Director of Technology at Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA)

• Define and steward IT strategy and governance
• Develop and maintain IPA’s IT strategy, ensuring it adjusts to organizational priorities, resource constraints, compliance obligations and operational realities across a distributed, multi-country environment.
• Own IPA’s IT governance framework - policies, standards, and controls covering security, access management, data governance, acceptable use, vendor management, and emerging technologies.
• Ensure governance is practical, compliant with regulatory and donor requirements, and proportionate to organizational risk and operational realities. Policies should be enforceable and understood across country offices, not just documented.
• Advise senior leadership on technology risks, investment decisions, and compliance obligations in clear, non-technical terms.
• Evaluate emerging technologies - including AI and automation - and recommend responsible, mission-aligned adoption pathways.
• Lead the IT function and its people
• Manage, develop, and retain a team of six IT professionals, including systems administrators, data engineers, and support staff, providing clear direction, regular feedback, and opportunities for growth.
• Recruit for capability gaps and build toward a team structure where technical domains have clear ownership and accountability, while ensuring there are always enough redundancies on all tasks.
• Foster a culture of documentation, service orientation, and accountability - where good work is visible and standards are consistently upheld.
• Set team priorities in coordination with the Senior Director, Operations & Systems, and communicate clearly about trade-offs and capacity.
• Ensure that IT operates as a service-oriented function, prioritizing responsiveness, clarity, and alignment with operational and research needs.
• Ensure security, compliance, and risk management
• Lead IPA’s information security direction, ensuring controls are proportionate to organizational risk and resourced appropriately.
• Ensure compliance with donor, contractual, and regulatory requirements related to data protection and information security.
• Oversee audit readiness and coordinate responses to security or data incidents, including engagement with legal and senior leadership.
• Drive organizational alignment
• Lead change management for significant technology transitions, ensuring staff across country offices understand and adopt new systems and practices.
• Oversee IT budget planning and financial reporting, ensuring transparency of total cost of ownership and value for money.

• 7+ years in a senior IT leadership role with accountability for the reliability, security, and availability of enterprise systems in production environments.
• 5+ years managing IT teams, including direct oversight of senior technical staff (engineers, architects, system admins) - with a demonstrated track record of developing people and building team capability.
• 5+ years overseeing enterprise system integrations, SaaS platforms and cloud environments (ERP, CRM, data warehouse, or comparable).
• 5+ years as a senior escalation authority for technical or security incidents.
• 3+ years developing or managing IT governance frameworks, policies, and internal controls.
• 3+ years in environments with regulatory, donor, or audit compliance requirements related to data protection or information security.
• 3+ years overseeing IT budgeting, vendor management, and SLA accountability.
• 3+ years leading change management for enterprise technology implementations.
• Experience communicating technology risks and decisions to non-technical senior stakeholders.
• Familiarity with enterprise business intelligence environments (e.g., Power BI).

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