Mission of the role:
This role will be a critical member of the Content and Knowledge team at GSL. School Leadership is a vastly understudied area of research in low and middle-income countries. The field of school leadership is gaining more visibility, with governments and funders starting to shift resources to support school leaders in LMICs for more effective program implementation and policy adoption. Through our research, we have found that we need more empirical evidence about the specific ways school leaders impact student outcomes, more effective ways to improve capacity while reducing time and cost, and how education systems can better support school leaders and scale effective school leadership programs. The Content and Knowledge team at GSL aims to address this challenge by collaborating with our partners, researchers, practitioners, and other similar organizations. The Research Manager will play a key role in producing original research and synthesizing existing knowledge on school leadership to facilitate evidence-based program and policy decisions.
In this role, you will:
- Contribute to developing research studies and proposals with a novel monitoring, evaluation, research, and learning approach to track the impact of our programs and to develop a policy and system thinking
- Work on global surveys, qualitative studies, A/B testing, randomized controlled trials, process monitoring, and program evaluation.
- Pilot, implement, and collaborate with our partners to collect, manage, and analyze quantitative and qualitative data.
- Contribute to shaping how GSL research evolves as the organization and network expand, and help answer important learning questions for our network.
- Contribute to identifying key findings from our studies, writing publications, and joining efforts in communicating insights from research to strengthen understanding and support for school leadership in low and middle-income countries.
Candidate Qualifications
Required Qualifications
(we will use these in our screening process; if you do not meet each of these, you will be denied)
- Master’s degree in Economics, Public Policy, Education Policy, or any other relevant field with a strong quantitative grounding.
- A minimum of 3 years of work experience in education or social development research.
- Experience in conducting literature review, creating questionnaires, and implementing surveys/ research in collaboration with partners.
- Experience in quantitative research and analysis, proficiency in at least one of the data analysis software (i.e., STATA, R, etc).
- Fluency in English.
Preferred Qualifications
(these will not be used for screening purposes; if you feel you have some but not all of these, you are still encouraged to apply)
- You have experience in managing surveys and data collection, including student learning assessments.
- You have experience cleaning, analyzing, and presenting data visually and in writing to a variety of internal and external stakeholders.
- You have experience in conducting qualitative research and analyzing qualitative data.
- You have experience in synthesizing research findings to generate practitioner and policy-oriented insights, for example, writing policy briefs, blogs, etc.
- You have experience in collaborating with a diverse group of partners, stakeholders, and researchers.
The Life of a Research Manager at GSL
What your day looks like
- Teamwide meetings generally occur between 11 am UTC and 2 pm UTC, with individual or small group meetings occurring before or after, depending on time zones.
- Apart from meetings, you can work whenever is best for you. You will work around 40 hours each week, with some weeks heavier than others.
- You will work with your manager to determine priorities each week, but no one will be regularly checking on you. You will need to manage your time and balance multiple priorities on your own.
- This role may require travel for 20-25% of the total time.
Who your manager is:
- Gautam Anand, Director of Research
- More than 4 years with GSL
- Gautam believes in a collaborative approach to work. He expects the Research Manager to work independently and take ownership of projects while he actively provides technical guidance and support. His working style includes open communication and honest feedback.
What is rewarding about the role
- You will work alongside a kind, compassionate, and hardworking team.
- Your voice will matter — you will have opportunities to lead and take part in decisions.
- You will be supporting school leaders around the world and helping them to better support students and their instruction.
- You will be contributing to building knowledge around issues like how school leaders can support teaching and learning outcomes, create a culture for gender-inclusive education, and what school leadership looks like in early childhood education and development, to improve conditions for students who are most marginalized.
- You will work with team members and partners from diverse cultural and social backgrounds.
What is challenging about the role
- This is not a 9–5 job. You may have calls either early morning (as early as 5 am for those in the western hemisphere) or late evening (as late as 11 pm for those in the eastern hemisphere).
- It can be lonely working in a remote space across many time zones.
- The work is fast-paced and requires juggling many projects at the same time.
Your first year will be a success if you:
- Ask questions and be proactive to learn from your colleagues and from our partners.
- Seek out best practices in education and school leadership by reading and reaching out to internal team members and external partners.
- Develop instruments and effective data management strategies.
- Support affiliate partners to improve the collection and use of data.
- Analyze data and present findings.
- Use data to contribute to strategic decision-making, organizational learning, and project planning with GSL and affiliate organization leadership.
- Synthesize existing research on school leadership to inform our programmatic and policy work.
- Identify opportunities for research funding and developing proposals.
Work Location and Remuneration
The candidate can be based in any country, with a preference for candidates based in Africa and South East Asia. The candidate must have work authorization in their place of residence as GSL is not able to sponsor employment visas. The candidate must have the ability to travel internationally as well as within the country. Salary and title are commensurate with knowledge, skills, and experience and are competitive with the non-profit education sector in the country in which candidates are based. Some examples of the annual salary range for this role are MYR 82,059 to MYR 117,227, KES 2,458,040 to KES 3,511,486, and ₱834,258 to ₱1,191,798. We may also consider more senior candidates for this position, who could be hired as a Senior Manager. In that case, the salary range would be higher.
Commitment to Diversity
GSL is an equal-opportunity employer. We value diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive work environment for all employees – across nationalities, races, ethnicity, religions, economic backgrounds, sexual orientations, disabilities, languages, ages, genders, and prior experiences. In our hiring, we seek those with an inclusive mindset and who notice and correct inequities when they arise.
Child Safeguarding
GSL is committed to safeguarding children. Background checks may be conducted as part of the hiring process. All team members are asked to agree to a safeguarding policy.
