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About OTT 

OTT is a global consultancy and platform for change that supports and strengthens the work of research organisations, foundations, governments and others for better-informed decision-making. 

Through its consultancy work, OTT develops tailored solutions to specific challenges around evidence generation and communication, evidence use, and evidence-informed decision-making for funders. With services delivered to research, learning facilitation, strategy development and refresh, monitoring, learning, and evaluation, OTT partners with organisations to drive evidence-informed change. 

In addition, OTT builds, nurtures, and supports the On Think Tanks platform, a global community of people working with and funding policy research. It is a space to learn, reflect, imagine, connect, and take action. Both OTT consulting and community work have public good at their heart.

OTT is a fully remote organisation. Its small team comprises around ten full-time staff and associates working across five continents.  

About the Role

OTT seeks a full-time Senior Associate to lead and grow its evidence-informed policy workstream for funders. This role will lead, expand, and deliver OTT’s work with organisations that fund the generation, communication, and use of evidence on matters of public interest in line with the organisation’s revenue goals.

The Senior Associate will be able to inform policies and decisions of global foundations, bilateral and multilateral organisations, international NGOs, think tanks, and government agencies and to engage in national and international debates on evidence-informed decision-making.

The Senior Associate will be part of the global consultancy unit, directly reporting to the OTT Director and a member of OTT’s operational leaders. 

Duties and Responsibilities

• Strategy development and delivery: Lead in developing and executing a plan to grow OTT’s evidence-informed policy workstream for funders. This includes helping funders support evidence-informed policy more effectively and equitably by developing their strategies or portfolios, monitoring and evaluating them, conducting consultations with their grantees to inform their decisions, facilitating networking and collaboration between funders, etc. It will also include being ultimately responsible for the unit’s growth by building a strong portfolio of clients, projects, and a team, developing a plan, and executing it to achieve the established targets.
• Business development: Actively searching for new project opportunities, contacting funders and clients, leading and contributing to developing concept notes, proposals, budgets and expressions of interest. This includes working on building and improving long-term relationships. OTT is keen to maintain a good balance between proactively developing initiatives based on their understanding of the challenges and opportunities in the field and responding to calls for proposals from clients. 
• Project delivery and support: Lead the delivery of and actively participate in ongoing projects, including time and budget management. This also includes managing or helping to manage teams under the organisation’s values, policies, and processes, recruitment, onboarding, line management, career development, and performance management. The role may entail overseas travel. 
• Knowledge synthesis and development: Proactively contribute to generating original content, sharing knowledge and learning from across OTT’s work.
• Communications and outreach: Engage with OTT audiences through multiple channels and spaces, including social media, blogs, webinars and the OTT Talks podcast series. They expect the candidate to seek opportunities to represent OTT in relevant international forums and spaces. 
• Community building: Actively contribute to building OTT’s associates and consultants’ community and continuously seek opportunities to work across the team. 

Skills and Experience

• Track record working in or towards a similar role and with relevant stakeholders.
• Experience in winning business (or fundraising) and proven ability to lead growth and work successfully with fundraising targets.
• Strong strategic thinking and capabilities—Senior associates will be called to play a strategic role in OTT and individual projects.
• Strong leadership and management skills to deliver high-quality work and build high-quality teams. 
• Ability to be hands-on, work as part of a team, lead, and work independently and with a remote team. 
• An autonomous and self-driven person with critical thinking and thought leadership skills.
• Strong problem-solving ability and ability to identify potential problems in advance. 
• Proven track record of designing projects and building and managing project budgets effectively and efficiently.
• A track record of understanding key issues and organisations in international development and/or evidence-informed policymaking sectors.
• Knowledge of monitoring, evaluation and learning methods and relevant approaches to grant-making, evidence-informed policy, policy influence, and organisational, social and political change (e.g., Outcome Mapping, Outcome Harvesting, Most Significant Change).
• Experience in field/empirical research in various settings and primary and secondary data collection and analysis.
• Strong analytical skills – OTT seeks someone to incorporate political, economic and social elements into their analyses. 
• Excellent communication and writing skills for various audiences for fundraising and business development purposes (e.g. concise, succinct, and clear). 
• Excellent IT skills (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, survey, and qualitative/quantitative research software are ideal).
• Fluent in English and competent in other languages. Fluency in languages other than English (e.g., French) would be desirable.