Technical Director - Engagement and Strategic Planning

The Technical Director for Engagement and Strategic Planning (TD - ESP) will be responsible for achieving the objectives in the engagement, strategic planning and decision-making leadership functions of the USAID project SHIPP (SEXUAL HIV PREVENTION PROGRAM).

As part of SHIPP’s senior leadership management team, the Technical Director for Engagement and Strategic Planning provides national technical guidance in the engagement and strategic planning of HIV prevention programs implemented in partnership with SANAC, NDOH, DBE and DSD and manages team members.

Key Responsibilities:

• Lead the Stakeholder Engagement Team and the Strategic Planning and Decision-making Team and ensure that the South African Government (SAG) departments’ capacity building needs in these areas are identified and addressed through the SAG collaboration plan and through specific activities in the annual work-plans.
• Develop, implement, and oversee an overall integrated Strategic Information plan in line with the SHIPP annual work-plans
• Provide strategic leadership for the SHIPP technical team project staff, and interface with the Chief of Party, USAID and Futures Group HQ to monitor program progress.
• Lead and support technical support to partners and provinces to develop their capacity for HIV Prevention programs
• Provides technical leadership in the design, execution, and ongoing review of project strategy to ensure that benchmarks of success are met.
• Support strategic planning, the development of work plans and results reporting for the project.
• Coordinate planning processes of the team.Direct quality control mechanisms for all technical deliverables.
• Develop and lead the implementation of capacity building, by planning and negotiating scopes of work with the appropriate departments of the SAG
• Work with the Deputy Chief of Party for Operations to recruit, hire, train and second staff to different requesting SAG departments and levels.
• Collaborate with the Technical Director for Gender Integration to ensure that staff are prepared to incorporate gender into HIV prevention at all levels. Organize a feedback loop from the community, district and national levels where staff are seconded, to SHIPP project management to enable identified needs for training or TA to be addressed. This will include both mentoring and training the seconded staff as well as collaborating with seconded staff and their departments to plan and implement capacity building support activities for SAG
• Ensure that all objectives of the annual work-plans are met and flag any critical delay to the Chief of Party
• Effectively communicate the SHIPP strategy to partners, stakeholders and management team
• Contribute to the SHIPP M&E plan, focusing on indicators and milestones.  He/she will be responsible for quality assurance and overall integrity of the SHIPP activities/program, including the management of quality outputs in keeping with project specification, scope, milestones, key performance areas and deliverables.
• Guide staff in preparing reports in accordance with approved reporting formats and ensure timely submission.

 Requirements:

• Applicants must be experienced in addressing the special challenges of HIV combination prevention programming described in the above program description, as demonstrated by at least 8 years of experience designing, implementing, and managing large, complex public health projects in/for developing countries.
• Experience with HIV and AIDS programs is highly desirable.
• Strong interpersonal, writing and oral presentation skills in English are also required.
• Master’s Degree or higher in public health, business administration, international development, or a related advanced degree is required.
• Two years’ experience living or working in a developing country.
• Fluency/ proficiency in a second African official language are desired.

Applications close on 9th August 2013. 

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