Senior Project Manager

JA Worldwide seeks a Senior Project Manager to lead the strategic planning and implementation of a major, multi-year global education initiative focused on empowering children and youth. This is a senior, hands-on leadership role requiring both strategic judgment and strong project execution.

The Senior Project Manager translates project commitments into an integrated delivery strategy, mobilizes implementing organizations, leads change, and drives results across countries and workstreams. Delivery will involve preselected JA member organizations and non-JA organizations selected through an approved, criteria-based process. The Senior Project Manager ensures that both groups receive the assessment, preparation, and support needed to deliver effectively. The Senior Project Manager supervises the Project Coordinator and coordinates contributions from functional specialists. The role requires effective collaboration combining clear accountability with adaptability, a service-oriented approach, and sensitivity to member and partner constraints.

Key Responsibilities

Develop strategy and translate it into delivery

  • Turn project commitments and agreed funding terms into a multi-year implementation roadmap and detailed annual operating plans.

  • Define milestones, responsibilities, resource requirements, dependencies, and decision points.

  • Develop complementary strategies for partners focused on scale and community-based partners focused on quality, inclusion, innovation, and local engagement.

  • Maintain consistent educational principles and quality standards while enabling appropriate local adaptation.

  • Lead the organizational and operational changes needed to implement the initiative, building commitment and supporting adoption of new practices and systems.

  • Adjust strategy based on evidence, partner performance, emerging opportunities, and delivery risks.

Lead implementation and performance management

  • Own the integrated delivery plan and drive execution across partner onboarding, learning-resource integration, educator preparation, activation, amplification, and learning.

  • Establish practical governance and operating systems, including implementation dashboards, milestone tracking, document management, decision logs, and reporting calendars.

  • Lead global coordination meetings and regional implementation reviews, ensuring that discussions result in clear decisions, accountable owners, and completed actions.

  • Identify bottlenecks early, develop corrective action plans, and intervene directly when critical commitments are at risk.

  • Maintain visibility of progress, unresolved issues, and decisions requiring leadership or funder approval.

  • Support the responsible use of AI-enabled workflows that strengthen coordination, follow-through, and delivery, with appropriate human oversight.

Support project governance and oversight

  • Establish and support a project governance task force, subject to leadership approval, to provide cross-functional oversight and monitor project implementation.

  • Work with leadership to define the task force’s membership, terms of reference, meeting cadence, decision authority, and escalation procedures, with representation from relevant leadership and functional areas.

  • Provide the task force with a concise performance dashboard covering delivery milestones, partner readiness and performance, educational quality, expenditure and forecasts, key risks, and progress toward agreed outcomes.

  • Bring material delays, resource constraints, cross-functional dependencies, and proposed corrective actions to the task force for timely review and decisions within its approved authority.

  • Document task force decisions, assign action owners and deadlines, and track follow-through to completion.

  • Maintain clear accountability: the Senior Project Manager remains responsible for execution, while the task force provides oversight, resolves escalated issues, and supports alignment. Matters outside its authority remain subject to the appropriate leadership, specialist, or funder approval.

Activate and strengthen the partner ecosystem

  • Ensure that partner selection considers delivery capability, educational quality, geographic relevance, inclusion, safeguarding, financial controls, and reporting capacity, consistent with agreed requirements.

  • Lead readiness assessments for preselected JA member organizations, identifying gaps, support needs, and implementation conditions.

  • Ensure that each implementing organization has a realistic delivery plan, clear responsibilities, agreed performance expectations, and access to appropriate support.

  • Lead annual portfolio reviews and recommend where to strengthen support, expand successful approaches, or adjust implementation arrangements.

  • Coordinate locally led innovation activities and capture lessons that inform future expansion.

Integrate educational quality and evidence

  • Work with education specialists to ensure that delivery remains developmentally appropriate, inclusive, and grounded.

  • Work with learning and evidence specialists to embed measurement and continuous improvement into implementation.

  • Use evidence across reach, experience, growth, and learning to guide decisions and improve delivery.

  • Work with communications and engagement colleagues to connect implementation with storytelling, knowledge sharing, and meaningful recognition of participant’s voices.

Maintain financial discipline and responsible delivery

  • Work with finance and grants-management colleagues to align budgets, partner funding, procurement, and expenditure forecasts with implementation priorities.

  • Monitor delivery against available resources, identify variances, and recommend corrective actions.

  • Maintain an integrated risk register covering implementation, partner capacity, safeguarding, financial management, data protection, and reputation.

  • Coordinate accurate, timely reporting and maintain consistency between reported activities, results, and financial information.

  • Support independent verification, final reporting, and project closeout.

  • Ensure that digital and AI-enabled processes follow approved access, confidentiality, data-protection, and human-review requirements.

Lead collaboration and plan for sustainability

  • Supervise, coach, and develop the Project Coordinator, establishing clear responsibilities and performance expectations.

  • Align contributions from education, technology, learning and evidence, communications, grants management, finance, and legal colleagues.

  • Build trust and communicate effectively with executive leaders, technical specialists, administrators, educators, and frontline implementation staff.

  • Serve as the principal day-to-day implementation contact for designated funder and strategic stakeholders, within agreed relationship-management arrangements.

Qualifications

Required

  • Experience leading complex global projects, involving multiple countries, independent organizations, and interdependent workstreams, from planning to implementation

  • Proven ability to lead change, including building commitments, addressing resistance, supporting adoption, and sustaining new ways of working

  • Minimum ten years of senior-level experience managing large, multi-year, grant-funded initiatives

  • Ability to develop and manage project plans, budgets, timelines, and measurable deliverables

  • Experience supervising staff and coordinating cross-functional teams

  • Strong partner-management skills, including assessing organizational readiness and supporting organizations with different capabilities and operating environments

  • Experience overseeing budgets and working with grants, finance, procurement, and compliance functions

  • Ability to interpret quantitative and qualitative evidence to evaluate performance and inform project decisions

  • Understanding of safeguarding, inclusion, and responsible data practices in initiatives involving children and youth

  • Strong interpersonal and communication skills with ability to collaborate across organizational levels, cultures, and time zones

  • Proficiency with project management tools and ability to adopt emerging technologies including AI-enabled tools, to support project delivery

  • Excellent written and verbal communication skills in English

Professional certification

Project Management Professional (PMP) certification is highly desirable at appointment. Candidates who do not hold the certification must commit to obtaining it within an agreed timeframe, subject to eligibility. The timeframe and organizational support will be established at appointment, with certification becoming a continuing requirement of the role.

Preferred

  • Experience scaling learning experiences through education platforms, school systems, or distributed non-profit networks

  • Knowledge with project-based learning, educator professional development, and children’s and youth empowerment initiatives

  • Experience collaborating with stakeholders and organizations across Asia, Europe, and North America

  • Experience implementing project-management, grants-management, and AI-enabled workflow systems

  • Proficiency in additional languages beyond English is a plus

  • Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration, International Development, Education, Public Administration, or a related field, or equivalent professional experience

 What success looks like

  • Project milestones and deliverables are achieved within agreed timelines and budgets

  • Implementing organizations are effectively supported and meet established performance and quality standards

  • Strong collaboration and accountability contribute to successful implementation across teams and partners

  • Project results are evaluated to identify opportunities for improvement and support long-term sustainability

Location 

This is a remote position with flexible working hours. The role requires regular availability and collaboration with teams operating during US Eastern (9:00 AM–5:00 PM) and Central European (9:00 AM–5:00 PM CET/CEST) business hours. Candidates must be able to adjust their schedules as needed to accommodate meetings, project priorities, and international collaboration. International travel of up to 25% may be required as part of the role.

Compensation 

Compensation will be determined based on location, relevant experience, and the employment or engagement arrangement. Benefits are available to eligible employees. Applicable compensation ranges will be provided in accordance with local requirements.

How to Apply

Please send your resumé and cover letter to hr@jaworldwide.org.