MEAL Manager

**Job Title:** MEAL Manager

**Location:** Erbil, Kurdistan Region, Iraq (KRI), with occasional travel to other areas of KRI.

**Type of position:** Full-Time Employment Contract

**Length of Contract:** 12 months

**Compensation and Benefits:** Competitive salary and benefits commensurate with skills and experience. Expatriate/National Compensation Package: includes local transportation allowances, Medical insurance and Life insurance.

**About SEED:** SEED is a women-led, local NGO in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, working to create a future where everyone can thrive by protecting rights, empowering communities, and strengthening systems. We promote gender equality and work to end gender-based violence; protect children and promote the healthy development of children, adolescents, and youth; combat human trafficking and uphold survivor rights; and improve mental health and well-being. Through transformational services, community development, capacity building, and policy and advocacy, we support individuals, communities, and institutions to create sustainable impact.

**Role of the MEAL Manager:**

The MEAL Manager leads SEED’s Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability, and Learning (MEAL) functions, ensuring the organization has robust, integrated systems to generate high-quality data, measure performance and impact, uphold accountability and safeguarding standards, and drive continuous learning and evidence-based decision-making. The MEAL Manager is responsible for designing and overseeing systems that monitor program performance, evaluate outcomes and impact, and translate evidence into strategic insights, donor reporting, and compelling storytelling and external communications. The role ensures that SEED’s programs are accountable to participants and communities, grounded in data and participant and community feedback, and continuously improving to deliver effective, equitable, and sustainable results.

Working closely with the President, senior management, program teams, and technical staff, the MEAL Manager provides organization-wide leadership on MEAL systems, builds staff capacity, and ensures alignment between data, evaluations, participant feedback, safeguarding and accountability frameworks, and program strategy. The role also contributes to external engagement, donor communication, and representation through high-quality evidence, reporting, and learning outputs. The MEAL manager manages the MEAL staff, reports to the President, and works closely with the Programs Department.

**Specific Tasks:**

**Data Management Systems, Monitoring, and Performance Management (20%)**

- Lead the design and continuous strengthening of SEED’s MEAL systems, data management and information systems (including CommCare), ensuring data integrity, consistency, and accessibility across all programs and are integrated with service delivery platforms and trackers (e.g., training, and policy/advocacy systems).
- Oversee program data collection and enforce robust data quality assurance processes (verification, validation, audits).
- Work collaboratively with program and technical teams to develop MEAL frameworks, logframes, and PITT documents, and define what and how to measure in alignment with program objectives and theories of change.
- Ensure data collection tools are designed/in place prior to program implementation.
- Ensure timely and accurate data collection, analysis, and reporting, including baseline, midline, and endline processes.
- Develop and maintain SEED’s standardized indicators, dashboards, and KPIs to enable performance tracking across programs, projects, locations, and time.
- Ensure alignment with donor requirements, national and international standards.
- Strengthen staff capacity to effectively collect, manage, analyze, and use data for program improvement and decision-making.
- Oversee quantitative reporting across programs, contributing to donor reporting, organizational reporting, and communications.

**Evaluation, Impact, and Results (20%)**

- Lead the development and application of clear theories of change across all SEED programs and projects.
- Ensure programs have measurable outcome and impact indicators aligned with organizational strategy.
- Lead and manage internal and external evaluations, including commissioning and oversight of independent evaluators.
- Promote participatory evaluation approaches that actively involve participants and communities.
- Ensure evaluation findings are systematically analyzed and translated into strategic and programmatic recommendations.
- Oversee development of high-quality results reports, impact summaries, and learning briefs for donors, partners, and external audiences.
- Design and oversee rigorous evaluation approaches, including mixed-methods and, where feasible, quasi-experimental methodologies, in line with standard evaluation frameworks.
- Support the use of evidence to strengthen fundraising, advocacy, and policy engagement and work with program a