Learning Innovation Associate/Manager
Seeking a highly-motivated, entrepreneurial educator to lead program innovation and delivery of exceptional learning outcomes at an early stage foundational literacy NGO in Uganda. You will use learning data and in-school observations to develop projects and run experiments that increase our impact on student learning. You should be excited for a fast-moving, high-ownership role where you will develop, test, and iterate ideas to improve learning outcomes in our programs. Example projects may include:
- Developing and testing lesson plan content to improve how we teach phonics. You may source and evaluate lessons from other organizations, may develop your own, or may use generative AI to develop content.
- Identifying opportunities to improve teacher support, such as introducing methods to help teachers check for understanding in very large classes.
- Running a/b tests to assess possible improvements to our program model, such as testing the cost-effectiveness of adding student textbooks to our program model.
Job Title: Learning Innovation Associate/Manager [title depending on years and level of experience]
Experience Level: 3-10 years of work experience suggested. At least 2 years of experience as a classroom teacher is required. Additional experience is encouraged, especially in relevant fields such as strategy consulting, entrepreneurship, international development, research, program management, or operations.
Education Required: Minimum of a Bachelor’s degree (in any field), Master’s welcome but not required.
Reports to: Ilana Kessler, Co-founder
Start date: Flexible, ASAP.
Contract status: Full time (40 hours per week). Seeking commitment of a minimum of 1 year, ideally longer.
Location: Eastern Uganda (Jinja or Iganga base, with periodic travel to Kampala.)
Work visa status: Global professionals and Ugandan nationals are encouraged to apply. Must be able to acquire legal work status in Uganda.
Language: Fluent English required.
Salary and Benefits: We are an early stage non-profit, so we aim to keep salaries modest. Compensation will be sufficient to live comfortably but modestly in a town in Uganda and will cover health insurance needs. Exact amounts to be discussed with finalists during the interview process.
How to apply: Please apply by submitting this form. Please apply as soon as possible, as we will consider applications on a rolling basis. We will email you back if you are short-listed to interview for the position.
Who is Learning Alliance:
Who we are:Learning Alliance is a startup international NGO that partners with primary schools in Uganda to simplify teaching and increase learning. Our mission is to help every student master the basic literacy skills they need to be successful at school, in order to have more success in school and more opportunities in life. We are implementing an evidence-based approach called Structured Pedagogy, which has been found to be highly scalable and cost-effective. We provide teachers with step-by-step daily lesson plans to teach English language reading and writing using phonics. The core of our program is the support that we offer teachers through our teacher coaches: Our coaches train teachers on how to use the phonics lesson plans, and then regularly visit classrooms of each teacher to observe and provide mentorship and advice. Our coaches help teachers try out new approaches and instructional routines which are fun and effective, making classrooms a place of joyful learning for students and teachers.
2025 pilot: Learning Alliance has partnered with 75 schools in a district of Eastern Uganda to pilot our program. We are currently a team of 9 staff, including 6 teacher coaches. If the pilot is successful, we expect to grow rapidly, adding more schools, hiring more coaches, and growing our positive impact. The Learning Innovation Associate will play a critical role on our leadership team by identifying barriers to maximizing learning outcomes, and implementing trainings and experiments to improve our effectiveness.
Learning Innovation Associate/Manager
The Learning Innovation Associate/Manager is the primary on-the-ground education strategist in our program, as well as a member of our leadership team. Your primary responsibilities will be observing our program to identify opportunities for improvement, developing trainings for teachers and our coaching staff, and experimenting with program improvements to make Learning Alliance more cost-effective, scalable, and impactful. You will focus on a) helping our coaches deliver a highly impactful program in our pilot year AND b) trying out and systematizing improvements to our program that we can scale up as we grow. In addition, you’ll contribute to a range of team support and management activities as a member of the leadership team in a small, entrepreneurial team.
Job responsibilities:
- Diagnose learning challenges and opportunities for program design (20%): Through in-person observations at schools and teacher trainings, discussion with staff, and analysis of data, identify areas for improvement in learning outcomes. You should expect to spend 1-2 days per week observing in classrooms or training sessions acting as the primary eyes and ears of the organization around how to increase our impact.
- Develop trainings, tools, talking points, and lesson plan content (20%): As we identify trainings that are needed for teachers, coaches, and students, you’ll be responsible for writing the training material, developing any necessary tools, and getting staff feedback before implementing them. A key determinant of success is simplicity: strong trainings and tools should incorporate evidence-based best practices, but should be easy to learn and implement across a training cascade (trainer-of-trainers model). In some cases, you will deliver staff training or professional development. You may explore the use of generative AI for developing structured lesson plans.
- Run innovation projects and A/B tests to improve the program (40%): During our pilot year, we want to explore and try out a lot of ideas to improve the program’s impact, while maintaining simplicity and cost-effectiveness. You’ll help develop, implement, and analyze results from a variety of innovations on the program to help us decide between various program design decisions. For example, you might run an A/B test comparing the cost-effectiveness of holding teacher trainings at schools vs. holding teacher trainings at the central district office. Or, you might try out an idea to engage teachers during the week with advice and training videos on WhatsApp.
- Mentor staff and help run weekly activities (10%): Provide in-person mentorship and professional development to coaches and the Learning Manager (the manager of the coaches). You will help the team plan and run our weekly staff meeting, build camaraderie among our staff, and conduct activities like weekly program data collection and staff work-planning. We have a highly talented team of coaches, and one key Program Associate role is to solicit their insights on program design.
- Support org as needed (10%): As a leadership team member in a startup organization, you’ll have an opportunity to support the team as needed in a variety of ways. We will have some ability to tailor this support to your interests. Example projects may include: developing content for social media, writing grant proposals, vetting various technology solutions, assisting with hiring processes, etc.
Who should apply:
Strong applicants may not meet 100% of the desired skills and strengths. If you have 70% of the items on this list and you’re excited about the role, please apply.
Required Qualifications:
- Experienced teacher. You should have a minimum of 2 years experience teaching, ideally including experience teaching phonics.
- Additional work experience focusing on strategy, program innovation, or data analysis would be helpful, though not required. (Management consulting, research, product development, human centered design, etc.)
- Bachelor’s Degree required (in any field). Additional education welcome but not required.
Desired Skill and Strengths:
- Skilled classroom teacher and mentor, with strong ability to observe in another teacher’s classroom to identify priority opportunities for improvement.
- Strategic and data-driven thinker, with excellent pattern recognition. You move comfortably from insights and data about how individual teachers or coaches could improve to ideas about how to improve the overall program.
- Strong writing and training skills. You can deliver training that is clear, fun, and effective, and can write training in simple, clear ways to be delivered by others.
- Strong relationship-builder. You can work effectively with team members across roles and backgrounds, are interested to seek input and learn from each other.
- Good project manager. You can plan out your initiatives fairly independently, develop materials and timelines, and deliver strong results.
- Creative and Innovative. You often have ideas for improvements that you are excited to test.
- Ideally you have prior experience working in LMICs, or a strong desire to work in and design for extremely low-resource settings.
Personal characteristics:
- Values-driven. Passionate about helping every student learn as a pathway to a better future. (See our values here.)
- Driven self-starter, with strong ability to solve challenges independently as they arise. Hardworking.
- Flexible, innovative, and entrepreneurial, with a desire to try out lots of new ideas, and comfort seeing some of them fail.
- You are eager for professional growth through advice and feedback.
- Excited about program design for cost-effectiveness and scalability, and decision-making based on evidence and data. Open to changing your mind about what works.
Why you should apply:
- Impact at scale: Opportunity to make a huge difference in students’ life prospects by helping them learn to read, and to improve the education system by working with teachers and helping them be more successful. Opportunity to mentor our first group of coaches, and to design a program with potential to scale to hundreds of thousands of students in the coming years.
- Rare org-building and leadership opportunity: Opportunity to be part of building a new organization from scratch, including contributing your ideas in how to design our team culture and innovate on our program offerings. For the right person, we hope that this is a dream job!
- Professional growth: You will be directly managed by one of the co-founders, who is highly experienced in innovation and program design for impact at scale, and who is highly invested in your learning and professional development. As an early stage employee, you’ll have a lot of opportunities to shape your role and work on projects that are of interest to you.
- Team: Positive, collaborative, fun, values-driven, high-trust team.
- Flexibility: This role has a lot of flexibility to set your own schedule, decide your priorities, and (periodically) work in locations of your choosing.
This position was originally posted by Learning Alliance and has been curated by PurposePhil Career. To apply, please visit the original listing on the "apply" link below. We are not affiliated with the employer organization of this job ad or consultancy, and provide this curated listing as a service to our users.
