Job Openings Senior Program Manager - Education

About the job Senior Program Manager - Education

About CEGIS

The 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:

CEGIS' 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 India's 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.

Position Summary

The Senior Program Manager – Education, Telangana will serve as CEGIS's primary engagement point for its education portfolio in the state. This is a senior leadership role that combines strategic government partnership, project execution, and team management.

The incumbent will serve as the primary relationship manager, while ensuring institutional continuity of government partnerships across the CEGIS team

The role requires an experienced professional who can operate credibly at the senior levels of a state government, translate complex analytical work into implementable governance solutions, and build and mentor a high-performing embedded team—while being supported by the Education Lead, State Lead and CEGIS's technical functions.

Key Responsibilities

Government Engagement & Strategic Partnership

Serve as CEGIS's primary representative with senior officials of the Telangana School Education Department Leadership.

Build and sustain trusted, high-quality relationships with government counterparts; represent CEGIS effectively in high-level reviews, policy consultations, and decision-making forums

Drive the government engagement agenda—identify priority areas for collaboration, facilitate strategic discussions, and support agenda-setting with senior leadership

Accountable for influencing and enabling programme outcomes through strong partnerships and execution excellence

Strategy & Theory of Change

Champion CEGIS's theory of change across all education projects in Telangana; ensure that every workstream reflects CEGIS's core approach of evidence-data-backed.

Co-create and continuously refine project strategy with the state government, anchoring it in an understanding of the Telangana education system's specific context and constraints

Identify systemic bottlenecks, surface opportunities for intervention, and bring cross-state learnings to strengthen project design

Define and monitor indicators of success at the programme level; ensure projects are oriented towards measurable improvements in learning and governance outcomes

Project Design & Implementation

Oversee the design and end-to-end implementation of education projects, including workstreams related to foundational learning, teacher professional development, academic monitoring, data systems, and capacity building

Structure complex problems, synthesise hypotheses, and develop appropriate analytical frameworks in collaboration with CEGIS technical functions and senior academics

Ensure timely delivery of high-quality project outputs, applying CEGIS-wide protocols for data management, data protection, and project management

Conduct quality control over field and desk research, quantitative and qualitative analysis, and all deliverables produced by the team

Data, Evidence & Decision Support

Enable evidence-based decision-making by ensuring robust data collection, analysis, and reporting across all projects

Set up and strengthen monitoring mechanisms, dashboards, and feedback loops that help government counterparts track implementation progress in real-time

Translate technical rigor into actionable, contextually appropriate recommendations for government stakeholders

Proactively identify project risks and implementation bottlenecks; communicate upward with timely, suggestive remedies.

Team Leadership & Operations

Lead, mentor, and manage a multidisciplinary team embedded in or closely partnering with the Telangana education department

Support reportees in planning and prioritising workstreams, setting timelines, and meeting deliverables; provide substantive intellectual and professional development support

Ensure the team operates in alignment with CEGIS's values and protocols, including data ethics, quality standards, and stakeholder engagement norms

Draft and review high-quality written outputs—strategy notes, policy briefs, presentations, analytical reports, and government-facing documents

Required Qualifications & Experience

  • Degree or equivalent in public policy, economics, management, engineering, social sciences, or a related field from a reputed institution
  • Experience: 9 to 12 years of relevant experience in one or more of the following:
    • Management or strategy or impact consulting, with significant development sector exposure or in leading government-facing partnerships for private or non-profit organizations
    • Programme leadership roles with government advisory entities, multilateral organisations, international development institutions, or strategic philanthropy organisations
  • Demonstrated track record of building and sustaining productive working relationships with senior officials in Indian state governments
  • Proven experience leading and mentoring multi-disciplinary teams in a fast-paced, complex programme environment
  • Experience in the education sector is preferred; strong candidates from other social sector domains are also encouraged to apply

Skills & Competencies

Exceptional stakeholder management: able to engage credibly and confidently with senior bureaucrats and build durable, trust-based relationships

Strategic and systems thinking: ability to understand complex government systems, identify leverage points, and develop solutions that are both analytically rigorous and implementable

Strong analytical skills: comfort with quantitative and qualitative data, research methods, and translating evidence into governance recommendations

Outstanding written and verbal communication in English; ability to tailor communication for diverse audiences including government officials, academics, and internal leadership

Basic to intermediate proficiency in Telugu; ability to navigate working contexts where Telugu is the primary language of communication

Execution orientation: ability to manage multiple workstreams, set priorities, meet deadlines, and deliver high-quality outputs under pressure

Team leadership: ability to inspire, develop, and hold accountable a diverse team while maintaining a collaborative and supportive working environment

Adaptability and creativity: comfortable with ambiguity, willing to experiment with new approaches, and able to pivot as project contexts evolve

Personal Characteristics

Go getter

Deep commitment to improving the effectiveness of Indian state governments and alignment with CEGIS's mission and theory of change

High degree of personal ownership and accountability; proactive in identifying and solving problems

Ability to work under pressure by handling competing priorities

Collaborative working style that values and actively incorporates diverse perspectives

Comfortable operating in a small-organisation environment where resourcefulness, agility, and initiative are essential

Ability to hold firm on quality standards while remaining pragmatic and solution-oriented in the face of real-world implementation constraints

Location

This role is based in Hyderabad, Telangana, with regular travel to districts across the state and occasional travel to CEGIS offices as needed.

Pre-reads for the application process

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


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