Programme Manager (Emergency Response)

Emergency Preparedness and Response Leadership

• Lead the design and delivery of LIFT’s emergency response programming in Myanmar, ensuring coherence with LIFT’s 2024–2028 Programme Operational Approach (POA) and its localisation, inclusion, and resilience-building goals.

• Oversee field-based rapid needs assessments during emergencies, coordinating closely with implementing partners, UN agencies, and relevant authorities to ensure evidence-driven prioritization

• Design and deploy fit-for-context emergency response packages (e.g. cash, in-kind support, early recovery inputs) with sensitivity to conflict dynamics, displacement trends, and gendered impacts

• Lead the development of emergency response strategies and standard operating procedures, ensuring timely activation and alignment with global humanitarian standards and UNOPS operational policies

• Serve as the focal point for conceptualizing, launching, and managing emergency-focused calls for proposals, including surge cost extensions or recovery bridging mechanisms

• Coordinate emergency deployments and operational support for implementing partners, ensuring agility and accountability in high-pressure or rapidly evolving contexts

• Anticipate risks to partner delivery in volatile environments and recommend mitigation or reprogramming measures to LIFT senior management and the Fund Board

• Ensure integration of Do-No-Harm principles, gender-responsive approaches, and community engagement across all emergency interventions

• Lead technical review and negotiation of emergency project proposals and budgets, ensuring strategic alignment, value for money, and context appropriateness

• Ensure full compliance with UNOPS policies and emergency delivery protocols, including safety/security, environmental safeguards, and fiduciary controls

• Ensure real-time monitoring systems are in place for emergency response activities, and that MEAL plans are designed to enable timely course correction

• In collaboration with the MEAL team, lead post-response evaluations and after-action reviews, distilling learning and best practices for institutional use

• Capture and communicate field-level insights through internal reports, case studies, or external knowledge products, contributing to LIFT’s thought leadership in emergency preparedness and response

• Develop and maintain a knowledge management system for emergency lessons learned, response models, and contextual risk updates

• Provide technical coaching to partners and LIFT staff on emergency preparedness, delivery standards, humanitarian coordination, and community engagement

• Lead targeted training and simulations to strengthen readiness of partner staff for future emergency activations, especially in high-risk zones

• Strengthen the internal architecture for LIFT’s emergency response, including surge staffing protocols, pre-vetted implementing partners, and emergency budgeting templates

• Promote local actor leadership and inclusive partnerships in all emergency programming, in line with LIFT’s commitment to localisation and GEDSI principles

• Represent LIFT in emergency-related coordination platforms, sector working groups (e.g. Shelter/NFI, Food Security, Early Recovery), and inter-agency forums

• Foster strategic linkages with humanitarian and development actors to ensure complementarity, avoid duplication, and leverage synergies across response efforts

• Support the LIFT Fund Board with updates, strategic briefs, and technical inputs on emergency response contexts and investment options

• Engage with national and sub-national authorities to ensure alignment with government-led coordination and disaster management structures

• An advanced university degree (e.g. Masters) in Agriculture, Rural Development, Natural Resource Management, Political or Social Sciences, or other related fields from an accredited academic institution is required.

• A first-level university degree (e.g. Bachelor's) in the above fields with an additional two years of relevant professional experience may be accepted in lieu of a Master’s degree.

• A minimum of 5 years of progressive experience in the Myanmar context in emergency response, humanitarian work or programme management is required.

• Experience with strategic planning, results-based management and reporting, formulation and monitoring of projects/programmes, in complex contexts is required. 

• Experience in conducting crisis assessments and partner coordination is required.

• Vast knowledge of the local context (Geopolitical, Social, economic) is required. 

• Experience with LIFT thematic areas (nutrition, food security, etc.) is highly desirable.

• Experience in international organizations and/or international contexts is an advantage.

• Experience in the usage of computers and office software packages (e.g. MS Office newer versions) is required. Experience with Google Suite is highly preferred.

• Fluency in both written and spoken English and Burmese is required.