Programme director jobs

About This Vacancy

Barnabas Aid is recruiting an exceptional leader to serve as Regional Director for Asia. This is a senior leadership role within the International Programmes Team, sitting on both the Programmes Leadership Team and the Strategic Leadership Team, and offering an outstanding opportunity to shape how BAI serves persecuted and suffering Christians across one of the world’s most complex and spiritually significant regions.

The Asia region spans South Asia, Central Asia, and Southeast Asia — some of the most sensitive and complex contexts in which Barnabas Aid works. Many of the communities we serve face active persecution, operate in restricted environments, and depend on the careful, sensitive stewardship of their relationships with BAI and our partners.

This is an extraordinary opportunity for a strategically minded, relationally gifted Christian leader to shape how BAI serves the persecuted Church across one of the world's most complex and spiritually significant regions.

The Role

The Regional Programme Director — Asia will provide strategic leadership for the development and delivery of Barnabas Aid's grant making and project management across the Asia Region. You will lead and develop a team of Programme Managers, build and sustain a strong partner network, and oversee a portfolio of high-quality, biblically grounded projects that deliver measurable impact for persecuted and suffering Christians.

As a member of both the Programmes Leadership Team and the Strategic Leadership Team, you will contribute to BAI's global Programmes strategy and to organisational strategy, culture, and effective cross-departmental working.

Key Responsibilities

Regional strategy and portfolio leadership

• In collaboration with the International Chief Programmes Officer, lead the development, review, and implementation of the global Programmes strategy within the assigned Region, translating strategic priorities into a clear regional plan and pipeline.
• Maintain a balanced regional portfolio aligned with organisational priorities, donor intent, and restricted fund requirements.
• Identify emerging needs, risks, and opportunities in the Region and recommend strategic responses, including new initiatives and partnerships.
• Ensure that the Region is balancing its portfolio of Programmes according to the Country Classification framework.

Grant making and programme cycle management

• Oversee the end-to-end grant making process for Programmes in the region, ensuring proposals are assessed, costed, and approved in line with delegated authority, Gate processes, and Programmes Subcommittee requirements.
• Take lead responsibility for one sub-region and/or a portfolio of countries, leading on partner engagement and the whole project management cycle.
• Ensure robust needs assessments, project design, logical frameworks (where applicable), budgets, partner due diligence, risk assessments, and monitoring plans are in place before grants are committed.
• Oversee project implementation across the regional portfolio, including milestone tracking, reporting, learning, and close-out, ensuring records are maintained accurately and on time.
• Proactively identify project delivery issues and work with team members and partners to resolve them promptly.
• Maintain proficiency in the use of all systems and processes used to manage the workflow of the team.
• Work closely with the Programme Quality Team to ensure best practice standards, continuous improvement, and consistent application of policies, processes, and templates.

Leadership and people management

• Support the staff in the regional team by providing clear leadership, coaching, and line management, including goal setting, supervision, performance management, and development.
• Ensure capacity planning across the Region so that project management workloads are realistic and risks are appropriately managed.
• Lead recruitment, onboarding, and succession planning for the regional team, contributing to wider Programmes Team workforce planning as required.
• Deputise for the international Chief Programmes Officer when requested to do so during their absence
• Ensure Regional team members plan overseas trips appropriately and adequately, always factoring in security and safeguarding risks.

Partner engagement and external representation

• Ensure the regional team builds and sustains a strong partner network, with relationships that are effective, mutually accountable, and aligned with Barnabas Aid's mission and values.
• Develop and implement a plan for regular partner engagement and capacity building (including visits where appropriate and safe) to strengthen project delivery, monitoring, and safeguarding.
• Represent Barnabas Aid professionally with partners and other stakeholders, managing sensitive information and security considerations appropriately.
• Engage proactively with peer organisations and networks to bring insight on sector best practice into BAI's work.

Cross-organisational collaboration and governance

• Work closely with Outreach and Support departments to provide timely, high-quality project information and updates that enable supporter communications, fundraising, and reporting.
• Contribute to organisational planning and decision-making through active membership of the Programmes Leadership Team and the Strategic Leadership Team (as applicable).
• Prepare quality papers, dashboards, and narrative updates for internal decision-making meetings and governance forums as required.

Compliance, risk, and safeguarding

• Ensure compliance with Barnabas Aid policies and external requirements relevant to grant making and project delivery, including data protection and information security.
• Maintain effective regional risk management, including project, partner, fraud, security, and reputational risks, escalating issues promptly and recommending mitigations.
• Champion safeguarding and ensure safeguarding considerations are integrated into partner due diligence, project design, implementation, and reporting.

Other duties

• Carry out any other reasonable duties as the organisation requires.

Turn insight into impact for autistic children and young people as Ambitious about Autism's first Director of National Programmes.

Applications close at 9 a.m. Monday 29th June.

Location: Hybrid working with at least two days in the London office and able to travel on a regular basis throughout the UK as necessary.

About the organisation

Ambitious about Autism stands with autistic children and young people, championing their rights and creating opportunities across education, employment, health and community life. We educate and support hundreds of autistic children and young people directly and reach thousands more through our national programmes, employability initiatives, participation work and policy influence.

With our Ambitious Together strategy launching later this summer, we are building on our strong foundations as a service delivery organisation, and seek to play a greater role in shaping the systems that affect autistic children and young people. To deliver on this vision, we have created a new executive leadership team role: Director of National Programmes.

About the role

Reporting to the Chief Executive and sitting on the executive leadership team, the Director of National Programmes will lead the strategy, design and evolution of our national portfolio, helping Ambitious about Autism strengthen its role as a catalyst for systems change. Working at the intersection of education, policy, evidence and lived experience, you will identify opportunities to improve outcomes for autistic children and young people, influencing practice far beyond our own organisation.

You will develop innovative and scalable programme models, creating partnerships that enable successful approaches to be tested, evidenced and adopted by others. Working closely with colleagues across fundraising, external affairs and education, you will help secure the investment, partnerships and evidence needed to influence lasting change.

Who we are looking for

We are seeking a collaborative, values-led leader with a deep understanding of education systems and a passion for improving outcomes for autistic children and young people, who can turn strategic insight into practical solutions that influence policy and practice. You will have a proven track record of developing evidence-led programmes, building partnerships and driving impact, while being commercially astute, politically aware and effective in complex environments.

As a strong people leader, you will inspire teams and champion co-production, and you will be motivated by our mission to help Ambitious about Autism lead a more inclusive education system within a values-driven organisation.

Applications for this role close at 9 a.m. Monday 29th June.

For further information about the role and to register your interest, please visit the Peridot Partners page and contact our advising consultants.

The Director of Place, Programmes and Delivery provides strategic leadership and operational oversight of the charity’s programmes and projects, including our Place Expansion work, ensuring they are high-quality, impactful, and aligned with the organisation’s mission and values. The role is responsible for translating strategic objectives into effective delivery, embedding learning and improvement, and ensuring programmes are sustainable, inclusive, and responsive to the needs of funders.

You will have a strong understanding of risk management, developing senior relationships with key partner agencies, able to take decisive and proactive actions to ensure smooth execution of programmes.

You will be purposeful and collaborative with the ability to manage multiple complex programmes at one time. The current programmes you will be responsible for include: Safeguarding and Welfare, Playzones, and Place Expansion. You will also be responsible for all of our Project work.

Being the senior leader responsible for our Place Expansion work will be a substantial part of this role.  Place-based working in this sector is still emerging and operates within complex local systems, requiring the ability to navigate, influence and align a wide range of partners, often with different priorities, accountabilities and constraints.

You will also be the lead senior officer responsible for Safeguarding.

As a member of the senior leadership team, the Director of Programmes, Delivery and Place contributes to organisational strategy, resource planning, and organisational culture. You will also regularly attend Board meetings and Sub-Committee meetings as required.

Find out more about this role at our online candidate information webinar on 8th June at 3pm.  Join the session using the link in the recruitment pack or watch the recording of the session on our YouTube Channel.

Please see the recruitment pack on our website for full details of this role.

Who you are:

• Significant senior-level experience in programme or service delivery within the charity, public, or related sectors.
• Experience of managing and influencing complex relationships with external senior stakeholders at a strategic level and brokering solutions in environments where relationships can be both collaborative and contested.
• Proven experience of leading complex programmes and teams.
• Strong understanding of programme design, delivery and impact measurement.
• Experience of project management tools, resource planning and budget management.
• Excellent leadership, communication, and stakeholder-management skills.
• Strong commitment to, and knowledge of, safeguarding, equity, diversity, and inclusion.
• Alignment with the values and mission of the organisation.
• You are able to demonstrate an understanding of, and commitment to, equality, diversity and inclusion in relation to London.
• You have lived experience of day-to-day life in London. 

Key Details:

• Full-time (35 hours per week).  We are open to discussing flexible working options.
• Salary: £75,000 per annum if full-time
• Permanent contract
• Flexible working: we use a model of 2 plus days per week in our central London office at House of Sport or a partner organization and working from home, with travel required throughout London
• Offering 28 days’ holiday + 8 public holidays + 5 volunteer days + Christmas Closure
• Competitive Pension scheme 
• Life Assurance and Health Cash Plan
• Employee Assistance Provider giving access to counselling and practical support

Timeline:

Deadline for applications: EoD on Tuesday 16th June