Job Openings State Lead - Maharashtra

About the job State Lead - Maharashtra

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 the most impactful lever for accelerating national development is to improve governance and state capacity to better deliver core public services at scale.

Informed by cutting-edge research and evidence as well as a practical orientation toward implementable ideas, CEGIS works with state governments in India to enable a transformative improvement in their functioning. CEGISs vision and Theory of Change (ToC) are an outcome of extensive research done by Prof. Karthik Muralidharan (CEGIS Co-Founder and Scientific Director) and outlined in his multiple award-winning, national bestselling book Accelerating India's Development, and enabled by strategic philanthropic support provided by Ashish Dhawan (CEGIS Co-Founder).

CEGIS Approach and Model of Functioning:

CEGISs solutions to enhance governance are co-created with state governments in a state-led way, where we focus on deep partnerships with states using 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 the book Accelerating India's Development, and these solutions are constantly 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.

Our focus areas reflect evidence that key characteristics of high-performing organisations include (a) measuring outcomes through reliable, high quality data that enables goal setting and progress monitoring; (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 and revenue collection are based on evidence and cost-effectiveness; (d) and creating efficient systems to leverage external actors (including for-profit and nonprofit organisations). CEGIS partners with states to improve capacity by focusing on these pillars of State effectiveness, and aims to also integrate these horizontal governance improvements into integrated sectoral roadmaps to accelerate the achievement of state and national development outcomes.

Internally, CEGIS is organized into solutions teams that lead the design and technical quality control of our research and evidence-backed approaches to improving governance and state capacity; delivery" teams that lead state-facing work to contextualize the solutions, and support governments in implementing them; and enablement teams that enable the organization to function smoothly.

CEGIS@6 to CEGIS@10: Building on momentum to catalyse national development

Since its incorporation in 2019, CEGIS has gained significant momentum in building strong collaborations with state government(s) as a trusted partner who can provide both thought leadership and implementation support on key governance reforms. CEGIS position as a non-profit that does not take any funding from the government (other than in-kind contributions of office space/staff) has been a key enabler in earning this trust.

Beginning with 1 state government engagement in 2019, today CEGIS is working across 9 Indian states (Assam, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Odisha, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, and Uttar Pradesh). We also partner with union agencies/ministries such as Capacity Building Commission, Ministry of Women & Child Development (MoWCD), and Ministry of Statistics & Programme Implementation (MoSPI) to share insights from our state-level work to inform national-level guidelines and dissemination to other states. Finally, we also take on selected work at the district level to design and test implementation templates.

From a small group of founding members, we have grown to become a team of 150+ members located across the country, and expect to grow to over 200 in the coming year. Led by a former senior civil-servant with deep governance experience; state and solution team leads with decades of domain expertise; and enabling functions led by professionals with considerable corporate experience, the team at CEGIS brings together knowledge and experience that spans various sectors – from development economics, research, governance, management consulting, and social entrepreneurship.

Over the last 6 years, CEGIS has also garnered support for our vision and theory of change from several foundations and philanthropists whose partnership has enabled us to build our organisational capacity as well as continue to experiment and improve our solution design to augment state capacity and governance. With the rapidly growing demand for CEGISs offerings, CEGIS is well-positioned to play a key role in accelerating Indias development.

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

About the projects in Maharashtra

CEGIS works closely with the Government of Maharashtra to support improvements in governance and service delivery across priority social-sector outcomes. The State Lead will anchor this partnership, working with senior government stakeholders to strengthen data-informed decision-making and execution across key departments. CEGIS supports the state across core social-sector priorities—including health, nutrition, education, and gender—by identifying underperforming geographies, diagnosing root causes through administrative data and field insights, and co-developing actionable, department-ready solutions.

Position Summary

As the State Lead, you will lead and drive the CEGIS engagement in the state of Maharashtra. This will be through a combination of directly leading some projects, and providing support strategic oversight to others, while having an overall picture of the portfolio of projects in the State. You will be ultimately responsible for the success of CEGIS-driven reforms and must ensure seamless team management and coordination with government and external partners. You will interact with senior government officials, researchers, agencies and have a macro-overview of the entire State and will be required to build an in-depth understanding of the states major policy developments and priorities. Over time, you will be expected to achieve a high level of trust and efficacy, and be able to function as an effective advisor to the State Government.

This role directly reports to the Chief Executive Officer, and also works closely with other State / function-heads on solution design, organization building, collaboration with external partners, donor stewardship, etc. You would also work time-to-time with the Chief of Solutions and with the Co-founder and Scientific Director (Prof. Karthik Muralidharan) to understand the intellectual vision behind the proposed reforms and drive the implementation of the reforms across sectors, as well as vertical leads and external partners.

Roles & Responsibilities

Drive the governance reform initiatives with a strong execution focusSolution Leadership and Design

  • Provide overall leadership to execute the strategy for the state, collaborate with the vertical and support teams to embed and scale impactful solutions and provide thought leadership to shape the outcomes where you have sectoral expertise.
  • Be a force multiplier across CEGIS: Partner with other CEGIS verticals and embed State inputs into solution design (ex-ante), implementation (in-flight), and institutionalization (ex-post), aligning with state capacity building and government processes.

Develop relationships with the key officials of the State and set-up mechanisms for review and institutionalization of reforms

  • Pitch CEGIS offerings to State level Stakeholders and influence decision making
  • Identify and devise strategies to capitalize on new opportunities within the state.
  • Build and maintain relationships with local organizations and stakeholders
  • Create opportunities for Project Managers and team members to interact with the principal external stakeholders to create ongoing engagement
  • As a State Lead, work with senior State officials to select, embed, and ensure alignment and delivery from extended network team including Fellows, seconded staff from government and all relevant partners under this reform umbrella.

Manage Partnerships and Relations

  • Institutionalize Partnerships, funding and other advisory support possible in the region in support of program objectives
  • Identify and influence operational partnerships and be the point of contact to maintain the relationships in the region, be it funding partnerships or operational agreements
  • Cultivate relationships and networks with prospective donors and industry experts, sectoral influencers, HNIs, other non-profits & eco-system players through engaging and meaningful communication.
  • Participate in external events, workshops, and conferences to advocate for CEGIS mission and establish new partnership, thereby advocating CEGIS work internally and externally.

Ensure Oversight to Project Portfolio and management

  • Lead in presenting to CEGIS' Investment Committee (Apex Committee) to commence projects, drawing from client interactions and insights, collaboration and effective communication among teams within the office.
  • Provide feedback to ensure that the project portfolio aligns with CEGIS' Theory of Change, ensuring effective delivery that fulfills both client and CEGIS requirements
  • Participate, as required, and help the teams scope and build the solution proposal, ensuring a balance of rigor, feasibility, and cost-effectiveness, aligned to CEGIS ToC.
  • Provide strategic direction to apply technical solutions in innovative ways to address complex departmental / state level requirements.
  • Provide strategic insights into project structure, approach, methodologies, deliverables, and timelines, leveraging support from subject matter experts when necessary.
  • Address and resolve project-related issues, including delays, data requirements, scope changes, administrative and logistical matters, staffing, and more, with both external and internal stakeholders.
  • Review Project OKRs with the Project Leads and presentation of progress to the Management and donors.
  • Create a culture of impact and enable team building through collaboration and transparency

Risk Management & Compliance

  • Ensure compliance with relevant regulatory requirements and internal policies.
  • Mitigate risks associated with client engagements and internal operations.
  • Act decisively in response to crises or unforeseen challenges affecting the office's operations.
  • Local Vendor agreements and payments

Required Qualifications, Skills, and Abilities

Educational Qualification

  • Masters degree or equivalent in relevant fields, including management, economics or public policy – from a top global program. A PhD in a relevant discipline is an advantage but not mandatory.

Professional Experience

  • 13–15 years of work experience with managerial responsibilities, demonstrating entrepreneurship, superb project delivery and team leadership
  • Prior exposure to working very closely with senior bureaucrats and designing/implementing large-scale projects is highly desirable
  • Strong interest in improving the functioning of the government combined with interest/experience in using research and evidence to improve policy
  • Excellent problem-solving and strategic thinking skills, ability to analyse complex quantitative and qualitative data, craft possible solutions and recommend actions
  • Excellent writing and communication skills (ability to communicate complex ideas in a meaningful way and across different audiences) in both English and local language(pref)
  • Ability to build and maintain positive and collaborative relationships both within and outside the organization
  • Ability to set goals and metrics for a team, and manage the team towards delivering those goals
  • Strong planning and organizational skills, and an ability to be able to set priorities, plan timelines and meet deadlines.

Personal characteristics & Interpersonal abilities

  • Ability to align multiple stakeholders and build platforms for collaboration and coordination
  • Passion for working with governments and making Indian states work better
  • Ability to think creatively, willing to take risks to experiment with new ideas and the ability to turn ideas into action
  • Excellent people management skills, with the ability to develop and motivate teams
  • High ability to collaborate and actively listen to others, understanding and valuing others views
  • Intellectual curiosity and ability/willingness to constantly learn
  • Operating style suited to working independently and in a small-organization setting, where teamwork and resourcefulness are highly valued
  • Demonstrated relationship-building ability and management of high-level relationships with partner organizations, ideally based on experience of working with Indian state governments


Location and Compensation

Location: The role will be based out of Mumbai. 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.

Pre-reads for the application process

Please go through the following materials before sending in your application:

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