Asia and the middle east programme manager jobs

Role Title: Senior Resilience and Climate Adviser 
Salary: £48,166 to 49,558 
Location: London-Hybrid 
Tenure: Full Time, Permanent

ActionAid UK is a member of the ActionAid Federation, an international charity that works with women and girls living in poverty. We work with our partners and dedicated staff in 43 countries to end violence and fight poverty so that all women, everywhere, can create the future they want

Are you a keen advocate of women and girls’ rights in emergencies? 

Are you committed to climate justice, women’s rights and shifting power to communities most affected by the climate crisis?

Do you have substantial experience in resilience and climate programming ?

Then we'd love to hear from you!

ActionAid UK is looking for a passionate and experienced Senior Resilience and Climate Adviser to join our Women, Peace and Security team. This is a unique opportunity to shape and strengthen our work on climate justice and resilience, bringing a distinctly feminist, anti-racist and decolonial perspective to one of the most important areas of global humanitarian and development work.

In this role, you will help drive ActionAid UK’s strategic thinking on resilience and climate across our programmes, research, and policy engagement. You will play a central part in defining how ActionAid UK positions itself within these thematic areas, supporting both UK-based influence and the wider international federation. A key aspect of your work will involve developing strong alliances across the sector, guiding organisational thinking on emerging issues such as anticipatory action and risk-based financing, and ensuring our approaches consistently reflect our values of shifting power and promoting women’s leadership. You will collaborate closely with colleagues across business development, providing technical insight to shape high-quality proposals and support strategic partnerships that align with ActionAid’s commitments to anti-racism and climate justice. You will also contribute to designing new concepts, strengthening tender submissions, and supporting the growth of innovative, values-driven programming.

Across programme quality and implementation, you will be a specialist resource for teams working in humanitarian and development contexts, offering targeted technical guidance that supports country programmes to deliver to ActionAid’s humanitarian signature: shifting power, accountability to affected communities, and women-led resilience. You will help shape monitoring, evaluation, learning and reporting processes, ensuring the organisation is continually improving how it generates and uses evidence.

Your work will also extend deeply into research and policy, where you will help build strategic research partnerships, promote decolonial approaches to evidence generation, and support the publication and sharing of learning within academic, governmental and practitioner spaces. You will inform policy positions and contribute to key engagements with governmental actors, including FCDO & global climate policy spaces (UNFCCC), always working in close partnership with ActionAid’s advocacy and policy teams. This role also plays a vital part in ActionAid’s campaigning work. You will provide leadership for the UK chapter of the Federation’s Global Climate Justice Campaign, chairing the Steering Committee, supporting research that underpins the campaign’s messaging, and helping to deliver effective collaboration with ActionAid Federation Members. As needed, you will act as a spokesperson to amplify ActionAid’s climate justice messages to the media and the wider public.

Externally, you will represent ActionAid within UK and global spaces, building relationships with like-minded organisations and identifying opportunities to elevate ActionAid’s influence and visibility on resilience and climate justice.

To succeed in this role, you will bring substantial experience of working in humanitarian contexts on resilience and climate programming, ideally with an international organisation. You should have a deep understanding of humanitarian architecture, key donors, and external standards, as well as hands-on experience with resilience approaches such as disaster risk reduction, climate adaptation, sustainable agriculture or natural resource management. A strong grounding in feminist and human-rights-based approaches is essential, along with a clear understanding of anti-racism and what it means to decolonise aid in practice. You should be comfortable supporting teams, conducting analysis, generating research, communicating complex ideas with clarity, and representing an organisation publicly. The role will also require regular overseas travel, sometimes to insecure environments at short notice.

A postgraduate degree, experience in Africa, Asia or the Middle East, additional languages and academic publications are all beneficial but not essential.

If you are committed to feminist principles, passionate about climate justice, and looking for a role where your expertise can influence real systems change, ActionAid UK would love to hear from you.

This role requires regular travel into central London for meetings, parliamentary engagement and external events. Some international travel is also expected.

Additional information

Diversity, equality, inclusion and belonging:

Diversity, inclusion and belonging are key to our organisational culture. We are on a journey to become not only an anti-racist organisation but one that proudly celebrates the diversity of all applicants and employees. We look forward to you bringing your full self to work, proudly sharing your unique perspective and helping us to shape our combined future. We especially welcome applications from those from under-represented/marginalised communities.

AAUK is a Disability Confident Committed organisation and as such any candidate that declares a disability will be shortlisted for interview if they meet the essential criteria for the role.

Referencing and safeguarding:

All offers of employment will be subject to satisfactory references and appropriate screening checks, which can include Misconduct Disclosure Scheme, safeguarding, criminal records and terrorism finance checks. By submitting an application the job applicant confirms their understanding of these recruitment procedures. 

ActionAid UK is committed to preventing any form of sexual harassment, exploitation, and abuse (including child abuse and adult at-risk abuse) and responding robustly when these harms take place. We expect all ActionAid UK staff and ActionAid UK representatives to share this commitment. We will not tolerate our staff or other representatives carrying out any form of sexual harassment, exploitation or abuse towards anyone we come into contact with through our work. 

Working practices:

ActionAid is committed to supporting flexible working. If you would like to discuss flexible working options, including the possibility of a job share for this role, there will be space to do so during the interview process.

ActionAid UK has a hybrid working policy for many of our roles. The requirement will vary from team to team and the responsibilities of individual roles. As a minimum, all colleagues are expected to attend the office 12 days per year, plus additional time for induction, training, and company connection days. Some roles may require in-office attendance on all days and if so, these will clearly be marked as in-office roles.

Please note that ActionAid UK does not offer fully remote working options. We encourage you to discuss hybrid working expectations at interview.

Recruitment processes:

Please note that ActionAid UK may review, shortlist and interview candidates prior to the closing date so we encourage all candidates to apply as soon as possible. If we receive a very high response, we may close the vacancy early and will not accept further submissions. Vacancies close at 23:55pm