Monitoring, Evaluation & Data Lead (Maternity Cover, 6+ months)

Lead reporting and data priorities

• Oversee incoming data, analysis and reporting requests from across Apolitical, distinguishing between needs colleagues can self-serve and those requiring dedicated Data team support.
• Work with our data and analytics engineers to set priorities for reporting, analysis and data-modelling work.
• Turn business, delivery and evaluation questions into clear requirements for the Data team, clarifying ambiguous requests and making trade-offs when priorities compete.
• Help colleagues understand what our data can — and cannot — tell us, so evidence is used appropriately in decision-making.

Build measurement into our work from the start

• Partner with Delivery, Partnerships, Learning, Product and Engineering as new programmes, partnerships, products and learning experiences are developed.
• Identify evaluation, tracking, survey and reporting requirements early enough for them to be designed into the work rather than addressed retrospectively.
• Bring together partner requirements, contractual commitments and internal priorities into a realistic programme of evaluation and data work.
• Help strengthen how Apolitical thinks about and demonstrates impact across our work.
• Contribute to evaluation of commercial and delivery feasibility and proactively surface complexities.

You won’t be

• Line-managing the Data team. This role provides prioritisation, direction and quality oversight, rather than people management.
• Working as a data engineer. You don’t need to write production code or own our technical data infrastructure.
• Doing evaluation in isolation. You’ll work across a stakeholder-rich organisation and will often need to reconcile different perspectives and priorities.
• Working from a perfectly predictable queue of requests. New partner, programme and business needs will emerge, and part of your role is deciding what matters most.

Onboarding milestones

Timelines may vary depending on individual onboarding and support needs, but we expect most team members to achieve the following milestones:

Within one month, you will…

• Understand our live programme portfolio, key partner and funder commitments, and upcoming reporting deadlines.
• Complete the handover with the current post-holder (going on leave beginning in November) and build strong working relationships across Data, Delivery, Partnerships, Learning and Product.
• Understand our existing measurement approaches, surveys, reporting workflows and core tools.
• Take ownership of the evaluation and reporting priorities that need to be delivered during the maternity-cover period.

Within three months, you will…

• Independently lead evaluation and reporting across the programme portfolio, delivering high-quality outputs against contractual and funder commitments.
• Establish a clear and trusted process for prioritising incoming data, analysis and reporting requests.
• Work with programme teams to ensure measurement requirements are being identified early in new work.
• Identify practical opportunities to improve the consistency, quality or usefulness of our surveys, reporting or evaluation processes.

Within six months, you will…

• Be the trusted organisational lead for monitoring, evaluation and impact reporting, with colleagues and partners confident in the evidence behind our work.
• Have strengthened at least one significant aspect of how Apolitical collects, analyses or communicates evidence of impact.
• Demonstrate how evaluation and data have informed programme delivery or organisational decision-making.
• Have our major reporting commitments and evaluation priorities in good shape for a smooth handover at the end of the contract.

About you

This is a great fit if you…

• Have significant experience in monitoring, evaluation and reporting, including designing approaches to measuring programme outcomes and impact.
• Have delivered contractual, grant or funder reporting against defined requirements and outcomes.
• Are confident working hands-on with data and reporting tools. We use BigQuery, ThoughtSpot, Google Sheets and SurveySparrow, among others, but you don’t need to write production code.
• Have designed and managed surveys and other evaluation data collection and understand good practice around measurement, tracking and data quality.
• Can move comfortably between the detail of data and evaluation work and the bigger question of what a programme, partner or organisation actually needs to know.
• Combine rigour with pragmatism: you know when measurement needs greater depth and when a proportionate approach will give us what we need.
• Are good at prioritising competing requests and comfortable making judgement calls when there isn’t a single right answer.
• Communicate evidence and evaluation approaches clearly to technical and non-technical audiences, including senior colleagues and external partners.
• Enjoy working across teams, bringing structure to ambiguity and helping other people make confident, evidence-based decisions.
• Are comfortable joining a scale-up where priorities change rapidly, and processes will continue to evolve.

Let us know in your CV if you have…

• Worked with governments, multilateral organisations or foundation partners.
• Worked on international development or other funder-led programmes.
• Developed or improved organisation-wide approaches to monitoring, evaluation or impact measurement.
• Experience combining quantitative evidence with interviews, testimonials or other qualitative approaches to understand impact.
• Have experience working with Data, Product or Engineering teams and can translate business or evaluation needs into clear requirements for technical colleagues.

This likely won’t be the right role if you…

• Want to focus primarily on advanced analytics, data engineering or writing production code. Those are not the core responsibilities of this role.
• Want a people-management position. You’ll provide direction and prioritisation to data work, but you won’t have direct reports.
• Prefer to receive clearly defined analysis requests rather than working out what should be measured, why it matters and what evidence is proportionate.
• Prefer a highly predictable roadmap. We work with partners, programmes and products whose needs can change, and you’ll need to make thoughtful trade-offs as priorities compete.
• Prefer evaluation to sit separately from programme and product delivery. We want measurement designed into our work from the beginning, which means collaborating closely across teams.