Job Openings Sector Head – Education

About the job Sector Head – Education

About CEGIS

Centre for Effective Governance of Indian States (CEGIS – pronounced See-Jis) aims to improve lives by helping Indian state governments deliver better development outcomes. We believe that well-functioning governments share at least four features with high-performing organisations: (a) measuring outcomes through reliable, high quality data that enables goal setting and monitoring progress towards these goals; (b) strategic use of personnel – competency based hiring and training, skilling, and performance appraisals to determine job assignments, pay, and promotions – to achieve the goals above; (c) strategic budgeting where resource allocation is based on evidence and cost-effectiveness; (d) and creating efficient systems to leverage external actors (including for-profit and nonprofit organisations). At CEGIS, we support the state governments to build these foundations so that they can deliver development outcomes more effectively.

CEGIS works closely with the political and bureaucratic leadership in the states to achieve transformational change. We are currently present in 9 states - Assam, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Odisha, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Uttar Pradesh. We also partner with union agencies/ministries such as Capacity Building Commission, Ministry of Women & Child Development (MoWCD), Ministry of Statistics & Programme Implementation (MoSPI) to provide technical support for strengthening foundational systems and reflect insights from CEGISs work at the state-level into national level initiatives and guidelines. We also collaborate closely with academics and research institutions to ensure our work is grounded in rigorous research and evidence-based practices.

CEGIS Approach and Model of Functioning

Our solutions to enhance governance are co-created with state governments in a state-led way, where we focus on deep partnerships with states with an iterative cycle of think-demonstrate-document-transfer. We work closely with the top bureaucratic leadership, front-line workers and public officials in Finance, Planning, Human Resources and a few other priority line departments. Many of our solutions reflect ideas outlined in our founder Prof. Karthik Muralidharan's book (Accelerating India's Development), and these solutions are constantly being refined based on real-time feedback and are designed to both be customized to the contexts we are working in, and to create templates that can provide the starting point for replication across contexts.

To further explore the mission of CEGIS and the impact we hope to have, please take a look at this video of our CEO, Dr Vijay Pingale.

About the Education sector
Education is a core sector for CEGIS. We work with departments of School Education, SCERTs, examination boards and related agencies to improve learning outcomes and schooling trajectories for children. As a governance focused organization, our work focuses less on classroom-level interventions and more on the enabling conditions for building effective education systems. Through targeted interventions in data systems, personnel management, procurement, digital/public goods, and public finance, CEGIS supports governments to design and operationalize strategies that improve foundational learning and broader schooling outcomes. After 5+ years of testing and validating individual point solutions across data, personnel, and public finance systems, CEGIS aims to integrate these components of system strengthening interventions to accelerate improvement of education outcomes. The education sector-lead will drive this agenda.

Across Health, Education, and Nutrition, CEGIS anchors its sectoral strategies around a common early-life outcomes framework. Early Childhood Development (ECD) sits at the core of the Education portfolio, while the first 1,000 days—from conception to age two—form a central pillar of Health and Nutrition. These are not treated as parallel programmes, but as an integrated continuum of human development, where maternal health, nutrition, caregiving practices, early learning, and system delivery intersect.

Position Summary

The Sector Head – Education will be CEGIS senior-most leader for the education portfolio. The role is responsible for architecting the sector strategy, stewarding a multi-state portfolio of engagements, building relations with and coordinating among a broad coalition of ecosystem players in education, and providing deep technical and strategic leadership on education system reform.

The Sector Head will command credibility with senior government partners and funders, and will work closely with CEGIS state leads and horizontal solution teams to ensure that engagements are coherent, outcome-linked, and progress along the solution maturity curve.

This is a senior leadership role that combines sectoral expertise, technical rigour in understanding research and evidence, practical wisdom about how best to deploy technical solutions, portfolio management, ecosystem-building, and people leadership.

Reporting to the Chief of Solutions, you will oversee a diverse portfolio of projects, ensuring methodological rigor, quality, and alignment with strategic objectives, while fostering cross-learning and innovation. You will also be expected to work closely with CEGIS Founder and Scientific Director (Prof. Karthik Muralidharan) to understand the intellectual vision behind proposed reforms and work closely on refining them, in ways that reflect cutting edge evidence.

Roles & Responsibilities

Sector Strategy and Portfolio Leadership

  • Refine and periodically update CEGIS sector strategy for education, anchored in CEGIS Theory of Change and solution maturity model.
  • Translate the strategy into a clear portfolio roadmap across states – including anchor projects, prototypes and learning agendas.
  • Work with the state leads to prioritise and sequence engagements based on impact potential, feasibility, and strategic fit.
  • Ensure each major engagement has a clear line-of-sight to student learning, equity and completion outcomes, with defined intermediate milestones and metrics.

Partnerships, Ecosystem Engagement and Funding Narratives

  • Build and maintain trusted relationships with senior bureaucrats in School Education Departments, SCERTs and other relevant agencies across states and at the Union level.
  • Represent CEGIS and its education work in key sector fora, working groups and high-level committees.
  • Co-create an outcome-linked funding narrative for the education portfolio with the fundraising and donor relations teams; anchor and review concept notes, proposals and reports.
  • Engage funders as thought partners, sharing learnings, risks and opportunities in a transparent manner.
  • Cultivate a network of academic and practitioner partners (universities, research labs, NGOs, EdTech/DPG actors) to complement and strengthen CEGIS work.

Technical Stewardship and Quality Assurance

  • Provide technical leadership on education systems to project teams across states, ensuring methodological rigour and internal coherence.
  • Guide teams on problem diagnosis, solution design, implementation support and adaptive course correction using administrative and survey data.
  • Work with Measurement, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) and Outcome Measurement teams to define sector-specific indicators and dashboards that link system and functionary-level changes to learning outcomes.
  • Aggregate learning across engagements into reusable solution playbooks, case studies and knowledge products for public use by governments and other organizations.

Internal Leadership and Cross-Sector Learning

  • Collaborate with the Health and Nutrition Sector Leads to leverage synergies – for example around ECD, school health and adolescent wellbeing.
  • Mentor and support mid-level colleagues working on education and contribute to building a strong sector bench within CEGIS.
  • Contribute to internal learning spaces and the CEGIS Academy/L&D agenda as faculty/anchor from the education side.
  • Model CEGIS values and operating norms – transparency, intellectual rigour and a strong bias to implementation and partnership with the state.

Cross-Sector Integration & Early Life Outcomes

  • Work collaboratively to design and operationalize solutions that cut across departmental silos aligning service delivery, data systems, and institutional incentives so that states move from fragmented interventions to a coherent early-life strategy that improves survival, growth, learning readiness, and long-term productivity.

Required Qualifications, Skills, and Abilities

Educational Qualification

  • Masters degree in Education, Public Policy, Economics, Development Studies, Public Administration, or a related field. A PhD in a relevant discipline is an advantage but not mandatory. What is essential is the ability to read, understand, and synthesize primary research with adequate judgment to assess the quality and generalizability of evidence.

Professional Experience

  • 15–20 years of progressive experience in education – for example research, system reform programmes, large-scale delivery or advisory/consulting.
  • At least 5 years in senior leadership roles involving direct engagement with governments (state or Union), preferably on system-wide education reforms.
  • Demonstrated experience of leading large, multi-stakeholder projects or portfolios and working with/within government systems (education departments, SCERTs, boards).
  • Proven experience engaging with domestic and global funders or multilaterals on strategy, programme design and funding.
  • Strong strategic thinking and systems-thinking orientation; ability to connect sector reforms to citizen-level outcomes.
  • Ability to command credibility and trust with senior bureaucrats, funders, peers and team members.
  • Comfort with both quantitative and qualitative data and ability to translate analyses into actionable insights and narratives.
  • Excellent written and verbal communication skills in English; proficiency in at least one Indian language is preferred.
  • High degree of ownership, bias to action and comfort with ambiguity in a fast-growing organisation.

Personal characteristics & Interpersonal abilities

  • Operating style suited to working in a fast-paced, entrepreneurial environment where teamwork, resourcefulness, and ownership are highly valued.
  • Ability to think creatively, take calculated risks, and translate ideas into action.
  • High ability to collaborate and actively listen, valuing and integrating diverse perspectives.
  • Versatility and comfort in taking on new problems and quickly diving into unfamiliar sectors or contexts.

Location and Compensation

Location: The role can be based out of Delhi/ Mumbai/ Chennai/ Hyderabad/ Bangalore. Travel to other states will be required.

Remuneration will be competitive with Indian philanthropy and social sector pay scales and will depend on the candidate's experience levels.

Interested candidates are requested to submit their applications by clicking the apply button below

Note: CEGIS has zero tolerance for sexual harassment. We therefore expect each applicant to self-declare related to the same. CEGIS could, if required, initiate a prevention of sexual harassment-based background verification. If an applicant is reported for misconduct, appropriate action that may include employment termination would be taken. Please complete the details for self-declaration on the application form.

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