Country MEL Support Manager

Role Purpose

The primary purpose of this role is to oversee and manage a portfolio of countries, providing professional MEL (Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning) support and guidance across the British Council's three Cultural Engagement sectors — Education, English and School Education, and Arts. The postholder is the point of contact for MEL advice for programmes within a portfolio of countries aligned, as far as possible, with their own time zone, and acts as the go-to authority on MEL approaches, methods, resourcing, standards and quality, recommending when evaluation activity is needed and helping to plan annual evaluation needs.

The postholder guides the end-to-end process of commissioning evaluation suppliers, including via the Evaluation team's Global Framework of suppliers, and supports the provision of insights across their portfolio of countries for stakeholder engagement and business development, alongside colleagues in the Research and Insight team. They also support MEL capability and capacity development within their portfolio, particularly around impact monitoring, provide technical support on monitoring and evaluation to teams delivering partnership and contract-funded work, and support any contract-funded MEL managers in their portfolio. The role also supports the Senior Evaluation Alignment and Standardisation leads with ad hoc MEL requests and enables Strategic MEL managers to access data and participants for cross-cutting studies.

Role Accountabilities

Strategy and Planning

Supports the development of monitoring and evaluation plans for grant, partnership and contract-funded programmes, ensuring they are strategically aligned, appropriately designed and resourced, and timed for greatest impact on stakeholders, and supports the development of evaluation plans and priorities across the portfolio of countries.

Leadership and Management

Plays a lead role in the design and implementation of high-quality evaluations to articulate and drive organisational impact, and supports the development of wider evidence within the Evidence, Evaluation and Learning (EEL) team and across the portfolio of countries. Effectively coordinates the work of colleagues and consultants leading on data management, to support the use of performance data and insights across the portfolio.

Programme Management

Makes authoritative professional recommendations about the focus and content of evaluation plans and programmes, and identifies new approaches and techniques to enhance the efficiency, quality and wider impact of monitoring, evaluation and learning processes.

Subject Expertise

Represents the British Council as a recognised, credible authority in monitoring, evaluation and learning, including with key external stakeholders, and builds and maintains external networks to access, absorb and apply professional best practice.

Business Development

Drafts monitoring and evaluation components of programme proposals within agreed corporate schedules of delegation.

Relationship and Stakeholder Management

Supports complex or key stakeholder and partner relationships, particularly with global programme and country leadership, to help achieve agreed short- to medium-term targets, and monitors, evaluates and reports on the effectiveness of stakeholder management strategies, adapting approaches as needed and proactively sharing experience and insights.

Knowledge & Experience

Education

Desirable:

• First degree or master’s degree in a social science or equivalent subject

Experience

Essential:

• Experience of designing and delivering independent evaluations within a programme delivery organisation and/or an agency delivering for clients
• Experience of different methodological approaches applied in the design and delivery of evaluation projects
• Operational experience of implementing the collection of monitoring data, assessing data quality characteristics and resolving challenges to quality
• Understanding of the MEL standards of major funders of British Council programmes, particularly the FCDO (or other UK Government departments) and the EU and/or equivalent overseas donors and funders
• Experience of providing extensive input to the design of MEL strategies for new business proposals
• Experience of procurement and of managing suppliers of evaluation consultancy work
• Experience designing theories of change, outcomes, results frameworks and indicators
• Experience designing data collection tools, including impact monitoring surveys
• Strong practical skills across quantitative and qualitative evaluation methods, including survey design, key informant interviews and focus group development
• Strong understanding of monitoring data quality, including threats to quality and how to mitigate these
• Good writing skills, including summarising findings and recommendations, developing impact case studies, and writing business development proposals

Desirable:

• Delivery of work across different international contexts and working with and through diverse international teams
• Competence in data management/analysis software (SPSS, Stata, SAS, Excel, Power BI/Power Apps)
• Operational experience in digital survey platforms and digital data collection
• Operational experience of data quality assurance processes

Important Information

• Location: Pakistan
• Contract Type:Indefinite Contract
• Pay band: 8
• Department: Cultural Engagement
• Right to Work Requirements: You must have the legal right to work in the location in which the role is based
• Languages: Written and verbal proficiency in English is required
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Closing date for applications:

11.59 PM IST, 30 August 2026

11.29 PM Pakistan Time (PKT), 30 August 2026