Senior Director of Delivery at Imagine Worldwide

All children have immense potential, but hundreds of millions don't have access to the learning they need. Imagine Worldwide's mission is to empower millions of children across Sub-Saharan Africa with the literacy and numeracy skills they need to reach their full potential. We provide an innovative education technology solution and implementation model to the global literacy/numeracy learning crisis using the onebillion application and various toolkits and systems to support implementation. Nine Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs) across multiple countries and settings have shown dramatic learning gains, increased school attendance, and gender parity, all for less than $7 per child per year.

Imagine Worldwide partners with governments, organizations, and communities to provide child-directed, tablet-based learning that is accessible, effective, and affordable. We are a California-based (United States) nonprofit organization operating across seven Sub-Saharan African countries. Learn more on our website.

About The Role

The Senior Director of Delivery is the second most senior leadership role in the organization, reporting directly to the Executive Director and serving as a key driver of Imagine Worldwide Tanzania's strategy and impact. This position plays a central role in advancing Imagine's mission to design, deliver, and scale high-quality tablet-based learning solutions that enable children across Tanzania to achieve foundational literacy and numeracy at national scale.

This role carries significant organizational value and influence. The Senior Director of Delivery is responsible for translating strategy into execution by ensuring that programs, technology, logistics, data systems, and partner engagement are aligned and operating effectively. The position provides executive-level oversight to ensure that implementation plans move beyond design into measurable, real-world impact in schools and communities.

Working across both global and in-country teams, the Senior Director of Delivery drives alignment, accountability, prioritization, and cross-functional problem-solving. The role ensures that learning programs launch successfully, operate reliably, and continuously improve through strong systems, data-driven decision-making, and collaborative leadership. As a senior organizational leader, the Senior Director of Delivery also contributes to shaping institutional culture, strengthening operational excellence, and guiding teams through periods of growth and scale.

The successful candidate will join a highly committed and collaborative leadership team dedicated to empowering every child, everywhere to reach their full potential. This position requires a strategic thinker with strong execution skills, the ability to lead across diverse teams and stakeholders, and a passion for delivering large-scale education transformation in Tanzania

Key Responsibilities

Strategic Delivery Leadership

• Provide leadership and accountability for coordinated delivery across Programs, MEAL, Logistics, and Technical Services, ensuring work is coordinated to achieve program outcomes and operational reliability
• Serve as the country's primary integrator for delivery execution, ensuring leadership receives one coherent view of delivery progress, constraints, and decision needs.
• Shape and translate the country scale plan into clear delivery outcomes (e.g., launch readiness, device uptime, training completion, data completeness, time-on-task enablement) and hold delivery leaders accountable.
• Ensure coordination with global functions as needed and alignment with Imagine's key performance areas and indicators.
• Contribute to discussions, policy notes, etc., as needed, on national scale and government transition.
• Represent Imagine Worldwide Tanzania across any external delivery platforms and/or as designated by the Executive Director.

Delivery Planning

• Develop and own a single integrated delivery plan that synchronizes all delivery workstreams (launch preparation and recurring operations), with clear milestones, dependencies, resourcing assumptions, and accountable owners.
• Establish and lead a delivery operating rhythm (planning, execution reviews, performance reviews, and retrospectives) that drives disciplined execution, early risk detection, and timely decision-making.
• Balance competing priorities across delivery functions and make unified prioritization calls grounded in mission outcomes, data, capacity constraints, and delivery risk.
• Define and monitor delivery KPIs; track performance trends via a delivery performance dashboard; and drive corrective actions through structured data reviews and cross-functional problem-solving.
• Own delivery risk management and escalation by maintaining a delivery risks and issues register, proactively identifying material risks, defining mitigation plans with clear owners and timelines, and ensuring risks are escalated early through agreed pathways.
• Lead incident response for material delivery disruptions (e.g., rollout delays, uptime failures, safety/security incidents impacting learning, partner underperformance) by coordinating rapid triage, containment, root-cause analysis, and prevention of recurrence.
• Ensure transparent progress and governance reporting, including decision logs, escalation pathways, and measurement systems that support delivery improvement through data quality assurance and actionable insights.

Operational Excellence

• Build and maintain standardized training systems, SOPs, and capacity-building programs that ensure consistent, high-quality delivery at scale. Oversee delivery-critical partner performance (e.g., ISPs and service providers), ensuring clear expectations, coordinated work, and timely issue resolution.
• Codify best practices and policies that reduce institutional knowledge gaps and increase delivery resilience.
• Partner with the ED as a senior leader, providing integrated delivery oversight and escalating only the highest-priority issues requiring ED intervention. Contribute to the country leadership team by role-modeling Imagine values, driving organizational health, and leading through ambiguity and change.

People Management

• Line manage the delivery function leads (Directors of Program, Director Technical Services, Logistics Manager, and MEAL Manager).
• Lead and manage staff reporting to them, setting clear expectations, priorities, and performance standards.
• Develop leadership capacity through coaching, feedback, performance management, and succession planning to support scale and sustainability.

Requirements

The successful candidate will possess the following competencies, experiences, and qualities:

Education and Work Experience

Bachelor's degree or higher with a minimum of 10 years of progressive experience in operations leadership, program delivery, or a similar senior role, including at least 5 years managing teams. Management consulting experience is a plus.

Role-Specific Skills Required

• Significant experience in managing successful program scaling.
• Proven track record in managing scale operations in complex environments working with multiple partners
• Excellent written and oral communication skills in English
• Strong ability to analyze and interpret data to inform decisions, coupled with proven project management skills to plan, execute, and deliver projects effectively.
• Strong interpersonal and relationship-building skills and ability to proactively manage and resolve conflicts
• Excellent understanding of budgets, financial processesR, reporting requirements, and compliance regulations within donor-funded grants and contracts
• Ability to work effectively in multicultural environments and teams
• Strong organizational skills, superior attention to detail, ability to work under pressure and meet deadlines
• Compensation & Benefits

Location

This position is open to candidates anywhere in Africa who are willing to relocate to Tanzania. Employment will follow in-country terms, with salary and benefits aligned to the host country. Imagine Worldwide will provide work permit sponsorship and relocation assistance as needed. Candidates with relevant experience in Tanzania are especially encouraged to apply.

Applications are reviewed on a rolling basis

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Imagine Worldwide is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. All applicants will be considered for employment without attention to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, veteran or disability status.