition.
- On the ground programmatic experience in a service delivery organization, NGO or comparable international agency.
- Experience and familiarity with related donors, peer agencies and national contexts, preferably in humanitarian, post-crisis, or climate-impacted contexts.
- Demonstrated expertise in technical program design, monitoring and evaluation, with the ability to turn concepts and strategy into measurable action.
- Excellent verbal and written communications skills in English.
- Strong organizational and time-management skills; proven ability to prioritize and deliver projects on time and independently.
- Technical capacity building and mentorship skills.
- Demonstrated ability to navigate a dynamic, cross-functional, global team structure in a large multi-national organization.
- Strong cross-cultural communication and ability to collaborate effectively across diverse teams.
- Strong analytical and problem-solving abilities, including the capacity to interpret complex data, identify key issues, and develop practical, evidence-based solutions.
- Demonstrated ability to work effectively with internal and external stakeholders at all levels.
- Highly proficient in Microsoft Office suite.
- Ability to manage and work through change.
Nice to Have
- Experience in technical tools and materials development, monitoring and evaluation, and research in relation to environmental health.
- Familiarity with nutrition-specific and nutrition-sensitive program monitoring, evaluation, and learning frameworks.
- Experience in strategy development and working across sectors or disciplines.
- Experience working in/understanding MENAU and Asia regional or country contexts.
- Arabic language skills are an asset.
Team & Environment
- Part of a dynamic team of professionals within Regional TU teams comprised of a Regional Lead and Technical Advisors (TAs), aligned with Technical Units (TUs) including Health; Economic Recovery and Development (ERD); Education; and Violence Prevention and Response (VPR), and supporting units for MEAL, policy and advocacy, and partnerships and program development.
- Reports to the Regional Health Lead for MENAU, with coordination with the Asia Regional Health Lead.
Benefits & Compensation
- Compensation, equity, and additional benefits details are not specified.
Work Mode
- Position is only open to national candidates for each country.
- National position based in an IRC MENAU or Asia location.
The International Rescue Committee is an equal opportunity employer. We value diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees, grounded in our core values of sustainability, humanity, dignity, hope, solutions-oriented mindset, passionate change-making, accountability, quality, ethical practice, inclusivity, equity, and collaboration.
