Associate Research and Policy Manager at Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA)

Reports to: Associate Director Policy

Job Summary

• IPA Nigeria is seeking an Associate Research & Policy Manager to collaborate closely with a broad range of partners to strengthen their capacity to use evidence to improve programs and policies. 
• The role will involve supporting Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEL) capacity strengthening and working with sector stakeholders to build sustained buy-in for a culture of evidence generation and use. 
• The Associate Research & Policy Manager will engage across institutions to design and implement analytical approaches that inform decision-making and enhance the use of data in policy and program development. 
• This position requires strong data science and analytical expertise, including the ability to manage and analyse large and complex datasets, design analytical frameworks, and develop visual and reporting systems that translate raw data into clear, actionable insights for diverse audiences. 
• The successful candidate will combine technical analytical skills with policy acumen and experience supporting partners to apply evidence in real-world decision-making contexts. 

Responsibilities

Workplan Management and Reporting:

• Collaborate with the partner’s team to develop a shared work plan, ensuring alignment with project goals and effective implementation.
• Support with other project management tasks, including progress tracking, financial oversight, and internal and donor reporting.

Stakeholder Management:

• Cultivate relationships with key local top-level decision-makers and ensure the project has their sustained buy-in and input.
• Coordinate project activities alongside technical staff from the partner in a learning-by-doing approach, fostering active engagement throughout the process.
• Promote engagement to raise awareness of the lab and encourage collaborative efforts for collective impact.

Generating Relevant Evidence:

• Lead the co-creation of a policy-driven research agenda for the regulatory partners, and guide the development of analytically rigorous research projects that generate actionable, data-driven insights.
• Facilitate engagement with local and international academics and technical experts to strengthen our partners’ policy-driven research agendas, including advancing robust analytical methods and data use.
• Identify and develop opportunities to leverage administrative and other large-scale datasets for policy-relevant research, including structuring data access, preparing datasets for analysis, and connecting local and international researchers to pursue these opportunities.
• Manage research projects end-to-end: define research objectives and analytical frameworks, develop protocols, oversee data collection and management systems, supervise statistical analysis, and ensure data quality, reproducibility, and methodological rigor at all stages.
• Provide hands-on technical leadership in collecting, cleaning, structuring, integrating, and analysing large and complex administrative or survey datasets, applying reproducible workflows and best practices in data management.
• Design and deliver hands-on workshops to build partners’ capacity in data engineering and analytics, including data pipelines, data merging and wrangling, statistical analysis, and dashboard or visual tool development, using platforms such as Power BI, Tableau, Stata, R, or Python.
• Develop and implement analytical and data-visualisation systems (dashboards) that translate raw data into clear, actionable insights for decision-makers, including automated reporting and interactive dashboards where appropriate.
• Establish and institutionalise standard operating procedures, documentation, and reproducible analytical workflows so partner staff can independently maintain, update, and scale data systems over time.
• Sharing Evidence to Inform Program Design and Delivery
• Share existing evidence to inform partner’s program design and delivery.
• Develop user-friendly data dashboards, visualizations, or summaries for top-level decision-makers, ensuring that complex results are accessible and directly inform program design.
• Produce policy briefs on key policy questions.
• Work together with the partner, the project team, sector team, global policy and communications teams to lead and/or participate in strategic events for policy purposes, including but not limited to summits, conferences, workshops, technical working groups, and round tables.
• In collaboration with researchers and in support of the country director, represent IPA locally in policy conversations and at events.

Exploring Program Institutionalization:

• Engage with the partner’s leadership to explore opportunities to institutionalize the lab for sustainability.

Qualifications

• Master’s Degree in International Public Policy, Economics, Statistics, Data Science,Social Sciences, or a related field, with 5 – 7 years of relevant professional experience.
• Exceptional candidates who do not meet these criteria may be considered.
• Strong proficiency in statistical and analytical software (e.g., Stata, R, or Python) for data cleaning, management, analysis, and visualisation.
• Demonstrated experience designing and building dashboards and data visualisation tools using platforms such as Power BI or Tableau, with the ability to translate complex data into actionable insights.
• Experience working with large and complex administrative datasets, including data integration, structuring, and analysis, and experience building or supporting automated data pipelines or reporting systems.
• Hands-on experience designing, strengthening, or implementing Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEL) systems, including data collection, management, and analysis frameworks.
• Proven ability to manage multiple research or analytical projects simultaneously, including planning timelines, coordinating stakeholders, and managing deliverables and budgets, preferably in a development or public policy context.
• Strong grounding in quantitative and qualitative research methods, including experience applying rigorous analytical approaches to inform policy or program decisions.
• Demonstrated ability to train, coach, or mentor others in data analysis, statistics, or MEL systems, including building institutional capacity for data use.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to translate technical analysis into clear, structured, and policy-relevant insights for non-technical audiences.
• Experience working with government institutions or regulatory agencies is highly desirable.
• Superior analytical, quantitative, and conceptual thinking skills.
• Willingness to be a team player and identify connections between work streams.
• Cultural and political sensitivity and demonstrated ability to work successfully with diverse constituencies.
• Passion for making data-driven decision-making a reality in the development sector.