Team Leader, Institutional Development Expert, Innovation Ecosystems

The Public Sector Governance team at Oxford Policy Management is building a project team, including a requirement for a Team Leader, for an upcoming assignment supporting Innovation Support Organisations (ISOs), hubs, incubators, and accelerators, across secondary cities in Tanzania and Uganda. 

If awarded, the assignment runs over 8 months and forms part of a wider effort to strengthen digital innovation ecosystems outside the usual capital city centres, in locations such as Mwanza, Dodoma, Arusha, Tanga, Mbeya, Gulu, Mbarara, Jinja and Mbale, among others.

We are an international development consultancy working to improve lives through sustainable policy change in low- and middle-income countries. Our vision is for fair public policy that benefits both people and the planet.

Through our global network of offices, we work in partnership with national stakeholders and decision makers to research, design, implement, and evaluate impactful public policy. We draw on our local and international sector experts to provide the very best evidence-based support. We deliver projects with expert knowledge and experience and can be relied upon for excellence in all aspects of project delivery. We work collaboratively, with ambition, to help deliver impactful public policy that will bring about lasting change.

Position Summary

The Team Leader will provide overall direction, coordination, and quality assurance for a multidisciplinary expert team, comprising an Institutional Diagnostic and Business Model Expert, a Capacity Building Specialist, and an MEL Specialist, supporting up to 12 ISOs across both countries. This is a hands on leadership role: you will oversee delivery, act as the primary point of contact for stakeholders, and ensure the quality and consistency of all outputs produced across the team, including diagnostic tools, maturity scorecards, capacity development roadmaps, and the final assignment report.

As Team Leader, you would:

Strategic leadership and quality assurance

• Provide overall strategic direction and quality assurance across the assignment
• Review and sign off on diagnostic findings, maturity scorecards, and capacity development roadmaps produced by the wider team
• Oversee the coherence and quality of the final assignment report and knowledge products

Team and stakeholder coordination

• Coordinate the work of the wider expert team, ensuring alignment across diagnostic, capacity building, and MEL workstreams
• Act as the primary point of contact for stakeholders throughout inception, delivery, and reporting
• Lead engagement with participating ISOs, adapting approach to local context and constraints

Field delivery

• Undertake field missions to Tanzania and Uganda for inception, coordination, quality assurance, and selected ISO visits
• Ensure timely, high quality delivery of all assignment outputs within budget

Key Qualifications / Experience / Skills / Behaviours

Professional qualifications

• University degree in business, management, economics, development studies, public policy, entrepreneurship, or organisational development

Technical expertise

• At least 10 years of professional experience in institutional strengthening, organisational diagnostics, or entrepreneurship ecosystem development, including work with hubs, incubators, accelerators, or similar support institutions
• At least 5 years of that experience gained working in Africa
• Strong understanding of institutional diagnostic frameworks and maturity assessment approaches

Soft skills, autonomy and management

• Demonstrated experience leading, not just contributing to, multidisciplinary teams on multi country technical assistance assignments
• Strong stakeholder management, able to engage confidently with donor representatives and institutional leadership
• Excellent written and spoken English, with the ability to produce clear, donor ready reports

Strongly Preferred

• Experience designing or delivering capacity building programmes, such as workshops, coaching, or peer learning models
• Experience with institutional diagnostic tools, maturity scorecards, or capacity development roadmaps
• Familiarity with secondary or regional city ecosystems, not only capital city hubs
• Experience working within donor funded programme structures, including phased deliverables and MEL reporting
• Working knowledge of Swahili is an advantage given the Tanzania component; familiarity with local languages spoken in the Ugandan project areas is also beneficial

Engagement Details

• Consultancy basis, embedded within a project led multidisciplinary team
• Field missions to Tanzania and Uganda required
• Anticipated start: Q4 2026, to be confirmed

Our Offer

Whether you join us in a corporate position, as a project delivery colleague, or as an independent contractor driving programme management - at OPM you will find a company that places equal value on excellence and integrity. As a leading international development consulting firm, we strive to enable and empower everyone who works with us to do their best work in an environment that welcomes ambition, creativity and passion for positive change.

Our commitment to diversity and inclusion

We strongly believe in a fairer distribution of power between all stakeholders, and we commit to reflecting this in our organisational structures and in the design and delivery of our projects. We proactively work to evolve ourselves and our stakeholders to shape inclusive and fair programming, implementation, and policies. Our recruitment and procurement processes reflect our ambition to make the international development sector more diverse and inclusive.

Application

If you share our vision for fair public policy that benefits both people and planet, we would love to hear from you. Please submit your application through our careers’ site by the closing date .  We review and interview applicants on a rolling basis and encourage you to apply by way of CV via our careers site at the earliest.