Data and Systems Lead

We're looking for a Data & Systems Lead who will work on our systems and evaluation to support Khulisa to grow its impact and reach through efficient ways of working and clear narration of its impact.

About Khulisa

Khulisa, meaning 'nurture' in the Zulu language of South Africa, is an award-winning charity dedicated to providing therapeutic support to young people. We focus on reaching those who are most at risk – young people from deprived communities who are often marginalized, vulnerable to exclusion, and at heightened risk of becoming involved in crime

Our approach centres on safe, exploratory methods that aim to understand behaviour and experiences often rooted in trauma, abuse, and neglect. We deliver intensive therapeutic programs within educational and community settings, empowering young people to confront the underlying causes of their emotional distress and work toward healing. To create lasting, sustainable change, we work to establish trauma-informed environments around young people by equipping parents, caregivers, educators, and other professionals with the tools they need to offer effective, supportive care. Currently, our services are active in London and Manchester.

About the role

Khulisa has invested heavily in the development of its monitoring and evaluation framework, alongside augmenting its evaluation capacity and capability through innovation. This role brings together the synergies between systems and evaluation developments to support the organisation to grow both its impact and its reach through efficient ways of working and clear narration of its impact. This role will involve:

• Managing the day-to-day maintenance and smooth running of Khulisa’s main CRM and reporting systems, including – but not limited to – Salesforce, PowerBI, FormAssembly and Wonde.
• Leading the change management of system development work, supporting colleagues to engage with systems changes and achieve greater results for the young people we serve.
• Ensuring the day-to-day operating of Khulisa’s data recording, processing and reporting processes.
• Continually refining and improving Khulisa’s internal MEL capacity including our evaluation systems; organisational and programme Theories of Change; evaluation indicators; data collection tools and define system improvements.
• Supporting the scoping and design of new programmes by providing data from past programmes, insights from beneficiaries and service-users, research into best practice and offer ongoing guidance on establishing best practice MEL systems and processes.

For a full list of duties and responsibilities, please see the attached job description when you click the apply button.

This is a hybrid role, with the post holder required to work mostly from home but with access to desk space in our London office. Travel to various locations in London and the North-West of England may also be necessary to fulfil the requirements of the role.

What we're looking for

Abilities/Experiences

• Mixed methods research skills with experience in taking overall end-to-end accountability for large-scale research and evaluation projects (from identifying objectives and developing the most appropriate approaches to the delivery of learning activities, through to complex analysis and production of robust, engaging research outputs, generation and sharing of recommendations); 
• Experience in communicating research effectively and for action with a wide range of audiences (policymakers, leaders in other charities, funders & cross-function internal teams); 
• Experience in developing and using Theories of Change; 
• Experience working on design/innovation projects; 
• Experience conducting research & evaluation with disadvantaged groups; 
• Experience in working towards or leading organisational change; 
• Experience in creative methods of communication and dissemination (e.g. data visualisation, infographics, video/other digital methods etc); 
• Experience facilitating internal analysis workshops to develop shared recommendations; 
• Experience of working with a wide range of CRM and evaluation software including Excel, Salesforce, PowerBI and others.

Knowledge/Skills

• Excellent quantitative and qualitative research skills;
• Excellent analysis, interpretation and storytelling skills; 
• Skilled in using insight, evidence and impact evaluation data to influence internal and external audiences; 
• Creative thinker with the ability to identify new approaches to deliver our learning needs; 
• Solutions focused and able to respond effectively to challenges and changes that emerge in research/evaluation projects and in the wider organisation; 
• Strong project management skills (from project initiation, project delivery, updating colleagues, driving a process, completing and learning).

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion: We are actively looking to recruit a diversity of talent. We embrace, respect and value the difference in our employees and believe that we and our work is better for it. We are committed to creating and maintaining an inclusive environment that consists of fairness, dignity, and caring for everyone, and one that enables every employee to flourish and realise their potential.