Head of Programs CARE Ukraine

Contract Start Date: early 2027, no later than 1 March, 2027Contract Duration: 1 yearDuty Station: Kyiv (Ukraine) with possible travel to Dnipro and Lviv area offices As a member of the Senior Management Team and under the direct supervision of the Country Director, the Head of Programs plays a leading role in developing and implementing high quality programs in Ukraine. The Head of Programs ensures projects are implemented on scope, time and budget and leads quality management and impact efforts of the entire project portfolio. The Head of Programs line manages the Program Implementation Lead, all Technical Advisors and Technical Coordinators, and the MEAL Coordinator, and ensures close coordination and consultation with other departments. The position will have a particular focus on assuring program quality and providing technical capacity building of partners in sectoral areas. The Head of Programs works closely with the Country Director, the Program Development Lead, the Partnership Coordinator, the Advocacy Advisor, and department heads to inform strategies and support program implementation and partnership development. Overall Program Implementation and Quality - Provide inclusive and cohesive leadership to CARE’s programme teams in Ukraine, ensuring coordinated implementation of high-quality programs in line with CARE Ukraine’s Country Strategy. - Maintain deep understanding of the social, political, and economic context in Ukraine by initiating assessments in areas where CARE foresees needs for programme expansion. - Ensure projects are implemented on scope, time and budget, with the Program Implementation Lead overseeing day-to-day delivery and technical teams providing the guidance and support required to maintain program quality. - Maintain and review the programmatic priorities of the Country Strategy, ensuring that programs remain aligned with these priorities and proposing adjustments based on changes in context, evidence, learning and priorities identified with partner organizations. - Ensure close coordination between program implementation, technical teams, MEAL and Program Development to address implementation challenges, strengthen integration across sectors and inform new programs. - Oversee the implementation of strategic programs and initiatives, ensuring that technical approaches, partner support and learning contribute to CARE Ukraine’s longer-term program objectives. - Ensure the mainstreaming of gender equality, protection and inclusion across programs, with harmonized approaches and consistent application of CARE’s program quality standards. - Ensure that program review meetings are held on a regular basis, covering implementation progress, technical quality, key risks and monitoring findings, and that agreed actions are followed up. - Ensure that any bottlenecks between the Program department and other departments at Country and Area Office level are swiftly addressed and resolved. Oversight and Management of Program Implementation and Budget - In collaboration with the SMT, define and oversee an effective, efficient and sustainable program implementation model, including defining and developing the role of CARE and its partners, and ensuring that proper program SOPs and systems are in place to ensure quality program implementation. - Support the Partnership Coordinator in ensuring that partner due diligence assessments are conducted, capacity development plans are developed and used, and partnership agreements are in line with CARE’s requirements, including those for PSEA. - Oversee the setting and follow-up of detailed project management tools, such as Detailed Implementation Plans, MEAL Plans and monitoring reports, through the MEAL Coordinator and Program Implementation Lead. - Ensure that programs are implemented in ways responsive to communities, especially women and girls, and in line with CARE principles, values and strategic plans, in compliance with CI procedures. - Serve as the overall budget holder for all programming, delegating day-to-day budget management and support to individual grant budget holders to the Program Implementation Lead, while retaining overall accountability for program expenditure and compliance with donor requirements and CARE’s scheme of delegation. - Maintain oversight of the Program Implementation Lead’s work on financial forecasting, expenditure monitoring and corrective actions, ensuring that significant budget risks and variances are addressed and that resources are used in line with program priorities, in coordination with Finance and Operations. - Provide direction on significant budget adjustments and resource allocation decisions, and directly oversee specific grants where required. Program Quality, Technical Support and Learning - Maintain and adapt CARE Ukraine’s programme quality framework, ensuring that systems and approaches are aligned with CARE International standards and humanitarian quality standards, including the Core Humanitarian Standard. - Provide direction to technical leads to ensure that programs meet minimum technical standards, that appropriate tools, guidelines and SOPs are applied consistently, and that Program Managers and partners receive the technical support needed for quality implementation. - Ensure that technical approaches across sectors are coherent and integrated, with particular attention to harmonized gender equality, protection and inclusion approaches across the program portfolio. - Lead regular reviews of program quality with technical teams, MEAL and the Program Implementation Lead, identifying gaps, challenges and risks and ensuring that agreed improvement actions are followed up. - Provide oversight of the MEAL framework and information management systems through the MEAL Coordinator, ensuring they generate reliable and timely evidence on program quality and outcomes across implementing modalities, and that significant system risks and capacity gaps are addressed. - Set priorities for needs assessments, evaluations, external monitoring and research with MEAL and technical teams, ensuring their quality, relevance and contribution to understanding program effectiveness and changing needs. - Lead the development of a research and learning agenda with MEAL and technical teams, defining priority questions and ensuring that research, implementation experience and good practices inform technical approaches and program adaptation. - Ensure findings, learning and recommendations are shared with CARE teams and partners, translated into agreed improvements and used to inform programmatic strategy updates. - Maintain oversight of CARE Ukraine’s accountability mechanism, ensuring that community feedback informs quality reviews and program adjustments, in line with CARE’s feedback and accountability standards. - Ensure technical capacity strengthening of partners addresses identified quality gaps and that its effectiveness is reviewed with technical leads and the partnership unit. Business Development - Support the Country Director in maintaining and adjusting the funding strategy, diversifying and strengthening donor engagements in line with CARE Ukraine’s Country Strategy. - Lead the coordination of technical inputs to new programs, proposals and reports, in close coordination with the Program Development Lead, Program Implementation Lead, technical teams and MEAL Coordinator, ensuring alignment with strategic priorities and program quality standards. - Ensure that new programs build on contextual analysis, monitoring findings, lessons learned and priorities identified with communities and partner organizations. - Ensure that partner organizations and communities participate in program design, including the development of logical frameworks, activities and budgets, and that proposals respond to identified needs, align with CARE Ukraine’s Country Strategy and program quality standards, and include adequate MEAL inputs and costs. Representation and Networking - Support in establishing, maintaining, and improving active and regular working relationships with strategic and implementing partners and colleague organisations. - Maintain a network across CARE International and the membership to secure technical resources to support the strategy. - Engage with UN agencies and develop strong working relationships with relevant humanitarian clusters and sector working groups to inform CARE’s strategic priorities and operational planning, share program evidence and learning, and ensure CARE fulfils its coordination commitments, including any co-leadership roles. - Provide program evidence and technical inputs to inform advocacy and communications strategies, working closely with the Advocacy Advisor and Communication Coordinator to strengthen the visibility and uptake of lessons learned from CARE programming. Team Management and Coordination - Manage the performance of direct reports using CARE’s performance management policies and procedures, providing coaching, mentoring, training and development to strengthen leadership and the quality of their work. - Monitor the recruitment, training and promotion of programmes staff to ensure core functions are filled. - Promote a collaborative and productive team environment based on mutual respect, supporting staff resilience and well-being in challenging situations. - In collaboration with the human resources department, identify capacity development needs of staff. - Supervise and manage managers and technical leads to ensure day-to-day activities are implemented in a coordinated way according to workplan and budget. - Take the lead on safeguarding prevention and response measures within CARE Ukraine’s workplaces, programs and communities, ensuring measurable standards consistent with CARE’s policies on PSEA-CP, Gender Equality and CARE Performance Standards. Support will be provided by the CARE DE Safeguarding Focal Point and CARE Ukraine HR Manager. - The duties and responsibilities as set out above are not exhaustive and the role holder may be required to carry out additional duties assigned by line manager. Essential Experience and Technical Expertise - At least 7 years’ experience in a humanitarian and/or development context with national or international NGOs. - A minimum of 5 years’ senior management experience, including significant field operations experience running humanitarian and/or development programs. - A minimum of 2 years living and working in an emergency or conflict setting. - Master’s degree in development or other social sciences or relevant degree. - A good understanding of at least one of the sectoral programs (Protection, WASH/Shelter, SRH and Livelihoods). - Significant knowledge of international humanitarian and/or development systems, institutions and donors. - Solid project management skills and knowledge of accountability frameworks. - Substantial experience and knowledge of effective financial and budgetary control. - Demonstrated knowledge in gender equality and gender-transformative programming. - Demonstrated understanding of MEAL systems and experience using data, evidence and learning to assess program quality, adapt implementation and inform program design. - Experience in partnership approaches, civil society development and/or capacity strengthening of local partner organizations. Leadership and Management Skills - Ability to lead, motivate and develop others, including through coaching and mentoring. - Experience in leading cross-functional teams with a proven history of delivering results. - Strong results orientation, with the ability to challenge existing mindsets. - Ability to analyze information, evaluate options and think and plan strategically. - Excellent interpersonal, communication and presentation skills, including negotiation and influencing skills. - Fluency in written and spoken English. - Ability and willingness to work flexible hours and in a setting with security restrictions. - Commitment to the aims and principles of CARE. - Politically and culturally sensitive, with qualities of patience, tact and diplomacy. - Trustworthiness and sense of responsibility. Desirable - Significant experience designing and supporting partner-driven programs. - Strong and recent knowledge of Ukrainian humanitarian context. - Ukrainian and/or relevant regional language. - Training and capacity building skills. - Experience of representation and ability to represent CARE effectively in external forums. CARE Ukraine is a country office which comes under the management of CARE Germany. It has been operating in Ukraine since March 2022.CARE prioritizes a locally led response and is partnering primarily with Civil-Society Organizations (CSOs), National NGOs, local authorities, and when needed, INGOs with a longstanding presence in the country and access to hard-to-reach areas. CARE Ukraine deliberately and strategically prioritizes partnerships with local and national Women Led and Women Rights organizations (WLO’s/ WRO’s), in accordance with Gender in Emergencies (GiE) principles.CARE Ukraine’s FY25 portfolio was approx. EUR 13 million, funded by GFFO/ BMZ, ECHO, DANIDA, Czech MOFA, ADA (Austrian Development Agency), AFD (Agence Francaise de Developpement), LDS (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints) and others. We implement primarily humanitarian programs, in the protection/ GBV, SRH, integrated humanitarian response and WASH/ shelter sectors. Some 10-15% of our programs are recovery/ response, primarily in livelihoods, WASH and womens empowerment sectors. The focus of most programming is the frontline oblasts of Kharkiv, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Mykolaiv, and Dnipropetrovsk oblast. We also have some programming in Odesa. The country office is in Kyiv, with a support office in Lviv and field offices in Dnipro and Kharkiv. We plan to phase out the Lviv support office in the second half of 2026.CARE Ukraine currently partners with 12 local/national organizations, almost all of which are WLO’s/WRO’s. We channel some 80% of our funding through local/national partners. Through the activities that have been implemented so far, CARE Ukraine has been able to reach over 750,000 people, including IDPs and affected populations in hard-to-reach areas. CARE values equal opportunities and diversity. We do not discriminate based on race, religion, colour, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status or disability. Accountability within CAREA commitment to CARE values and CARE’s integrity framework is critical to working with CARE. Any candidate offered a job with CARE will be expected to adhere to the following key areas of accountability:- Comply with CARE’s policies and procedures with respect to safeguarding, code of conduct, health and safety, confidentiality, do no harm principles and unacceptable behavior protocols.- Report any concerns about the welfare of a child or vulnerable adult or any wrongdoings within our programming area.- Report any concerns about inappropriate behavior of a CARE staff or partner. SafeguardingChildren and vulnerable adults who come into contact with CARE as a result of our activities must be safeguarded to the maximum possible extent from deliberate or inadvertent actions and failings that place them at risk of abuse, sexual exploitation, injury, and any other harm. One of the ways that CARE shows this on-going commitment to safeguarding is to include rigorous background and reference checks in the selection process for all candidates. Gender equalityCARE is committed to meeting the standards of the CARE International Gender Policy (2019). Through this policy, CARE seeks to promote the equal realization of dignity and human rights for girls, women, boys and men in all diversities, and the elimination of poverty and injustice. Specifically, this policy seeks to improve the explicit incorporation of gender in programmatic and organizational practices. - Employment contract with the possibility of prolongation - Flexible working hours (flexitime and generous opportunities for remote working) - Vacation according to the country office policies, plus additional days off on public holidays - 24/7 group accident insurance - Health insurance - Recreation bonuses - Coverage of relevant training and development opportunities We are looking for highly motivated team members who identify with CARE’s goals and values. We offer a varied role with numerous employee benefits within a supportive, international team. Interested? Then please apply by sending us your CV (in pdf format max. 4 pages), a cover letter and your letters of reference in English by November 22, 2026. Your contact person is Ditha Pahnke. Please note that we will review applications on a rolling basis. Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted. References will only be contacted after the interview.