The Head of Programme Development is a senior role within the Programme Development and Quality Team, responsible for identifying donor opportunities, leading donor engagement, supporting fundraising strategies, and coordinating high-value proposal development. The role requires innovative thinking to position programme strategies effectively and expand the funding portfolio. It involves drafting key proposal sections, coordinating inputs from technical, operations, finance, HR, and security teams, and ensuring strong, competitive submissions. The position also requires close oversight of major institutional grants to confidently communicate programme progress and results in donor discussions and reporting. Additionally, the role represents Save the Children International Sudan externally with donors and internally across SCI functions.

Strategic Planning:

• Conduct analysis of our past and current award portfolio and funding pipeline, as well as the broader funding landscape in Sudan, to identify and advise the SMT of emerging trends in donor funding strategies and priorities to inform decision making and to position to remain relevant and competitive among peer organizations.
• Design and implement funding/resource mobilization strategy that will support the delivery of our Country Strategic Plan, humanitarian response plans, and thematic sector priorities, as well as participate in progress reviews of strategic plans to identify and address funding-related gaps and barriers.
• Work closely with Awards and Finance teams to ensure funding trackers and online award management and financial systems are regularly updated and accurate to enable Country Office Master Budgeting and dynamic forecasting. 
• Ensure funding is adequately channeled into the CO’s strategic objectives and towards innovations; ensure program development builds on learning and evaluation of previous project implementation.
• Ensure that the country office has a comprehensive, SMT-endorsed Programme Development Strategy in place, which is in line with the Country Strategic Plan, and includes a Funding Strategy. Ensure it is implemented and monitored effectively, and operationalized with Members in a structured way.
• Ensure a system is in place to monitor progress toward targets set out in the Strategy.
• Cultivate business relationships with external stakeholders and potential partners for large scale or strategic funding opportunities, either as a prime or sub-recipient in joint ventures

Donor Engagement:

• Conduct research and intelligence gathering on key donors
• Coordinate closely with the PDQ director and Senior Management to cultivate relationships with external stakeholders and potential partners for strategic funding opportunities.
• Ensure key donor contact information and donor strategies and priorities are documented and are kept up-to-date at the country office level to inform donor engagement plans
• Cultivate excellent working relationships with donor agencies at the regional and country-level, in conjunction with the Country Director and PDQ Director, and ensure notes and action points are shared with key internal stakeholders and SC Membership for coordinated donor engagement
• Identify and cultivate strong working relationships with external stakeholders and potential partners for large scale or strategic funding opportunities, either as a prime or sub-recipient in joint ventures
• Represent the Sudan Country Office in relevant donor fora, workshops, and conferences where new programme development opportunities can be formulated, as indicated by the line manager
• Lead the development and regular update of donor engagement strategy to assist in growing Sudan’s portfolio, consistent with the Country Strategy
• Participate in crucial donor meetings, when necessary, to foster long-term collaboration and engagement
• Working with colleagues in PDQ, set ambitious targets for donor engagement and influencing donor strategies
• Proactively seek donor intelligence on prospective new opportunities or partnerships.
• Ensure key contacts, required formats, and donor strategies are kept up-to-date at the country office level.
• Develop and maintain donor engagement plan. 
• Develop and mainstream tools to ensure the tracking of donor engagement plans and to capture updates and actions in a systematic manner. 
• Directly manage the development of high-value or complex proposals or bids, building on global, regional, and national expertise and ensuring the highest quality product. 
• Drive interdepartmental coordination for programme and proposals development with Programme Operations (for field team inputs, logistics requirements, costings, etc.), Security, Awards Management, Finance & Grants, and HR (for staffing requirements). 
• Ensure full internal and member review and sign-off as per the proposal development process. 
• Draft critical sections of proposals that are standard inputs – e.g. capability statements; country context, and programme experience, while drawing on the expertise of technical advisors, Operations, Finance, HR, and Security. 
• Ensure that PDQ maintains an on-going and regularly updated information bank on community analysis and research findings for future proposal development (Child Rights Situational Analysis, assessments, HEAs, DHIS, census data, field research on community needs, etc.).  This activity is closely linked with the data and knowledge management function, technical advisors, and Member Services.
• With in-country TAs, seek out and facilitate input of technical advice from backstops or members to ensure that programs benefit from Save the Children’s global expertise while remaining relevant to the local context. Facilitate engagement of consultants on large-scale proposals, or when technical specialists are needed.     
• Produce proposal development schedules and track timelines, ensuring and facilitating coordination amongst teams – PDQ, Programme Operations, Finance, HR, Security, and Member Services.
• In collaboration with Members (and Member Support Services), broker technical assistance and other resources to support proposal development. 
• Lead the formation of consortia, including split of geographic location, thematic location and budget in collaboration with TS, Awards and other relevant colleagues.
• Ensure that Programme Quality Framework and Theory of Change are addressed in all new proposals and that key elements of program quality are included (e.g. child participation, child safeguarding, gender, lessons learned from past proposals, accountability, risk assessments, effective and sustainable partnerships, etc.).
• Ensure Gender Marker tool is used effectively to ensure all proosals are gender sensitive at a minimum;
• Coordinate Value for Money calculations in proposal development, as required by donors.

Coordinate proposal development

Documentation and learning

• Capture and document learning from ongoing projects to be applied to project design. 
• Ensure that all documents are correctly filed within SC’s award management system and country office shared drives. 
• Hold meetings with Awards Management staff to ensure that successful proposals are handed over, and all lessons learned during the proposal development stage are shared. 
• Work with MEAL, technical specialist, to develop an overall needs assessment to provide evidence-based proposal design. 

Capacity building 

• Broker and support training opportunities and resources to build capacity in program, aards and technical staff – i.e. donor enagagement, opportunity capture, proposal development, and woking with consortia.

People Management

• Provide day-to-day direct line management of the Program Development Team, including Delegation of roles, responsibilities, and tasks among the team; Provide leadership and technical support to the team, as needed; Undertake performance management, including annual goal setting, coaching, mentoring, performance reviews, feedback etc)
• Establish positive working relationships with all Country Office departments to work effectively on proposal development, strategies, ongoing programs, and opportunities
• Support the development of an organizational culture that: reflects our values; promotes accountability and high performance; encourages a team culture of learning, creativity, and innovation; and enables our people to deliver outstanding results for children and excellent customer service for our members and donors.   

Partnerships & Business Development

• Lead and coordinate engagement with national partners and relevant stakeholders during the pre‑award and business development phases, ensuring potential partners are strategically assessed for legal eligibility, organizational capacity, and alignment with Save the Children’s programmatic priorities and donor expectations.
• Work collaboratively with program, technical, and finance teams to identify, assess, and position strong national partners for inclusion in funding proposals, ensuring partnership models are competitive, compliant, and responsive to donor requirements.
• Support the development and negotiation of partnership frameworks, sub‑grant concepts, and Terms of Reference (TORs) that clearly articulate roles, value addition, risk mitigation, and compliance requirements, including child safeguarding and ethical standards, while advocating for flexible partnership modalities suitable for national actors.
• Facilitate and coordinate early‑stage partnership alignment meetings following grant awards, bringing together national partners, Save the Children technical teams, Area Representatives, and Field Managers to reinforce shared vision, partnership principles, and delivery expectations aligned with approved proposals and donor commitments.
• Strengthen Save the Children’s strategic relationships with national partners, government counterparts, and consortia stakeholders to enhance organizational visibility, credibility, and positioning for future funding opportunities.

Other

• As part of the Senior Management Team (SMT), the Head of Programme Development will support the country office in managing the operations for the country office, this includes participation in Strategic meetings, conduct regular travel to implementation field offices to ensure the quality of implementation, and tackle any other managerial and operational issues when needed. 

Essential:

• Development professional with a relevant Masters’ Degree or equivalent professional experience.
• Recommended 5 years experience in both emergency and development contexts, preferably with solid experience in more than one of the Save the Children priority sectors: education, protection, child rights governance, and health and nutrition; experience in both development and complex emergencies preferred.
• Excellent coordination and interpersonal skills to communicate and negotiate clearly and effectively at all levels, and pull together input from a diverse team.
• Excellent writing/editing, budget development and presentation/communication skills. 
• Experience in presenting project information to donors and partners.
• Experience in coordinating development of large-scale or strategic proposals, including the development of multi-million dollar project budgets. 
• Proven representation skills.
• Highly developed cultural awareness and ability to work well in an international environment with people from diverse backgrounds and cultures.
• Strong results orientation, with the ability to challenge existing mindsets.
• Experience of solving complex issues through analysis, definition of a clear way forward and ensuring buy in
• Ability to present complex information in a succinct and compelling manner.
• Ability and willingness to dramatically change work practices and hours, and work with incoming surge teams, in the event of emergencies.
• Fluency in English, both verbal and written, required.
• Commitment to Save the Children values, including willingness to abide by and enforce the Child Safeguarding policy

Desirable:

• Significant experience in the region
• Arabic Language skills
• Experience with EU and US programming 

BEHAVIOURS (Values in Practice)

Accountability:

• Holds self-accountable for making decisions, managing resources efficiently, achieving and role modeling Save the Children values.
• Holds the team and partners accountable to deliver on their responsibilities - giving them the freedom to deliver in the best way they see fit, providing the necessary development to improve performance, and applying appropriate consequences when results are not achieved.

Ambition:

• Sets ambitious and challenging goals for themselves and their team, takes responsibility for their own personal development and encourages their team to do the same.
• Widely shares their personal vision for Save the Children, engages and motivates others
• Future orientated, thinks strategically and on a global scale.

Collaboration:

• Builds and maintains effective relationships, with their team, colleagues, Members and external partners and supporters.
• Works collaboratively to achieve shared goals and thrives on diversity of people and perspectives; knows when to lead and when to follow and how to ensure effective cross-boundary working.
• Approachable, good listener, easy to talk to.
• Invests time and energy to actively develop self and others to help realise their full potential, and to build the organisation’s capability for the future. 

Creativity:

• Develops and encourages new and innovative solutions.
• Willing to take disciplined risks.

Integrity:

• Honest, encourages openness and transparency; demonstrates highest levels of integrity.