Senior Technical Advisor, Humanitarian and Business Development

Job Title: Senior Technical Advisor, Humanitarian and Business Development

Location: Preferably Burkina Faso, Cote D’Ivoire, DRC, Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, Niger, Tanzania, Uganda, or United States

About Us: For nearly 70 years, Pathfinder International has been a catalyst for systems transformation, inclusive growth, and resilient communities in over 120 countries across the world. With a global footprint spanning Africa, South Asia, and the Middle East, we invest in women, girls, and communities by expanding access to essential health products and services while advancing health systems, unlocking leadership pathways, and strengthening economic and climate resilience. Through strategic partnerships with civil society, governments, and the private sector, we scale innovations and data-driven models that deliver measurable impact. We advance this work alongside men and communities, co-creating and building environments and systems to ensure every woman has the agency to shape her future and lead a healthy, fulfilling life.

Your Impact: The Senior Technical Advisor, Humanitarian and Business Development, will provide strategic and technical leadership in designing high-quality humanitarian and nexus programmes and will support organizational growth through competitive business development. The position will lead to the development of evidence-based, innovative, and donor-responsive proposals across humanitarian, recovery, resilience, and development programming. Reporting directly to the Director Business Development & Partnerships and working closely with country offices, technical advisors, BD advisors, the MEL team, and partnerships teams, the Senior Technical Advisor will translate organizational strategy into winning funding opportunities and technically robust programme designs. This position will also strengthen organizational capacity in programme design, technical writing, and proposal development in the humanitarian sector.

Key Responsibilities:

Strategic Programme Design:  

• Lead the design of high-quality humanitarian, recovery, resilience, and humanitarian-development-peace nexus programmes.


• Translate donor priorities, contextual analyses, assessments, and organizational strategies into innovative programme concepts.


• Ensure programme designs are technically sound, gender-responsive, climate-sensitive, conflict-sensitive, inclusive, and country-led.

Business Development and Proposal Leadership:

• Lead technical proposal development for strategic humanitarian and development funding opportunities.


• Ensure program designs integrate protection, emergency preparedness and response, early recovery, and humanitarian-development-nexus approaches.


• Support technical quality assurance across humanitarian programs through technical guidance, reviews, and adaptive learning.


• Serve as Proposal Lead or Technical Lead for priority bids.


• Develop technical narratives, implementation approaches, and Theories of change.


• Support capture planning, opportunity positioning, competitive analyses, and partner engagement.

Technical Writing and Technical visibility:

• Prepare high-quality technical documents including concept notes, proposals, strategic papers, donor reports, briefing notes, case studies, and learning products.


• Review technical quality, consistency, and compliance of proposals before submission. Ensure evidence, data, lessons learned, and organizational experience are effectively incorporated into proposals.


• Maintain high standards of technical writing, editing, and document presentation.

Program innovation and impact:

• Promote evidence-informed programme design across the organization.


• Identify and document innovations, promising practices, and lessons learned.


• Support development of organizational guidance, templates, and programme design tools.


• Contribute to organizational thought leadership on humanitarian programming and business development.

Capacity strengthening:

• Strengthen organizational capacity in humanitarian programme design.


• Design and deliver formal training and informal mentorship programs to enhance internal technical writing for humanitarian settings and program design capacity across global teams.

What You Bring:

• Master’s degree in public health, International Development, Humanitarian Assistance, Social Sciences, Economics, Monitoring and Evaluation, or a related field.


• Minimum 10 years of progressively responsible experience in humanitarian programming, programme design, and international development.


• Demonstrated experience leading successful proposals for major institutional donors.


• Strong understanding of humanitarian architecture and humanitarian-development-peace nexus programming.


• Proven track record of leading successful proposal development processes for bilateral (e.g., FCDO, GAC), multilateral (e.g., UN agencies, Global Fund, World Bank), and private sector donors.


• Experience working in multicultural, multi-country contexts with demonstrated ability to engage global teams and stakeholders.


• Excellent communication skills, with ability to tailor complex technical content to diverse audiences (donors, policymakers, partners, internal teams).

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience working in humanitarian settings and humanitarian actors.


• Experience in graphic design and desktop publishing


• Experience in mentoring staff and capacity strengthening


• Fluency in French, Portuguese or Arabic

Why You’ll Love Working with Us:

• Join an innovative, forward-thinking organization that values your growth and ideas.


• Work within a supportive, collaborative environment.


• Make a meaningful impact on our business development and partnership portfolio.


• Enjoy a competitive salary and comprehensive benefits package.


• Benefit from the opportunity for global engagement.

 Ready to Apply? If you are passionate about financial functions and are eager to make a difference, we would love to hear from you! Please submit your resume and a cover letter detailing your experience and why you are the ideal candidate for this role via this website no later than September 19^th, 2026. You are also requested to include the contact details for at least 3 references in your resume.

Please note that this position will be filled on a rolling basis.

Equal Employment Opportunity Employer Statement

Pathfinder International provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws.

This policy applies to all terms and conditions of employment, including recruiting, hiring, placement, promotion, termination, layoff, recall, transfer, leaves of absence, compensation, and training.

Safeguarding and Protection Statement

Pathfinder is committed to the safeguarding and protection of the people we serve and our staff. We have zero tolerance for any type of behavior that inflicts harm on children, young people, adults, our staff, and partners including sexual abuse, harassment, bullying, and exploitation. We do everything possible to ensure that we recruit only those who are suitable to work with for us and expect that everyone we hire will abide by our safeguarding and related policies and will report any suspected or known violations. This job is subject to a range of vetting checks as legally permitted in the country where they are being hired. By applying, the job applicant acknowledges they understand our intent to verify suitability to work with us

This job description format focuses on the main duties of the position and is not intended to list every potential task or assignment. Duties can and will change to meet the changing priorities of the department and organization.

Pathfinder International does not charge any fee, request any form of payment, or solicit financial or personal banking information at any stage of its recruitment process, including application, interview, assessment, onboarding, or training. Any request for payment or any form of compensation in exchange for employment opportunities with Pathfinder International should be treated as fraudulent and reported immediately.

Applicants are advised to exercise caution against fraudulent job advertisements or individuals falsely representing Pathfinder International for financial gain. Applicants are encouraged to verify all recruitment communications through Pathfinder International’s official channels.