Chief Operating Officer

< back to jobs opening

Job Description:

Chief Operating Officer

Location: Delhi / Mumbai / Bengaluru / Hyderabad / Chennai / Potentially flexible

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 Indias 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 Indias 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 Role

Overview

The COO will be a critical leadership position that will build and shape CEGIS with overall responsibility for organization-building and delivery. This leader will be an integral member of a C-Suite, which will comprise the CEO, COO, and the Chief Solutions Officer (CSO) and also engage closely with Founder, Prof. Karthik Muralidharan. The role offers a unique opportunity to contribute to nation-building in partnership with a world-class leadership team and advisory board, and an outstanding mission-driven team of professionals.

The C-Suite will be led by the CEO, but will operate as a highly collaborative leadership team, jointly shaping strategy and key organizational decisions, with the COO exercising delegated authority for execution, delivery, and organization-building. The CSO will do the same for technical solution design, technical grant writing, MEL, and knowledge products.

The COO will own the full delivery portfolio, overseeing State Leads to ensure initiatives meet the highest standards of quality, are delivered on time, and yield demonstrable impact on governance validated by internal and external measurement. Success in this role requires a rare combination of organization building, intellectual and executive gravitas, stakeholder relationship building, and uncompromising operational rigour to drive reform in complex, high-stakes governance environments. The ultimate goal for CEGIS is to help design and implement scalable and sustainable governance reforms that can accelerate key development outcomes, with measurable impact across state engagements.

As a key anchor for CEGIS growth toward CEGIS@10, the COO will be an organization builder deeply committed to strengthening state capacity and enabling high-impact, scalable expansion of CEGISs impact, to accelerate Indias development.

Key Responsibilities

Strategic Leadership and Coordination

  • Work closely with the CEO, CSO, and Founder to shape and implement CEGIS overall and state-level strategy.
  • Provide overall leadership for the delivery of CEGIS solutions in states, translating organisational vision into actionable state-level plans.
  • Ensure mission clarity and alignment of all teams with CEGIS mission, theory of change, and strategic priorities.
  • Work closely with the CSO (and CEGIS technical teams) to stay on top of technical design of solutions, as well as new solutions enabled by advances in research and technology, and be a thought partner in prioritizing solutions for implementation.
  • Work closely with the CSO and other senior leaders to ensure that solutions are effectively tailored to state contexts and grounded in on-the-ground realities.

Delivery, Performance & Resource Management

  • Own end-to-end delivery of CEGIS work across all states, overseeing State Leads/ other senior project owners to ensure projects meet timelines, quality standards, and impact targets.
  • Lead the design and stewardship of delivery partnerships with other organisations.
  • Provide strategic guidance on setting up and ensuring adherence to operating processes and accountability frameworks for delivery teams.
  • Supervise management of the operational budget and resource deployment across states based on strategic priorities.

Organizational Building

  • Strengthen CEGIS as an organization; owning organization development, project governance, talent, and operating processes to enable effective execution.
  • Mentor and manage all State Leads to build a high-performing, mission-driven delivery team; oversee recruitment, capability-building, and performance management for the delivery team.
  • Work closely with the CSO (and CEGIS technical teams) to strengthen systems to convert learnings from CEGIS projects into knowledge products for broader sharing.

Stakeholder Engagement

  • Co-design a stakeholder engagement strategy along with CEO and CSO, and be a key C-Suite leader in engaging with government leadership to build deep long-term partnerships and secure commitment for implementation.
  • Enable and support State Leads in managing their government relationships and ensure CEGIS is viewed as a trusted problem-solving partner.
  • Build long-term relationships and reduce risks.
  • Support the CEO and CSO in strengthening relationships with other key partners, including operating partners, philanthropic funders, and other stakeholders.

18-month goals and priorities

While we are looking for a candidate with a 5+ year time horizon for this role, the priorities for the first 18 months are outlined below:

  • Strengthen delivery quality, and consistency across all state engagements.
  • Institutionalize CEGISs project governance framework to optimize resource utilization, operating rhythms, performance tracking, and escalation mechanisms.
  • Design state-level priorities and workplans in partnership with state leads and the C-Suite and government counterparts, and ensure common understanding of these.
  • Mentor and grow the cadre of State Leads as CEGIS scales.
  • Work with the HR head to strengthen CEGISs talent pipeline, internal staffing systems, and learning and development (L&D) systems with the goal of fostering skills and career growth for individuals, and building organizational capabilities.
  • Work with the Finance head to strengthen financial planning, and resilience.
  • Work with the Technology head to improve internal operational efficiency.
  • Work with CEO, CSO, and Founder to develop a 3-5 year strategy (starting late 2026).

Key Qualifications

  • Senior leadership experience (typically 20-30 years) in management consulting, non-profit or mission-driven organisations. Masters degree and evidence of continuous intellectual growth.
  • Proven track record of building organizations with outstanding work culture, standards of excellence, and track record of delivery.
  • Proven track record of driving operational excellence in complex environments.
  • Proven track record of success in complex, multi-stakeholder environments, navigating senior government counterparts
  • Strong understanding of governance, public finance, capacity-building, and/or of key development sectors (such as education, health, child development) is desirable.
  • Being excited about CEGISs mission and contributing to national development.

Key Competencies

  • Leadership: Demonstrated ability to inspire, mentor, and lead large, multidisciplinary, and cross-functional teams.
  • Operational Acumen: Expertise in designing and implementing processes that can drive cost-effective delivery at scale.
  • Collaborative temperament: Able to work in groups with divergent worldviews and experiences and lead based on earning respect as opposed to imposing authority.
  • Stakeholder Management: Exceptional relationship-building and influencing skills across diverse stakeholder groups.
  • Adaptability: Resilience and flexibility to navigate ambiguity and scale operations in a dynamic environment.

Compensation:

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

Pre-reads for the application process

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

Recommended listening:

  • Karthik Muralidharan: Indias Roadmap for Effective Governance — FED Dialogues: Podcast Episode
  • Karthik Muralidharan on Making Governance More Effective — Sushasan | Podcast

Apply:

Interested candidates are requested to submit their application here or reach out to us at vishal@theconvergencefoundation.org

Note: CEGIS has zero tolerance to 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 of misconduct, appropriate action that may include employment termination would be taken. Please click the link for self declaration.

Working Place:

Delhi, India

Department :

Centre for Effective Governance of Indian States (CEGIS)
< back to jobs opening