Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning Manager

Salary: £49,370 to £50,797 Pro-Rata

Location: London-Hybrid

Tenure: Fixed term-8 months (External Secondments Considered)

ActionAid UK is a member of the ActionAid Federation, an international charity that works with women and girls living in poverty. We work with our partners and dedicated staff in 43 countries to end violence and fight poverty so that all women, everywhere, can create the future they want.

Are you a keen advocate of women and girls’ rights in emergencies? Are you an experienced monitoring and evaluation specialist in the humanitarian sector? Have you successfully built relationships with a variety of stakeholders to generate learning in humanitarian responses? Then we’d love to hear from you!

This is an exciting opportunity for a senior MEL professional who wants their expertise to directly support women-led change, influence donor practice, and shape learning across a global federation. ActionAid UK is looking for an experienced and values-driven Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning Manager to play a pivotal role in strengthening the quality, impact and accountability of our development and humanitarian programmes.

This is a senior specialist opportunity where your expertise won’t sit on a shelf; it will actively shape high-quality development and humanitarian programmes, strengthen accountability to the communities we work with, and help generate the evidence that moves resources, decisions and systems in the right direction. You’ll help ensure our MEL practice is led by feminist principles and decolonising approaches, centring the knowledge, leadership and priorities of women, girls and marginalised communities in the places where we work.

Pushing for evidence that reflects lived realities, valuing qualitative and participatory methods alongside numbers, and challenging extractive data collection and “parachute evaluation” approaches will be central to the role.

In this role you’ll sit at the centre of programme quality, business development and learning. You’ll work closely with colleagues across ActionAid UK and the wider ActionAid Federation, bringing strong MEL leadership into proposal development, project design, inception and delivery. You’ll help ensure that our bids and grants are built on realistic and resourced results frameworks, strong log frames and Theories of Change, and practical monitoring approaches that can stand up to donor scrutiny while staying grounded in what matters locally.

You’ll be a go-to technical lead for monitoring, evaluation, accountability and value for money across a major institutional funding landscape, supporting work linked to donors such as the FCDO, DEC, Start Fund and UN agencies, among others. You’ll provide hands-on guidance on MEL frameworks, tools and evaluation Terms of Reference, oversee evaluations and consultant management, and help teams build confidence and capability through coaching, training and practical support.

As a line manager to up to two MEL Specialists, you will help nurture a confident, skilled and collaborative MEL function that supports high-quality programming across diverse contexts.

Just as importantly, you’ll help ActionAid UK become sharper at learning and telling the story of change. You’ll drive evidence generation on effectiveness, coordinate learning forums and MEL clinics, and document and share examples of impact internally and externally to influence practice, build credibility and strengthen our profile.

You’ll collaborate with colleagues such as the Women, Peace and Security team to support research strategy delivery, maintain strong internal knowledge assets and develop clear, compelling capacity statements for different audiences.

We’re looking for someone with substantial experience designing and strengthening MEL approaches for humanitarian and development programming, ideally in areas such as women’s rights, VAWG, protection, livelihoods/economic security, resilience and adaptation. You’ll bring deep confidence with results-based planning and participatory approaches, strong knowledge of project cycle management, and a clear ability to coach others and improve systems and not just deliver outputs.

You’ll be comfortable representing ActionAid UK externally in MEL spaces and networks, helping to influence policy and practice and building relationships across the sector.

This role is based in London with hybrid working, requires a DBS check, includes some travel, and offers the chance to be part of an organisation committed to feminist principles, safeguarding, equality, diversity and inclusion, and becoming an anti-racist, decolonised INGO. If you’re motivated by learning that leads to better decisions, stronger programmes and real-world impact for women and girls, we’d love to hear from you.

Diversity, equality, inclusion and belonging are key to our organisational culture. We are on a journey to become not only an anti-racist organisation but one that proudly celebrates the diversity of all applicants and employees. We look forward to you bringing your full self to work, proudly sharing your unique perspective and helping us to shape our combined future. We especially welcome applications from those from under-represented/marginalised communities.

AAUK is a Disability Confident Committed organisation and as such any candidate that declares a disability will be shortlisted for interview if they meet the essential criteria for the role.

All offers of employment will be subject to satisfactory references and appropriate screening checks, which can include Misconduct Disclosure Scheme, safeguarding, criminal records and terrorism finance checks. By submitting an application the job applicant confirms their understanding of these recruitment procedures.

ActionAid UK is committed to preventing any form of sexual harassment, exploitation, and abuse (including child abuse and adult at-risk abuse) and responding robustly when these harms take place. We expect all ActionAid UK staff and ActionAid UK representatives to share this commitment. We will not tolerate our staff or other representatives carrying out any form of sexual harassment, exploitation or abuse towards anyone we come into contact with through our work.

ActionAid is committed to supporting flexible working. If you would like to discuss flexible working options, including the possibility of a job share for this role, there will be space to do so during the interview process.

ActionAid UK has a hybrid working policy for many of our roles. The requirement will vary from team to team and the responsibilities of individual roles. As a minimum, all colleagues are expected to attend the office 12 days per year, plus additional time for induction, training, and company connection days. Some roles may require in-office attendance on all days and if so, these will clearly be marked as in-office roles. Please note that ActionAid UK does not offer fully remote working options. We encourage you to discuss hybrid working expectations at interview.

Please note that ActionAid UK may review, shortlist and interview candidates prior to the closing date so we encourage all candidates to apply as soon as possible. If we receive a very high response, we may close the vacancy early and will not accept further submissions. Vacancies close at 23:55pm.