Program Manager, Digital Agriculture - Digital Green

Company Overview

Digital Green is a global development organization that is co-creating a world where farmers use technology and data to build more prosperous communities. We’re working towards a world where all rural people have access to locally relevant, quality technical and peer advice that helps them build food secure, resilient and prosperous lives, even in the face of climate change.

In the past 16 years, Digital Green has achieved significant scale and demonstrated impact, reaching 6.35M smallholder farmers (53% women), training over 100,000 frontline workers (43% women) on our community video model, and supporting hundreds of rural groups to achieve their goals. In the past year we have been developing a novel digital and AI-supported product that holds the promise for exponential scale-up. After more than a year of experimentation and building, we are gathering insights that are richer by the day, refining our digital and in-person capacity building services, and consolidating lessons in order to meet the moment where smallholders are today.

Digital Green is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization in the US. For more information, please visit Digital Green’s website: www.digitalgreen.org and farmer.chat.

Job Summary

The Program Manager - Digital Agriculture ensures donor-funded projects are implemented in alignment with Digital Green’s strategic priorities and donor / contract requirements. This role reports to the Head, Program Strategy and engages closely with colleagues primarily in Africa, Asia, and North America.

This position is remote and will be based in the United States, India, Kenya, or Ethiopia. Applicants must have existing permanent work rights in the country from which they intend to reside at the time of application as Digital Green is unable to sponsor any type of work visa for this position. For US applicants you must be based out of one of the following states: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Kansas, Maryland, Missouri, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia, Washington D.C., or Washington State. Travel is estimated to be 4 - 6 weeks a year but may be adjusted depending on the evolution of the role.

• You work closely with in-country program staff, product and tech staff, global technical leads (grants management, finance, MEL, Gender, Agriculture), and the business development team
• You are an individual contributor and a team player with a passion to connect everyone and everything. You will regularly and reliably communicate project progress to stakeholders within and outside of the organization
• You are part of a team that is spread globally. You will facilitate and contribute to regular project check-ins, partner conversations, and project / task management calls that will take place early mornings and late evenings in order to overlap with your colleagues' time zones. I.e. you must accommodate working in a mix of US time zones, East Africa time, India standard time, and other time zones as required by the partner / project. 
• You will be strategic, creative, comfortable challenging ideas, and curious

Responsibilities and Duties

Donor management

• In partnership with the country leadership, manage relationships with donors, including leading donor communications, monthly / quarterly update calls to provide status updates alongside the program teams, technology and product teams, consortium partners and other functions like MEL, Communications, Climate and Gender 
• Organize and facilitate project reporting processes which ensure the key team members across the organization are able to effectively report on project progress while relieving the burden of reporting from implementing teams (including ad hoc donor requests)

Partnership management

• Where relevant, liaise with project consortium members and sub-awardees at headquarters level.  Organize regular calls and other communications with key partners as needed. 
• Provide timely support and guidance to the consortium members and ensure that they understand and are meeting the overall strategic objectives for the project; diplomatically give feedback and initiate corrective actions as needed
• Manage sub-contracts, awards, scopes of work and partner reporting for implementing partners and consultants

Project and Budget management

• Coordinate internal meetings across technology, product, programs and strategy teams. Coordinate regular task force / program management team meetings to support activity prioritization based on standardized and consistent processes/ frameworks 
• Proactively identify issues and risks related to program implementation and suggest relevant course corrections and escalate issues as appropriate
• Collaborate with the grants management and finance team to monitor financial performance of donor funded programs ensuring that we remain within 10% of target spend and make adjustments as needed with internal teams and donors

Operations and Administrative support

• Coordinate with the Head of Grants Management on administrative execution of all requirements for sub-award management, including ensuring subrecipient selection and engagement steps are completed prior to engaging a sub, drafting contracts, coordinating invoices for payment, and supporting on-going monitoring efforts.
• Ad hoc administrative tasks, especially for new programs and smaller country teams, such as conducting interviews, approving payments / invoices, creating new processes, etc

Strategic support and thought leadership 

• Ensure that project objectives align with Digital Green’s organizational strategy while contributing to organizational enablers such as MEL, climate and gender
• Interface closely with the product and technology teams to ensure product related aims are achieved within programs (as required)
• Support the business development and fundraising team to accurately communicate program related achievements and learning through contributing to proposal review and section writing

Qualifications and Skills

• 5  years of experience in international development project management for large multi-year development projects; minimum of 7 years of relevant experience at the “Senior” level
• Experience managing Agtech and / or climate resilience projects with an Africa and / or South Asia focus preferable. Relevant experience with edtech, health tech, and with rural populations also applicable.
• Bachelor’s degree in agriculture, rural development, business, ICT for development, or another relevant field of study; Master’s degree preferred
• Experience in overseeing program monitoring and evaluation, project reporting and communication efforts; understanding of various donor reporting requirements preferable 
• Experience working in matrixed organizations with multiple dotted line relationships requiring ability to exert informal influence across multiple teams (tech, product, comms, MEL etc)
• Experience with cross-sectoral partnerships (especially across technology teams and government partners) working across multiple time zones and with people from diverse cultures
• Experience in budgeting and financial management of large scale projects
• Comfort and curiosity to learn about emerging technologies (digital and data) and how they can be adapted to serve the most marginalized 
• Experience in one or more of our program countries preferred

• The salary range for this role is $96,820, $103,000 USD. The salary offered to the selected candidate will be commensurate with their relevant experience and cost of living indicators based on the state (country) of residence.

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